Punishment as an Effective Behaviour Modification Strategy - Assignment Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : Punishment and Behaviour Modification Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx @2010 Abstract There has been great contribution from different researchers over the use of Punishment as a form of behavioural modification method with various issues raised over its effectiveness in bringing the desired change among the individuals. In this interest, this paper reviews the potentials, questions, and also applicability of punishment in the field of behavioural modification as well as discussing the issues involved here. Introduction Definition of punishment is diverse among the different psychologists. However, by adopting the concise definition from Kazdin (1975) who states that Punishment is the aversive presentation of an event or positive removal of an event following a response that reduces the response’s frequency, the relationship between the defined response and the aversive consequence is shown. Punishment therefore occurs as a result of bad or undesirable behaviour. Punishment always take two forms, with the positive punishment involving adding of something which is undesired for instance time limit for a particular task and the negative punishment involving removal or denial of something desired, for instance a birthday treat . The psychologists argue that in order for punishment to take place, the aversive stimulus should happen close enough to the beginning of the behaviour leading to reduced repetition in the future. However, the aversive stimuli are most inappropriately applied as well as being mostly driven by client’s anger than the objective of behaviour change. Punishment has undergone a lot of criticisms from various researchers as well as human rights organizations; however this still remains the favourite method of instilling discipline and behaviour change among the children. The controversy in its application therefore raises the question (Walker& Shea, 1991). Punishment and Behaviour Modification Many care takers, medical professionals, and also parents have always considered punishment as a primary strategy that can suppress unwanted behaviour among children. They support it because punishment has been very essential in the treatment of the problems related to intractable behaviour using punishers like verbal reprimands, punitive or even reciprocity sanctions, hence its influence in the development of procedures to be used for clinical purposes basically for inducing suppression of unwanted behaviours among children. Various authors have also concluded on the importance of punishment, as can be found in their materials claiming the effectiveness of treatment using punishment since it is competent and may successfully compete against the reinforcement contingencies which maintain the undesired behaviour in children. The common procedures for punishment, for instance the short manual restraint and time-out, may be very effective if extinction is not present. This has also been shown by studies and applied findings indicating the better performance of punishment in behaviour modification compared to little intrusive procedures, like the differential reinforcement. The end result results of all these suggestions seem to concur with the laboratory findings since there are several parameters that mostly affect the procedures of behaviour reduction. For instance, effective behaviour-reduction can be achieved through intense differential reinforcement schedule as compared to a mild punisher. However, in as much as it has received applauds from parents and some teachers, punishment has generally been viewed all over the globe as a very dangerous technique of behaviour modification, with human rights organisations like United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child (U.N.C.R.C), Convention on Human Rights (American convention) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (I.C.C.P.R.) condemning and putting in place laws against punishment. Some countries have completely banned all forms of physical punishment and they include Germany (2000), Israel (2000), Portugal (2007) and Spain (2007) while other nations still apply use it. Recent study shows that most of physical punishment occur from kindergarten to eighth grade. However much used here, it results in: Avoidance learning Due to the evasiveness of punishment, children are likely to learn behaviour avoidance(church, 1963)which cannot be assumed as equal to learning how to end the unacceptable behaviour, but only mean finding methods of avoiding the punishment for instance by giving false information. This indicates that the behavioural problem, even though covered, will still exist in the children and will likely be repeated or increased among the children. General avoidance especially the avoidance of authority figures may limit chances of children getting in contact with the sources that offer the learning of acceptable behaviour, for instance teachers, counsellors or parents (Clarke, Montgomery & viney, 1971) and may as well cause a sense of belonging to a given social out-group. This indicates that punishment may worsen the already existing problem. Need for More intensive punishment for better results Even though increased suppression of the behaviour problem has always been done through the use of increased punishment intensity (Azrin& Holz, 1966).near-completion of suppression of the behaviour occurs only through the use of a more intensive punishment, so intense that could be considered inhumane (Turner & Solomon, 1962).This might have emotional consequences among the victims leading to the interference with any intention of learning a better behaviour. Severity of punishment does not in essence increase deterrence but may only lead to the counter-productive effect like defiance hence increased offense in case the children view the punishment as unjust or excessive (Sherman,1993). Requires proper timing Punishment also tends to be more effective in children only when applied during the immediate time of occurrence rather than after sometimes later. This means that when the punishment takes place after the occurrence of the behaviour problem, the children will view this as unfairness or even an expression of hatred on them, which ends up not correcting the behaviour. The problem behaviour always return to the former level when punishment discontinuation takes place implying that punishment may only cause temporary suppression of behaviour, which in the long run returns to the original state. Further still, Studies show that increased punishment increases the child’s secrecy since there is more motivation to avoid detection. Increases problem behaviour due to Perception on illegitimacy of punishment In the previous 3 decades, psychologists extensively researched on the importance of cognitive factors in the development of human behaviours with great success (Ashcroft, 1994). Human beings think and this thinking is responsible for their feelings and actions hence the punishment given might be deemed unfair or fair by the child ,with punishments viewed as unfair worsening the already existing behaviour problem. Its perception as unfair could also lead to alienations among the children (Lerman & Vorndran, 2002). Poor development of Punisher-child relationship Punishment can modify the behaviour of a child in case there is close and affectionate relationship between the punisher and the child; however, the impersonal and distant relationships between the two may extremely create a negative mental picture in the child hence developing hatred and resistance towards the punisher. Hence punishment effectiveness is limited only to better bonding between the punisher and the child. This is also the reason why punishment is successful in deterring the behaviour problem in children’s social in-groups and vice- versa in social out-groups among children. Illegitimate shaming leading to defiance Punishment can be given through the shaming of the action, or by a stigmatizing way through the actor being ashamed (Braithwaite, 1989). Integrative way mostly reduces the level of problem behaviour while the stigmatic shaming increases this. In case the child gets ashamed due to the punishment, sees the punishment as deserving as well as have good relationship between him and the punisher, then they will accept the attachment of the shame to the behaviour problem and maintain their pride which in turn makes the punishment be a deterrent. However, if the shame is seen as illegitimate and the bonds between the child and the punisher is poor then the shame will be viewed as personally attaching making them act sensitively against the punisher. Due to this they may proudly defy what they perceive as unworthy shame. This could be further worsened by the out group identity. This may also look normal to the children due to the consideration that there is no any shame in defying the immoral authority. Results in social aggression Social aggression is one of the most common ways of responding to punishment (Bandura, 1967). There are two components in the aggression: the aspect of reflexive fighting that does release tension in the children, brought about by the depressing experience while punishment takes place, and the aspect of delay which includes malice and also thoughts directed at satisfying the recipients of the punishment by destruction of the property of the punisher or sometimes even inflicting harm. This is also shown by 88 corporal punishment meta-analysis studies by Gershoff (2002) which had the conclusion that spanking children leads to aggression, bad conducts and also the related constructs. Holden (2002) also realized that there is no evidence of any positive effects from physical punishment (Baumrind, Larzelere, & Cowan, 2002). Leads to Insensitivity to punishment due to the Prior experience Various studies have also shown that the effectiveness of punishment can be reduced by the child’s prior experience with the punishing stimulus either non-contingently or even contingently which might end up making the behaviour insensitive to the punishment. For instance the research carried out on rats showed that the efficacy of the punishment by shock repeatedly is reduced by the exposition of intermittent shock punishment even after several days and weeks lapse between them. Later on this effect was replicated by Deur and Parke in 1970 on children who were normally developing using a loud buzzer as the stimulus for punishment. Even though these findings may be attributed to stimulus punishing adaptation, intermittent reinforcement has given another relation .Hence college students and rats with intermittent reinforcement history indicated little response suppression under intermittent or continuous punishment with shock compared with continuous reinforcement-historic participants .Eisenberg (1989) also found out that shock punishment resistance had one response increase ( lever pressing) in rats even after the exposure of a topographical different behaviour to intermittent reinforcement. Basic findings have also indicated that intermittent punishment history may also produce complications in the treatment success in such instances in that there is requirement of the punishers that are very intense in order to effectively suppress the behaviour (Shemer &Feldon1984) .However, the punishers mostly used in clinical cases make the relevance of these findings unknown since most basic studies dealt with the shock effects while none of applied studies replicated and also extended the findings up to problem behaviour. Despite this, there are important suggestions for treatment by the findings among which include identification of novel punishers and also that intermittent punishment programmes should not take place before the continuous schedules. The conditioned stimulus may be helpful in the efficacy as well as the acceptance of punishment in the clinical treatment of problem behaviour. Unconditional stimulus was represented by electric shock, rats were the subjects. The establishment of conditioned punishers was via a method from primary methods. In the first method, the stimulus presentation was before the inescapable stimulus started and terminated during the beginning of unconditioned stimulus then the periodic delivery of the unconditioned stimulus took place (Orme-johnson & Yarkzower, 1974).this method has been studied severally with the result that occurrence of most conditioning took place when the presentation of punisher was before the start of unconditioned stimulus. Neutral stimulus was presented, as opposed to simultaneously after or even with its onset. Leads to increased problems with mental health One of the chief arguments against using punishment as a form of correcting or modifying behaviour is because of the medical consequences associated with its use, for instance the E.I.P.S.D trauma above. Hyman (1995) suggests that a half of the children who undergo severe punishment always developed this illness. He also suggests that Post-traumatic stress disorder symptomatology analogous is present in this disorder and can be detected by various symptoms of depression like sleeping difficulties, feelings of worthlessness, anger outbursts, poor concentration, poor academic performance, school avoidance and also problems with peer relationships (Hyman,1995). Conclusion It is clear that punishment has faced a lot of controversy as a behaviour modification method, hence considered less effective especially in children, in case it is compared with other control method. This is strengthened by the recent study carried out by Dodge, Bates, Strasberg and Pettit (1994) showing how parental spanking, regardless of the gender of the punisher or the frequency of use, makes the child more aggressive, with the aggression mostly rampant where the punisher or the parent has a violent behaviour. Same findings have been encountered in other child rearing and disciplining cases involving the use of power-based techniques. Bibliography Lerman, D. C., & Vorndran, C. M., 2002, On the status of knowledge for using punishment: Implications for treating behavior disorders. Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis, 35, 431-464. Lieberman, D. A., 2000, Punishment and extinction. In Learning: Behaviour and cognition (3rd Ed.). Belmont, CA, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. [pp. 286-325]. Sanson, A., Montgomery, B., Gault, U., Gridley, H., & Thomson, D., 1996, Punishment and behaviour change: An Australian Psychology Society position paper, Australian Psychologist, 31, 157-165. Strassberg, Z., Dodge, K.A., Pettit, G.S., &Bates, J.E., 1994, Spanking in the home and children’s subsequent aggression toward kindergarten peers. Development and psychology, 6,445-461. Bandura, A. and Walters R.H., 1959, Adolescence aggression, Ronald press, New York Braithwaite J., 1989, Crime, shame and reintegration, Cambridge university press, Cambridge, England. Turner L.H., 1962, Human traumatic avoidance learning: Theory and experiments on the operant –respondent distinction and failure to learn, Psychology monographs, 76, 1-32. Sherman L.W., 1993, Defiance, deterrence, and irrelevance: a theory of the criminal sanction, Journal of research in crime and delinquency, 30,445-473. Bandura A., 1967, Behavioural modifications through modelling procedures .In L Krasner. L.P. Ullman (Eds.), Research in behavioural modification: New developments and implications, Hort, Rinehart, and Winston, New York. Azrin N.H. & Holz W.C., 1966, punishment. In W.K. Honig (Ed.), Operant behaviour: Areas of research and application, Appleton –Century-Crofts. Walker, J.E., & Shea, T.M., 1991, Behavior management: A practical approach for educators (5th Ed.). Macmillan, New York. Shemer, A. & Feldon, J., 1984, Long-term partial reinforcement extinction effect and long term partial punishment effect in a one-trial-a day paradigm. Bulletin of the psychonomic society, 22, 221-224. Orme-Johnson, D.W., &Yarkowzer, M., 1974, Conditional suppression, journal of the experimental analysis of behaviour, 21, 57-74. Ashcraft, M.H., 1994, Human memory and cognition (2nd Ed), Harper Collins. Eisenberg, N., 1990, The development of prosocial behaviour versus nonprosocial behaviour in children. Psychological Bulletin. Gershoff, E. T., 2002, Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviours And experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psycholological Bulletin, 128,539-579 Baumrind, D., Larzelere, R. E., & Cowan, P. A., 2002, Ordinary physical punishment: Psycholological Bulletin, 128,580-589. Hyman, I. A., 1995, Corporal punishment, psychological maltreatment, violence, and Punitiveness in America: Research, advocacy, and public policy. 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