Operant Therapies

Operant Therapies-All the World Is a Skinner Box?

Operant Therapies-All the World Is a Skinner Box?

Gateway Question 15.7: What role do operant principles play in behavior therapy? Aversion therapy and desensitization are based on classical conditioning. Where does operant conditioning fit in? As you may recall, operant conditioning refers to learning based on the consequences of making a response. The operant principles most often used by behavior therapists to deal with human behavior are:

1. Positive reinforcement. Responses that are followed by reinforcement tend to occur more frequently. If children whine and get attention, they will whine more frequently. If you get A’s in your psychology class, you may become a psychology major.

2. Non-reinforcement and Extinction. A response that is not followed by reinforcement will occur less frequently. If a response is not followed by reward after it has been repeated many times, it will extinguish entirely. After winning three times, you pull the handle on a slot machine 30 times more without a payoff. What do you do? You go away. So does the response of handle pulling (for that particular machine, at any rate).

Operant Therapies-All the World Is a Skinner Box?

3. Punishment. If a response is followed by discomfort or an undesirable effect, the response will be suppressed (but not necessarily extinguished).

4. Shaping. Shaping means reinforcing actions that are closer and closer approximations to a desired response. For example, to reward an intellectually disabled child for saying “ball,” you might begin by reinforcing the child for saying anything that starts with a b sound.

5. Stimulus control. Responses tend to come under the control of the situation in which they occur. If you set your clock 10 minutes fast, it may be easier to leave the house on time in the morning. Your departure is under the stimulus control of the clock, even though you know it is fast.

6. Time out. A time-out procedure usually involves removing the individual from a situation in which reinforcement occurs. Time out is a variation of response cost: It prevents reward from following an undesirable response. For example, children who fight with each other can be sent to separate rooms and allowed out only when they are able to behave more calmly.

• Figure 15.3 (top) Dr. Larry Hodges (in the head-mounted display) and Dr. Page Anderson show how a virtual reality system is used to expose people to feared stimuli. (bottom) A computer image from a virtual Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can re-experience their traumas. For example, someone whose Humvee was destroyed by an improvised explosive device can relive that moment complete with sights, sounds, vibrations, and even smells. Successive exposures result in a reduction of PTSD symptoms (Gerardi et al., 2008).

9781285519517, Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior with Concept Maps and Reviews, Thirteenth Edition, Coon/Mitterer – © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.

Operant Therapies-All the World Is a Skinner Box?

Token economy A therapeutic program in which desirable behaviors are reinforced with tokens that can be exchanged for goods, services, activities, and privileges.

For a more thorough review of operant learning, return to Chapter 6, pages 212–229.

BRIDGES

As simple as these principles may seem, they have been used very effectively to overcome difficulties in work, home, school, and industrial settings. Let’s see how.

Non-reinforcement and Extinction An extremely overweight mental patient had a persistent and disturbing habit: She stole food from other patients. No one could persuade her to stop stealing or to diet. For the sake of her health, a behavior therapist assigned her a special table in the ward dining room. If she approached any other table, she was immediately removed from the dining room. Any attempt to steal from others caused the patient to miss her own meal (Ayllon, 1963). Because her attempts to steal food went unrewarded, they rapidly disappeared.

What operant principles did the therapist in this example use? The therapist used non-reward to produce extinction. The most frequently occurring human behaviors lead to some form of reward. An undesirable response can be eliminated by identifying and removing the rewards that maintain it. But people don’t always do things for food, money, or other obvious rewards. Most of the rewards maintaining human behavior are subtler. Attention, approval, and concern are common yet powerful reinforcers for humans (• Figure 15.4).

Non-reward and extinction can eliminate many problem behaviors, especially in schools, hospitals, and institutions. Often, difficulties center on a limited number of particularly disturbing responses. Time out is a good way to remove such responses, usually by refusing to pay attention to a person who is misbehaving. For example, 14-year-old Terrel periodically appeared in the nude in the activity room of a training center for disturbed adolescents. This behavior always generated a great deal of attention from staff and other patients. As an experiment, the next time he appeared nude, counselors and other staff members greeted him normally and then ignored him. Attention from other patients rapidly sub- sided. Sheepishly, he returned to his room and dressed. Operant Therapies-All the World Is a Skinner Box?

Reinforcement and Token Economies A distressing problem therapists sometimes face is how to break through to severely disturbed patients who won’t talk. Conventional psychotherapy offers little hope of improvement for such patients.

What can be done for them? One widely used approach is based on tokens (symbolic rewards that can be exchanged for real rewards). Tokens may be printed slips of paper, check marks, points, or gold stars. Whatever form they take, tokens serve as rewards because they may be exchanged for candy, food, cigarettes, recreation, or privileges, such as private time with a therapist, outings, or watching television. Tokens are used in mental hospitals, halfway houses, schools for the intellectually disabled, programs for delinquents, and ordinary classrooms. They usually produce improvements in behavior (Dickerson, Tenhula, & Green-Paden, 2005; Matson & Boisjoli, 2009). Operant Therapies-All the World Is a Skinner Box?

Tokens provide an effective way to change behavior because they are secondary reinforcers. See Chapter 6, pages 218–220.

BRIDGES

By using tokens, a therapist can immediately reward positive responses. For maximum impact, therapists select specific target behaviors (actions or other behaviors the therapist seeks to modify). Target behaviors are then reinforced with tokens. For example, a mute mental patient might first be given a token each time he or she says a word. Next, tokens may be given for speaking a complete sentence. Later, the patient could gradually be required to speak more often, then to answer questions, and eventually to carry on a short conversation in order to receive tokens. In this way, deeply withdrawn patients have been returned to the world of normal communication.

The full-scale use of tokens in an institutional set- ting produces a token economy. In a token economy,

 

Number of sessions

10 18 26 34 42 50 58

Frequency of self-destructive actions

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John Gregg

• Figure 15.4 This graph shows extinction of self-destructive behavior in two autistic boys. Before extinction began, the boys received attention and concern from adults for injuring them- selves. During extinction, the adults were taught to ignore the boys’ self-damaging behavior. As you can see, the number of times that the boys tried to injure themselves declined rapidly. (Adapted from Lovaas & Simmons, 1969.)

9781285519517, Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior with Concept Maps and Reviews, Thirteenth Edition, Coon/Mitterer – © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.

patients are rewarded with tokens for a wide range of socially desirable or productive activities (Spiegler & Guevremont, 2010). They must pay tokens for privileges and when they engage in problem behaviors (• Figure 15.5). For example, tokens are given to patients who dress themselves, take required medication, arrive for meals on time, and so on. Constructive activities, such as gardening, cooking, or cleaning, may also earn tokens. Patients must exchange tokens for meals and private rooms, movies, passes, off-ward activities, and other privileges. They are charged tokens for disrobing in public, talking to themselves, fighting, crying, and similar target behaviors (Morisse et al., 1996; Spiegler & Guevremont, 2010).

Token economies can radically change a patient’s overall adjustment and morale. Patients are given an incentive to change, and they are held responsible for their actions. The use of tokens may seem manipulative, but it actually empowers patients. Many “hopelessly” intellectually disabled, mentally ill, and delinquent people have been returned to productive lives by means of token economies (Field et al., 2004).

By the time they are ready to leave, patients may be earning tokens on a weekly basis for maintaining sane, responsible, and productive behavior (Miltenberger, 2011). Typically, the most effective token economies are those that gradually switch from tokens to social rewards such as praise, recognition, and approval. Such rewards are what patients will receive when they return to family, friends, and community.