Operant Conditioning, Reinforcement, and Punishment.

Hello my friends, I'm coming to you a little bit late, or am I really late if I've never really set a schedule? I don't know. I initially told myself I was going to do Mondays and Fridays, but now it looks like that hasn't been so sustainable this week, so you know, we'll aim for once a week, maybe twice a week, we'll work it all out, but anyway. Last time we talked about respondent conditioning, and I had left off with just starting to talk about operant conditioning, so I figured we would dive a little bit more into operant conditioning as well as punishment and reinforcement in today's episode. Welcome to the JustTalks ABA podcast with me, I'm Jess, a BCBA who is still trying to navigate the big world of applied behavior analysis. Learning me as I try to break down common topics of applied behavior analysis and attempt to make things make just a little bit more sense. So what is operant conditioning? And now before I jump into this, I just wanted to let you know that typically I have not a script, but I have my points written out that I want to make, so that way I don't make any mistakes, and then I have all my terms correct, and I just want to make sure that I say things almost perfectly, but that's become a little bit aversive, and I don't want to do that. So I'm going a little bit rogue, we'll see how that goes today, and if I can string my thoughts together in a cohesive sentence, and if we can do that today. But if not, I might go back to the writing things out beforehand for next time. But anyway, just letting you know, if it seems like I'm a little bit more scattered today, that is why. But anyway, getting into operant conditioning. Now operant conditioning was made very popular by BF Skinner, and this has to do with the consequences that follow a behavior. So respondent behavior was very much about what happens before the behavior, and pairing stimuli together before a behavior. Now operant conditioning focuses on what happens after a behavior, and there are two things that can happen. Now operant conditioning essentially says that behaviors are more likely to occur or they are strengthened when they are followed by reinforcement, and they are less likely to occur or they are weakened if they are followed by punishment. So essentially, again, respondent conditioning, what occurs before the behavior, and operant conditioning is all about the consequences that follow it. And there are the two main principles that make operant conditioning possible, and that is reinforcement and punishment. So we're going to take a look at that in this episode today. So again, before I go into talking about the different examples for positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and positive and negative punishment, I just wanted to talk about the main difference between reinforcement and punishment. So reinforcement increases the behavior, or it strengthens the behavior, and punishment decreases the behavior or weakens it. Now positive reinforcement is when you add something, and that increases the behavior, and negative reinforcement is when you take something away, but it still increases the behavior, and we'll get more into that with some examples. And the same can be said for punishment. Negative punishment is when you are adding something, that decreases the behavior, and negative punishment is when you are taking something away and you are decreasing the behavior. Now negative reinforcement and punishment are often confused, so we'll go into some examples about how to tell the difference, but just keep in mind reinforcement increases behavior, and punishment decreases behavior. And something else to keep in mind is that the words positive and negative doesn't really mean what you would think of outside of behavior. It's not positive is good and negative is bad. Essentially, positive means the addition of something, so you're adding something, and negative means you are removing or taking something away. So keep that in mind when thinking of positive and negative reinforcement and punishment. It's that positive is adding, negative is taking away. But good and bad and all that stuff, we don't care about those terms when it comes to behavior. So let's look at positive reinforcement first. So positive reinforcement happens when a behavior occurs and you add a stimulus immediately following that behavior, and that stimulus increases the future likelihood that that behavior will occur again. So this stimulus that is added after the behavior is typically something, well it would have to be something that the person likes in order to strengthen the behavior, otherwise it's punishment. So let's take a look at an example of like a pretty common example of getting a child to eat more vegetables. So let's say we tell a child, if you eat your vegetables, you will get ice cream. In this example, eating vegetables is the desired behavior. And when the child eats vegetables, right after they're done, their parents go into the freezer, grab an ice cream cone, they're like, hey, here you go, great job eating your vegetables, here's some ice cream. In this example, like I said, eating vegetables is the desired behavior. Once the child has eaten the vegetables, the parents go and give the child ice cream right away. So that is the consequence that is immediately following the behavior. Now if we were to see that child eat vegetables again in the future, that's when we know that positive reinforcement has occurred because the frequency or the possibility that the behavior would occur again in the future or the likelihood has increased. This behavior has been strengthened. So again, eating vegetables, they get ice cream. So veggies are eaten consequence is the addition. So you're giving the child ice cream. And then in the future at dinner time, the child is more likely to eat their vegetables. So that is an example of positive reinforcement. Now another example that might be more relatable is going to work. You go to work, you get paid. Now here, the getting paid is not occurring immediately after and I understand that that's when you get into your more schedules of reinforcement. But just to keep this easy, let's say you get paid at the end of every work day. So you go to work and as soon as you're done work, your supervisor hands you a paycheck. So in this example, you go to work, that is your behavior. And then when you leave, you are given a check. So you are being like the check, the money is being added. And now in the future, you will be more likely to go to work because you want money. You want to get paid. So in this example, going to work, you are having the addition of money. And then in the future, your going to work behavior has now been increased or the likelihood that it will occur in the, again, in the future has been strengthened. All right. So that's positive reinforcement. And I think I might have caught myself just now. I mentioned that if the behavior does not occur in the future or if, you know, the addition of the stimulus following the behavior doesn't increase the behavior, then it's not positive reinforcement and it's punishment that I don't think is right. It just would not be positive reinforcement. It would be punishment if the behavior was weakened or decreased over time. But I think by me saying that if it's not increased in the future, then it's punishment. That's not entirely correct. So sorry about that. But anyway, that's why I usually write things out. So here we go again. So positive reinforcement, you're adding something the person likes and that strengthens the behavior. And now for negative reinforcement, what happens is, you know, you have an aversive stimulus or something that you don't like. You engage in a behavior and that stimulus is removed. So now in the future, you are more likely to engage in that behavior. So let's look at an example of right now it's summer. It's hot. I don't have central air conditioning. I have a tiny little portable AC unit in my room. So I walk into my room and it is hot and I do not like it. I do not handle the heat well. So what I do is I turn the air conditioning on. When the air conditioning is on, it removes the heat from my room, it removes the humidity from my room and now I no longer have that aversive stimulus of heat. So in the future, when I am hot and uncomfortable and I see that the air conditioning is not on in my room, then that would be an example of negative reinforcement. My air conditioning, turning on behavior has increased in the future because it removes the aversive stimulus. You might also look at it as maybe if you think of it and from the frame of mind, well, you're adding cold air, is it also positive reinforcement? Could be. But for this example, I'm looking at the removal of the hot air. That is aversive. I do not like it. So let's look at another example. You were drinking, you wake up with a hangover, you have a terrible headache. I think I use this example in one of my last episodes. Apparently, I like to talk about hangovers and headaches. I don't even drink that much, but it's just something that apparently is very easy for me to talk about. So you wake up from a night of drinking, you have an absolutely terrible headache and you take a Tylenol. By taking that Tylenol, the pain of the headache has been removed. So in the future, if you wake up with a headache or you have any kind of pain, your Tylenol taking behavior will be more likely to occur in the future because it worked for you the last time. So the biggest thing to keep in mind here for negative reinforcement is something is happening that is aversive. You don't like it, whether it's, you know, you're hot, you're uncomfortable, someone's being loud and talking too much, whatever it might be, then you engage in a behavior that removes that aversive stimulus. So whether it is telling the person, Hey, can you please be quiet? And then they stop talking. That's removing the aversive. Whether I'm hot and I turn the air conditioning on and it removes the cold air or I have a headache and I take a Tylenol and now it removes the pain. All of these things are removing or all of these behaviors are removing the aversive stimulus. Now in the future, I will be more likely to do any one of these things because it's worked for me in the past. So that's reinforcement. The behaviors, whether you're adding something that you like or you're removing something that you don't like, the outcome is the same. Your behavior will be increased in the future. So that's reinforcement behavior is strengthened or will increase or be likely to occur in the future because they have been strengthened in the past, whether it's been by the addition of something that you enjoy or the removal of something that you do not. All right. So that was reinforcement now getting into punishment. So positive punishment, just like positive reinforcement was adding something, punishment is the same. Positive punishment is adding something. The difference here is that the addition of the stimulus decreases the behavior instead of increasing it. So typically the increase or sorry, the addition of the stimulus or the stimulus that is added is typically aversive or something that you don't enjoy. So for example, you're a kid, you're walking around your house, you see an open socket. Like, ooh, that looks fun. I'm going to stick my finger in there. You put your finger in the socket and you get shocked and it hurts and you pull away and you're like, I am never doing that again. That sucked. In this example, the behavior is putting your finger into that electrical socket. The addition of the stimulus is that electrical current or that pain. So you have had that pain added to your finger. In the future, you will be way less likely to stick your finger into that socket because the last time you did it, it hurt, it sucked and you don't want to feel that again unless you're someone that doesn't learn from the consequences of your behavior, but typically you would see a decrease in the future behavior of putting your finger into sockets. So let's say another example, you're in class, you're in high school, you're the class clown, you love to tell jokes, but your teacher is over it. So you're acting out, you're talking and then your teacher calls you out in front of the whole class and scolds you and you immediately become embarrassed. You turn red in the face, you're so upset, you're like, oh my God, that was the worst. And in the future, you are way less likely to talk out because you've been so embarrassed by being called out the last time or you were so embarrassed by being called out. So this is another example of positive punishment. Your behavior of speaking out or telling jokes or just acting rowdy was followed by the addition of being scolded by your teacher. And then in the future, you are less likely to do that like speaking out or acting rowdy behavior because you were punished in the past. So the main difference here is although it is still positive punishment and you're still adding something, the outcome is a decrease in that behavior in the future. So that's the main difference to keep in mind between positive punishment and positive reinforcement. So now let's look at negative punishment. So just like negative reinforcement was the removal of something that increases behavior in the future. Negative punishment is the removal of something that decreases the behavior in the future. So I have a younger brother and sister and this is something that happened quite a lot when we were young. So let's say you're playing video games. My case, we played a lot of Mario Kart or 007. So you're playing video games and you and your siblings start to fight and you're hitting each other and you're just screaming, yelling and your mom comes in. She's like, you know what, enough. She takes the video games away. In this example, oh, and sorry, in the future, let's just say we're perfect and, you know, we're not typical siblings. We don't hit each other in the future. We don't fight as if that would happen in the real world. But let's just use this as an example. So in this example, the behavior of aggression or hitting my siblings resulted in the removal of something that I enjoyed, which was the video game console. And in the future, that hitting behavior has decreased because the last time we fought and we hit each other, we got things that we like taken away and that sucks. We really would much rather be playing video games than not. So in this example, hitting has resulted in the removal of something that we enjoy behavior has decreased. Another example, and this one again, just like the air conditioning, you can look at it in two different ways, but thinking of if you're driving and you are speeding, you want to get home after work, you're tired. So you're speeding down the road and a police officer pulls you over and gives you a speeding ticket and you have a fine. So you have to pay money. So the fine, although it is, some could say that it's adding a fine or adding a ticket, but really what makes that fine valuable or meaningful is the removal of money, at least from the way that I'm looking at it. Let me know what you think. But in this case, your speeding has resulted in the loss of money and you want money, you don't want to pay money for speeding. You want to hold on to that stuff. So in the future, you're less likely to speed. So because here you were speeding, you got caught. So speeding is a behavior, removal of money through the fine is the consequence. And in the future, you will be less likely to speed because you had that fine in the past. So again, although you are removing something just like with negative reinforcement and negative reinforcement, the behavior increased because you were moving, removing something that you liked or didn't like. Sorry. Wow. This is why I write things out with negative reinforcement. You are removing something that you don't like. So you are more likely to engage in that behavior in the future. But negative punishment, you are removing something that you like. You don't want to lose that thing. You don't want to say goodbye to your money. So in the future, your behavior is more likely to decrease or weaken. You'll be less likely to speed. Again, thinking that, you know, this is the perfect world. I know some people might speed and get tickets and they don't care, they'll keep speeding, but let's just pretend that this is a perfect world and these consequences will, you know, have that effect that we want to see on behavior. So that is the main difference. Again, reinforcement increases the future likelihood of behavior and punishment reduces or weakens the future likelihood of behavior. Positive means adding something. Typically with reinforcement, you're adding something good and negative means you're taking something away. So in again, reinforcement, you're taking away an aversive. Now in positive punishment, you're typically adding something aversive and in negative punishment, you're taking something good away. So that's the difference between positive and negative reinforcement and punishment. If you have any ideas of some other examples that might be helpful or even some examples like the air conditioning or the speeding where you're like, hey, could it be positive reinforcement or could it be punishment or like, what's the difference? Negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement, like you're adding the cold air, but you're taking away the hot air. Like honestly, some of these things keep me up at night and I would love to talk about some more examples. So if you can think of any of those, please let me know. But yeah, that's reinforcement and punishment in a nutshell. So just to review what we talked about earlier, operant conditioning has to do with the consequences that follow a behavior and whether those consequences strengthen or weaken a behavior. Now behaviors are typically strengthened through reinforcement and they are weakened through punishment. And there are two different types of reinforcement. There is positive reinforcement, which is adding something that increases the future likelihood of a behavior. And there is negative reinforcement, which is the removal of something that increases the future likelihood of behavior. And there's also two types of punishment. There is positive punishment, which is the addition of a stimulus that reduces the future likelihood of behavior. And there is negative punishment, which is the removal of a stimulus that also reduces the future likelihood of a behavior. It's a lot, but honestly, it's not so bad. And eventually you just bought the stuff everywhere and it just starts to become a lot more fluent. So it's not so bad. But yeah, if you have any examples of things that could be looked at both ways, please let me know. You can find me on Instagram at JessTalksABA. I would love to talk more about this with you guys, think of some fun examples. And we'll see where we are next time. Not sure what I'm going to talk about next time. Maybe I'll do the functions of behavior. Maybe I'll change my mind and do something else. Who knows? But if you would like to, you can positively reinforce me by heading to Instagram and following me. Not, but I would really like it if you did. Or leave a positive review or something else, you know, just spread the love, it'd be really appreciated. But yeah, thank you so much. And if you've stuck through this whole episode, or even if you've been listening for the last few episodes and you've stuck with it, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. This is just something that I'm doing as a hobby. Honestly, COVID just has me at home playing video games, watching trash YouTube and rotting my brain. It's been nice to have something, you know, to do that actually has me using my brain again. It's been a nice, nice change. So thanks for listening, even though this has just been a hobby and it's not something that I really thought anyone would find any value or interest in. So you know, I really appreciate you sticking it out and listening and it means a lot. So yeah, we'll see you in the next episode. Not sure what that will be on. Hopefully maybe I'll have one for Friday. If not, I'll have one next week. Thanks so much for listening and I will catch you in the next episode.