Ineffective Forms of Punishment
Sometimes punishment is the need of the hour. However, if punishment is inappropriate, it will lead to undesired outcomes. There are different types of punishment, and in this episode, we will discuss the ineffective forms of punishment. If you punish someone without understanding and rectifying the root cause of the particular behaviour, then it is an inappropriate punishment. It can be physical, psychological, or a mix of both.
In some cases, mild physical punishment like a slap on the wrist or a gentle spanking will help teachers and parents keep young children from harmful behaviours. For example, a toddler who enjoys sticking metal objects into electrical outlets must be informed unequivocally that such behaviour is unacceptable. Most experts, however, advise against physical punishment for school-age children and how it is illegal and unnecessary in some situations. When used on older children, physical punishment can result in undesirable behaviours such as hostility towards the teacher, aggression, lying, etc. Occasional mild physical punishment does not appear to be associated with later behavioural problems, though it can sometimes escalate into physical abuse.
Psychological repercussions
Any consequence that seriously jeopardizes a student's self-esteem or emotional well-being is considered psychological punishment and should be avoided. Similar to physical abuse, it is essential to understand that negative remarks, public humiliation, etc., will have the same impact as physical punishment. And can cause long-term psychological harm. Psychological punishment can lower students' expectations for future performance and motivation to learn and achieve by inflating their self-perceptions.
If a student needs to complete homework on time, asking to involve in extra class work or homework is a good idea. It would make the student realize that he wouldn't have to stay back if the task was completed on time. But if the student is given extra work as a punishment, the teacher unintentionally conveys the message that schoolwork is unpleasant or a punishment.
Suspension from school
Out-of-school suspension—in its most severe form, permanent expulsion from school—rarely changes a student's behaviour. Many chronically misbehaving students struggle with their academic work; for example, many high school troublemakers have poor reading skills. Suspension of such students from school places them at an even more significant disadvantage and further reduces their chances of academic success. Furthermore, when students find a school to be an unpleasant experience, removing them from that environment is negatively reinforcing rather than punishing. (Unfortunately, it also serves as a negative reinforcement for school administrators who have terminated their troublemakers.
In some situations, missing break time is a suitable punishment for students who fail to finish their classroom assignments during class time due to off-task behaviour. However, research shows that students can focus more effectively on school tasks when they take breaks from academic activities. The most helpful advice is to disengage playtime privileges exceptionally rarely, if at all, and to monitor the long-term effect of such a result on students' school performance.
Common Phenomena in Instrumental Conditioning
Researchers have observed a variety of phenomena related to instrumental conditioning. We'll now look at a few common ones.
Superstitious Attitudes
Conditioning can occur even when events occur randomly and are unrelated to anything the learner has done. Skinner, for example, once kept eight pigeons overnight in their cages with the food tray mechanism adjusted to reinforce at regular intervals regardless of the pigeons' responses at the time. Six of the pigeons were behaving strangely by the morning. One thrust its head repeatedly into an upper corner of the cage, while two others swung their heads and bodies in rhythmic pendulum movements (B. F. Skinner, 1948).
Shaping
A learner must, of course, make the response to be reinforced for it.
However, sometimes a learner needs more ability or the desire to respond in a certain way. Skinner developed a method called shaping to deal with such a situation. We start by reinforcing the first response remotely resembling that behaviour to shape a new behaviour. Then, we keep supporting it until the learner emits it reasonably frequently. At that point, we reinforce only those responses that reach the desired behaviour more closely, then those that resemble it even more closely, until finally, only the desired behaviour is reinforced. The shape is, in other words, a process of supporting successively closer and closer approximations.
Chaining
Chaining is a method of teaching in which sub-skills are reinforced sequentially, making the learner capable of performing more complex behaviours.
For example, when teaching a child to wear a shoe, each specific step, from tightening the cord to making the parts of the knot, would be trained and reaffirmed until the child could finish the entire task.
Extinction
When the conditioned stimulus (CS) is presented repetitively in the lack of the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned response (CR) significantly reduces and may eventually disappear. This is known as extinction (UCS). Extinction, on either hand, happens in instrumental conditioning when the frequency of a response diminishes because it no longer outcomes in reinforcement. Class clowns, for example, who discover that their jokes are no longer funny, are likely to cut back on their jokes. Students who raise their hands but are never called on may abandon their attempts to participate in class discussions.
Today, we discussed ineffective forms of punishment. In the next article, we will talk about a new topic.