Punishment contingencies for the reduction of incorrect responses during articulation instruction

A comparison was made between the effects of punishment combined with positive reinforcement and reinforcement alone for the reduction of incorrect articulation responses. Three different punishers (a buzzer, response cost, and "No!") were studied for six young children while they were receiving programmed articulation instruction. The results indicated (1) that punishment in combination with positive reinforcement was generally more effective than positive reinforcement alone; (2) that whether or not a particular stimulus acted as a punisher could be determined only be empirical demonstration; and (3) that the introduction of punishment contingencies did not produce increased rates of disruptive, off-task behaviors. Conversely, off-task behaviors tended to increase in rate when punishement contingencies for articulation responses were removed.     

Cognitive determinants of resistance to deviation in seven-, nine-, and eleven-year-old children in low and high maturity of moral judgment.

Investigated rationale content, an assumed cognitive determinant of resistance to deviation in children, using a standard punishment paradigm with 120 7-, 9-, and 11-yr-old children. Sex of child, age of child, rationale focus, and rationale orientation were combined in a 2 * 3 * 2 * 2 factorial design with a female as a punitive agent. Maturity of moral judgment, sex of child, rationale focus, and rationale orientation were used as factors in another series of analyses. Rationales were significantly more effective with girls than boys, and response inhibition was greatest for intention-focused and person-oriented rationales. However, sex and age of the child were interacting factors. The data suggest that level of moral judgment influences moral behavior. Results are interpreted within a social learning as well as a cognitive developmental framework. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluative feedback and aspiration statements of schizophrenics and normals.

Elicited aspiration statements from 30 male schizophrenics and 30 normal adult males in 3 treatment conditions: response-contingent praise, response-contingent censure, and no evaluation. Task "performance scores" were predetermined by E and were identical for all Ss. 2 dependent measures were examined: frequency of increased aspiration statements and magnitude of aspiration changes compared with prior "performance." Response-contingent censure resulted in greater frequency of increased aspiration statements for both diagnostic groups. However, censure differentially effected the magnitude of performance-aspiration differences, with schizophrenics showing greater magnitude of response. Results support previous findings on attitudes of schizophrenics and normals toward success and failure and are congruent with theories of schizophrenic behavior emphasizing development of withdrawal patterns to avoid punishment. It is also indicated that schizophrenics' sensitivity to the aversive may be used constructively. (23 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response suppression in humans as a function of contingent and non-contingent punishment: Signal properties of stimuli.

Trained an instrumental goal (G) response in 40 undergraduates in 4 groups under intermittent reward (money). When the acquisition criterion was met, reward was withdrawn and different punishment treatments administered. Group C received contingent punishment (electric shock) of the G response whenever it was omitted. Shock occurring on a variable interval schedule provided noncontingent punishment to another group (NC). Contingent and noncontingent punishments were combined and administered to Group C and NC. The 4th group (E) served as a control and received no punishment. This entire study was repeated, and both experiments indicate that the C treatment yielded most suppression, even exceeding that obtained under the C and NC procedure which administered more punishments. Results favor the notion that punishment acts in an analogous, but opposite direction to reward, and that its consequences may be predicted on the basis of the consistency of the information conveyed by a punisher. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aversive schedules with independent probabilities of reinforcement for responding and not responding by rhesus monkeys: II. Without signal.

Manipulated independently the probabilities of aversive stimulus presentation given the occurrence or the nonocurrence of a leverpress response. 10 naive male rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were divided into 5 groups, each group receiving a different sequence of the 2 probabilities and thereby a different sequence of electric shock presentation schedules ranging between avoidance and punishment. The schedules provided systematic control both of the amount of response facilitation that occurred when response-produced shocks were first introduced following avoidance training and of the postfacilitation response rate decline. When the probability of shock presentation following a response was less than that for not responding, scalloped response patterns occurred; when the relative shock probabilities were reversed, bipeak response patterns were observed. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of multivariate analysis in medical chemistry]

If the repeated presentation of a single (standard) auditory stimulus is randomly interspersed with a second acoustically different (deviant) stimulus, the cortical activity evoked by the deviant stimulus can contain a negative component known as the mismatch negativity (MMN). The MMN is derived by subtracting the averaged response evoked by the standard stimulus from that evoked by the deviant stimulus. When the magnitude of the response is small or the signal-to-noise ratio is poor, it is difficult to judge the presence or absence of the MMN simply by visual inspection, and statistical detection techniques become necessary. A method of analysis is proposed to quantify the magnitude and statistically evaluate the presence of the MMN based on time-integrated evoked responses. This paper demonstrates the use of this integrated mismatch negativity (MMNi) analysis to detect the MMN evoked by stimulus contrasts near the perceptual threshold of two subjects. The MMNi, by virtue of being equivalent to a low-pass filtered response, presents an almost noise-free estimate of MMN magnitude. A single measure of the integrated evoked response at a fixed time point is used in a distribution-free statistic that compares the magnitude of the averaged response evoked by the deviant stimulus with a magnitude distribution derived from 200 subaveraged responses to the standard stimulus (with the number of sweeps per average equal to that of the deviant stimulus). This allows a calculation of the exact probability for the null hypothesis that the negative magnitude of the response evoked by the deviant stimulus is drawn from the magnitude distribution of responses evoked by the standard stimulus. Rejection of this hypothesis provides objective evidence of the presence of the MMN.     

Changes in parent consequences as a function of family intervention.

Systematic observations of parent-child interaction collected in the homes of 25 families who participated in a parent-mediated social reprograming treatment project for aggressive boys (mean age 8.8 yrs) were used to assess changes in parent consequences for child behavior. Analyses comparing baseline and termination consequence ratios revealed significant reductions in maternal aversive consequences that were provided for deviant and prosocial behavior and in paternal positive consequences that were provided for deviant behavior. Additional analyses revealed that reductions in inappropriate parent consequences were not the result of a general overall reduction in parent–child interaction. It is concluded that the treatment program was partially successful in producing changes in the ongoing pattern of consequences provided by the parents. These changes consisted of reductions in inappropriate consequences rather than increases in appropriate consequences. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aversion therapy for sexual deviation: Contingent shock and covert sensitization.

Studied 2 different aversion therapy approaches to the treatment of sexual deviation (e.g., homosexuality) in 6 clinical referrals. Covert sensitization, which provides an imagined aversive event following imagined sexual behavior, was compared with contingent shock, which provides a physical aversive event following erection to slides depicting sexually deviant material. Replicated, counterbalanced within-S presentations of each technique were used. Treatment effects were monitored by measurement of penile circumference changes during slides presented prior to treatment sessions, and by daily subjective recording of sexual urges and fantasies as well as masturbation and sexual acts. No clear difference was found between the treatments on the penile circumference measure. On suppression of subjective measures of sexual arousal, however, covert sensitization appeared to be more effective than contingent shock. Follow-up of 4-18 mo. is reported for the individual cases. (37 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cooperation in social dilemmas: Free riding may be thwarted by second-order reward rather than by punishment.

Cooperation among nonrelatives can be puzzling because cooperation often involves incurring costs to confer benefits on unrelated others. Punishment of noncooperators can sustain otherwise fragile cooperation, but the provision of punishment suffers from a "second-order" free-riding problem because nonpunishers can free ride on the benefits from costly punishment provided by others. One suggested solution to this problem is second-order punishment of nonpunishers; more generally, the threat or promise of higher order sanctions might maintain the lower order sanctions that enforce cooperation in collective action problems. Here the authors report on 3 experiments testing people's willingness to provide second-order sanctions by having participants play a cooperative game with opportunities to punish and reward each other. The authors found that people supported those who rewarded cooperators either by rewarding them or by punishing nonrewarders, but people did not support those who punished noncooperators--they did not reward punishers or punish nonpunishers. Furthermore, people did not approve of punishers more than they did nonpunishers, even when nonpunishers were clearly unwilling to use sanctions to support cooperation. The results suggest that people will much more readily support positive sanctions than they will support negative sanctions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactional correlates of treatment outcome in behavioral parent training.

52 21–38 yr old mothers and their 2–11 yr old children took part in a behavioral parent-training program to modify aggressive and oppositional child behavior. Several measures of mother–child interaction were obtained for each dyad at baseline, treatment, and follow-up. Measures included sociodemographic variables and home observations. After 1-yr follow-up, measures were compared between dyads who succeeded in the program and dyads who did not. Results show that: (1) unsuccessful mothers were more aversive and indiscriminate in their use of aversive behavior toward their children than successful mothers in all phases; (2) unsuccessful children were more aversive than successful children, but only in treatment and follow-up; and (3) all children evidenced some degree of indiscriminate aversive responding. The majority of unsuccessful dyads scored high on several measures of socioeconomic disadvantage, suggesting that such interactional differences might provide a link to account in part for the impact of adverse socioeconomic factors on mother–child interaction. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Release of renin from glomeruli isolated from rat kidney

Cardiovascular and behavioural responses elicited by novel, noxious or aversive stimuli have been studied in dogs and cats. Hindlimb blood flow, heart rate and arterial blood pressure increased in dogs when an orienting response was elicited by a novel stimulus (a sound). Similar cardiovascular responses occurred in dogs to mild noxious stimulus and in cats displaying a threatening posture when confronted by a dog. The cardiovascular components of the orienting response to a sound habituated with repetition of the sound. In two dogs however sensitization (increase) of the response occurred with reped by repetition of the confrontations: the vasodilation in the muscles waned and eventually was replaced by vasoconstriction while the cardiac acceleration and pressor response persisted. The threatening response was the most persistent. The modification of the behavioural and cardiovascular aspect of the response was not developing in parallel. The cardiovascular pattern was altered before any apparent changes of the behavioural pattern occurred. The cardiovascular responses of the noxious stimulus in dogs and cardiovascular components of the defence reaction in cats were readily conditioned to a sound. The possible role of the modification of the cardiovascular pattern in defence reactions in pathogenesis of hypertension is discussed.     

Side effects of parent counseling on marital satisfaction.

In a study with 27 mothers and their clinic-referred children, mothers were divided into 3 groups based on their pretreatment level of marital satisfaction (Locke Marital Adjustment Test). Child compliance and deviant behavior as measured by independent observers, parent perceptions of child adjustment, and parent marital satisfaction were assessed before treatment, after treatment, and at a 2-mo follow-up. Parent counseling consisted of teaching mothers to reward appropriate behavior and use a time-out procedure for deviant behavior. All groups changed significantly from pre- to posttreatment on the child behavior measures and on parent perceptions of child adjustment. These changes were maintained at follow-up for child compliance and parent perceptions of child adjustment. The group of mothers with low marital satisfaction reported an increase in marital adjustment from pretreatment to posttreatment, but this effect was not maintained at the 2-mo follow-up. Groups with medium or high marital satisfaction reported no change in marital adjustment. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contextual effects in conditioning, latent inhibition, and habituation: Associative and retrieval functions of contextual cues.

Rats were used as subjects in four experiments to investigate the transfer of learning from one context to another. Subjects received two sessions of training each day, one in each of two different contexts. Experiment 1 showed that the habituation of the unconditioned response to a stimulus presented in one context was left intact when the stimulus was presented in another context, but that latent inhibition was attenuated when preexposure and conditioning phases occurred in different contexts. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that a conditioned response made on the basis of an appetitive reinforcer was diminished when conditioning and testing occurred in different contexts, but that aversive conditioning was not influenced by the context in which testing occurred. In Experiment 4, the presence of an aversive reinforcer during training did not preclude the occurrence of context-specific conditioning on the basis of an appetitive reinforcer. Associative and retrieval-based interpretations of the results are explored. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The elimination of tantrum behavior by extinction procedures.

"This paper reports the successful treatment of tyrant-like tantrum behavior in a male child by the removal of reinforcement… [and] did not involve aversive punishment." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aversive conditioning in honeybees (Apis mellifera).

In Exps I–III, a shuttlebox was used, with the odor of formic acid as the aversive stimulus. A punishment contingency was found to suppress shuttling more in master animals than in yoked controls, whereas escape and unsignaled avoidance contingencies facilitated shuttling in master animals compared with yoked controls. In Exps III–VI, the Ss were unrestrained foragers flying back and forth between the hive and the sill of an open laboratory window to take sucrose solution from targets constructed so that shock could be delivered while the proboscis was in contact with the solution. A group of Ss trained to discriminate between 2 differently colored targets, one providing sucrose and the other sucrose plus immediate shock, performed as well as a group trained with sucrose and tap water and better than a group trained with sucrose and sucrose plus delayed shock. Ss for which a signal was paired with shock while they were feeding from a single target quickly learned to avoid the shock by flying off the target. The effectiveness of the pairing was demonstrated both by an explicitly unpaired procedure (which retarded acquisition when the signal and shock subsequently were paired) and by differential conditioning. Findings suggest that escape, punishment, and avoidance procedures appear to have the same effects on honeybees as on vertebrates. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of expectancy of a threatening event on time perception in human adults.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of a threatening stimulus in human adults in a temporal bisection task. In Experiment 1, for two anchor duration conditions (400/800 vs. 800/1600 ms), the participants completed trials in which the probe duration was followed by an aversive stimulus or a nonaversive stimulus. The results showed that the duration was judged longer when the participants expected an aversive rather than a nonaversive stimulus. In Experiment 2, the effect of the temporal localization of the aversive stimulus was also tested, with the aversive stimulus being presented at the beginning or at the end of the probe duration. The results revealed a temporal overestimation in each condition compared to the trials in which no aversive stimulus was presented. Furthermore, the temporal overestimation was greater when the expectation for the forthcoming threatening stimulus was longer. This temporal overestimation is explained in terms of a speeding-up of the neural timing system in response to the increase in the arousal level produced by the expectation of a threatening stimulus. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family aggressiveness factors in the prediction of corporal punishment: Reciprocal effects and the impact of observer perspective.

Family aggressiveness factors in predicting corporal punishment were examined among 1,536 parents of 983 college students. The proposed reciprocal effects model of corporal punishment suggested that parents and children take an active role in precipitating child maltreatment, and that the use of physical force to resolve conflict may be a function of an aggressive microsystem in which all members are active participants. I hypothesized that when examined concurrently, parent and child factors would predict parental use of corporal punishment, and that when parent history of received corporal punishment was taken into consideration, child aggressiveness would still be a significant predictor. Results were consistent with the reciprocal effects model, but only when the criterion variable of corporal punishment was defined from multiple perspectives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual Differences in the Pattern of Habituation at 5 and 10 Months of Age.

Individual differences in pattern of habituation in fixation time and cardiac change to visual and auditory stimuli are described. Nearly half of the longitudinal sample at 5 months and almost 90% at 10 months did not display a monotonically decreasing habituation pattern over trials, a result that challenges the use of simple indices of response decline as measures of rate of information processing. A positive response to a novel stimulus at 5 and 10 months was observed only if an obvious peak response followed by a decline occurred during familiarization and (for 5-month-old subjects only) if the peak/decline occurred shortly before the introduction of the novel stimulus. Relative to 5 months, habituation patterns at 10 months were flatter and more irregular, and individual differences did not revolve around a few prototypical patterns. No evidence was observed for individual stability in type of habituation pattern across modality within an age or within modality across age, nor were there many correlates between pattern and demographic characteristics of the subjects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A parametric study of the N40 auditory evoked response in rats

BACKGROUND: The N40 auditory evoked potential (EP) in rats is used to study "sensory gating." Our first goal was to compare the effects of systematically varying the characteristics of the pairs of clicks (S1-S2), on the degree of attenuation of the responses to S2 stimuli. A second goal was to examine the effects of changing S2 stimuli on the degree of attenuation of the responses to the deviant stimulus. METHODS: The N40 EP was recorded from 10 rats in eight identical-pair conditions and from 11 rats in two paradigms: nonidentical pairs and short trains of identical stimuli followed by a deviant stimulus. RESULTS: In eight identical-pair conditions changing stimulus duration, intensity, or frequency had no effect on the degree of attenuation of S2 responses. Changing S2 stimulus or presenting a deviant stimulus following a train of identical stimuli had a significant effect on the degree of attenuation of the response to the deviant stimulus. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the rat N40 EP is sensitive to stimulus change and can contribute to the study of both habituation and dishabituation mechanisms of "sensory gating."     

Schizophrenic and normal response patterns to "aversive" and "neutral" associations in two paired-associate paradigms.

3 groups of Ss (hospitalized psychiatric patients, hospitalized nonpsychiatric patients, and college students) were required to learn 2 classes of paired associates—neutral and aversive by 2 methods of presentation of the material: (a) after the traditional presentation of the stimulus word, S was required to anticipate the correct response; (b) S viewed 2 words in the window and had to select the correct one. The results indicated that in general it was much more difficult to learn the "aversive" words than the neutral ones, and hospital patients as a group had more difficulty than the college Ss. However, sensitivity to group differences was enhanced when S was required to use the 2nd rather than the traditional 1st method. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)