Behavior Modification

Over on 60-Second Science Blog, the news source of Scientific American, Karen Schrock reported that a task force of the American Psychological Association (APA) released a report recommending that caregivers eschew physical punishment. Ms. Schrock noted that at least one member of the task force disagreed with the recommendations, but that most members endorsed it.

Corporal punishment has long been a hotly debated subject, with conflicting study results and opposing ideologies feeding the fire. Now the results of a five-year effort to review the scientific literature are in: a task force appointed by the American Psychological Association concludes that “parents and caregivers should reduce and potentially eliminate their use of any physical punishment as a disciplinary measure.”

The recommendation was announced at the APA’s annual meeting here today by the task force chair, psychologist Sandra A. Graham-Bermann of the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. In a presentation, she explained that the group of 15 experts in child development and psychology found correlations between physical punishment and an increase in childhood anxiety and depression, an increase in behavioral problems including aggression, and impaired cognitive development—even when the child’s pre-punishment behavior and development was taken into consideration.

I endorse the recommendations that teachers, parents, and others in positions of authority avoid use of physical punishment, and I hope that the APA will adopt recommendations to this effect. I look forward to reading the entire report of the task force and reporting about it here on Behavior Mod Info.

This is a good place to remind readers that the lay use of “punishment” differs from the behavior analytic use of the term. In lay terms, punishment usually refers to the imposition of a penalty for an offense, and it too often involves inflicting physical pain on someone; for example, we say that a parent spanking a child after a transgression is “punishing the child.” Sadly, this type of punishment is too often administered, administered inconsistently, and usually a better example of the adult’s frustration than of a sensible behavior-change procedure.

In behavior analysis, there is a more technical use of the term that does not necessarily involve inflicting pain. To be sure, a behavior analyst could engineer an environment in which a painful consequence would follow a behavior. But the behavior analyst might also arrange an environment so that whenever a behavior occurred, a positive feature of the environment would cease for a brief time. In either case, the consequence would be delivered consistently (i.e., initially, every time the behavior occurred) and dispassionately.

In Science and Human Behavior, B. F. Skinner devoted an entire chapter to punishment. He thorough discredits it. His treatment is flat-out excellent, even more than 50 years later.

Link to Ms. Schrock’s post.