Negative+Punishment

Jeremy SPED 843  Dr. Aronin  Spring 2011

 Negative Punishment

__Description of Intervention Method __ media type="youtube" key="4ywloKkc8Ks" height="351" width="575"

__Types of Students Who Benefit from the Method__ In general, students whose behavior functions or will function to obtain a desired consequence can benefit from this method.

__Qualifications for Using the Method__ In order to utilize this method, individuals should be familiar with the basic principles of behavior modification and understand the function of the student's behavior.

__Costs of Using the Method__ There is generally no cost associated with this method.

__Potential Risks with Using the Method__ As illustrated in the video above, one of the biggest risks of using this method is students may resent the individual using negative punishment. The student may not associate the removal of the given stimuli with their behavior, but instead attribute the loss of the stimuli to the teacher being "mean".

__Benefits of Using the Method__ This method is generally easy to administer and does not have a cost associated with it.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__Settings for Method Use__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This method can be used in any setting in which an individual has control over access to stimuli.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__Field’s Attitude Towards the Method__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Negative punishment is widely used within most school systems.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; text-align: center;">Summary of Research Study

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Somlai, Z., Moustafa, A. A., Kéri, S., Myers, C. E., & Gluck, M. A. (2011). General functioning predicts reward and punishment learning in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 127(1-3), 131-136.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__Description of Subjects__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Participants were 40 patients with schizophrenia (22 outpatients) and 30 healthy control volunteers with negative psychiatric history. The patients were recruited at the Semmelweis University, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. The inpatients participated in a psychosocial rehabilitation program and were not in an acute psychotic state at the time of testing. The control volunteers were employees and their acquaintances who were matched with the patients for age, gender, and education.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__Description of Research Design__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">On each trial, participants viewed one of four images (S1–S4) (Fig. 1), and were asked to guess whether it belonged to category A or category B. Stimuli S1 and S3 belonged to category A with 80% probability and to category B with 20% probability, while stimuli S2 and S4 belonged to category B with 80% probability and to category A with 20% probability (Table 2). Stimuli S1 and S2 were used in the reward-learning task. In this task if the participant correctly guessed the category membership on a trial with either of these stimuli, a reward of +25 points was received; if the participant guessed incorrectly, no feedback appeared. Stimuli S3 and S4 were used in the punishment-learning task. In this task if the participant guessed incorrectly on a trial with either of these stimuli, a punishment of −25 was received; correct guesses received no feedback.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__Dependent Variable__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The dependent variable in this study was correctly identifying the catagory for an image

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__Independent Variable__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The independent variables were the use of positive reinforcement (i.e. receiving points for correct answers) and the use of negative punishment (i.e. the removal of points for incorrect answers)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__Summary of Results__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Results from the reinforcement learning task are depicted in Fig. 2. Although patients with schizophrenia made numerically fewer optimal decisions than controls, the ANOVA demonstrated no statistically significant main effect of group. Similarly, although participants made numerically more optimal responses on punishment-learning than reward-learning trials, the effect of feedback-type was not significant. Finally, there was no interaction between group and feedback-type, suggesting no differential impairment in schizophrenia for reward or punishment learning.