Establishment of praise as a conditioned reinforcer in socially unresponsive psychiatric patients.

Abstract

The establishment of social praise as a reinforcer for clinically relevant behaviors was investigated in three socially unresponsive subjects. A withinsubject multiple baseline design was employed. During an initial baseline period, praise was not effective in modifying the behavior of any subject. The contiguous association of social praise with token reinforcement served to enhance the reinforcing properties of praise, establishing praise as an effective modifier of the target behaviors.

A Comparison of Two Pairing Procedures to Establish Praise as a Reinforcer

“…Relatively few applied studies have described attempts to establish the reinforcing effects of social stimuli such as praise, and those based on the pairing hypothesis typically have used the response—stimulus procedure. For example, studies have involved pairing attention with established positive reinforcers such as food, tokens, or preferred activities or with negative reinforcers such as escape from or avoidance of aversive events contingent on a target response; then the response is subsequently examined under extinction (Chadwick & Day, 1971; Dorow, 1980; Drennen et al, 1969; Miller & Drennen, 1970; Stahl et al, 1974). Although results of these studies have suggested that the procedure was effective in conditioning social stimuli as a reinforcer, several limitations temper these conclusions, including (a) no baseline for the target response, (b) no test of the effect of the social stimulus prior to conditioning, (c) use of group designs that did not permit examination of within‐subject changes, (d) lack of experimental control (i.e., maintenance of the target response not only under conditions of contingent social stimuli but also under no‐consequence conditions, suggesting that the target response was or became automatically reinforcing), (e) brief evaluation periods under social stimulus delivery conditions, and (f) modest experimental effects.…”

“…Studies have shown that some individuals are unresponsive to the reinforcing effects of praise or other social stimuli (Drennen, Gallman, & Sausser, 1969; Ebner, 1965; Kale, Kaye, Whelan, & Hopkins, 1968; Levin & Simmons, 1962; Lovaas et al, 1966; Stahl, Thomson, Leitenberg, & Hasazi, 1974) or may even find social interaction to be aversive (Hagopian, Wilson, & Wilder, 2001; Levin, 1962; Taylor & Carr, 1992). These problems present a special challenge to teachers and clinicians, who may address the issue in one of two ways when attempting to teach appropriate behavior.…”

Establishment of praise as a reinforcer in chronic schizophrenics.

“…Drennen et al (1969) and Miller et al (1970) paired the word good with positive primary reinforcers (candy, etc. ); Stahl et al (1974) associated good with tokens that had been previously paired with primary reinforcers. All of these studies reported an increase (from zero) in the reinforcing properties of good.…”

“…The studies cited previously imply a conditioning process as underlying the acquisition of reinforcing characteristics. However, only Stahl et al (1974) and Lovaas et al (1965) appeared to consider optimal conditioning parameters. Drennen et al (1969) and Miller et al (1970), for example, did not report that good always preceded the primary reinforcers nor the nature of the interstimulus intervals, etc.…”

Operant and Respondent Procedures to Establish Social Stimuli as Reinforcers in Children with Autism

“…Another variable that has been discussed more recently, and seems important, is making the pairings contingent on a response (Dozier et al, 2012;Miller & Drennen, 1970;Stahl et al, 1974). For example, Dozier et al (2012) compared S-S pairings that were non-contingent to pairings that were contingent on a simple task.…”