Punishment contingencies for the reduction of incorrect responses during articulation instruction

Effects of Response Cost in Computerized Programmed Instruction

“…Punishment has been used to increase performance on simple discrimination tasks (Brent & Routh, 1978;Costello & Ferrer, 1976), but not performance on programmed instruction. One of the principal reasons why punishment has not been used with programmed instruction is because Skinner maintained that monotony, anxiety, and hostility are consequences of using aversive control in education (Skinner, 1968(Skinner, , 1984.…”

Operant Conditioning and the Treatment of Stuttering

“…Treatment is initiated simply by attaching consequences to the behaviors of interest. It has been our experience that a combination of positive reinforcement for fluent utterances and punishment for moments of stuttering is critical, and that feedback contingent upon instances of stuttering is particularly crucial for the client's most productive learning (Costello, 1975;Costello and Ferrer, 1976). The treatment is designed by the clinician to start at a level appropriate to the client's baseline performance and then progress in small, orderly steps, gradually requiring longer and more difficult responses from the client with less and less help from the clinician.…”

Reinforcement and punishment during programmed instruction

“…A proposed solution to the problem of student "racing" is the use of mild punishment for incorrect responses, such as an imposed delay (Crosbie & Kelly, 1994) or the loss of money (Munson & Crosbie, 1998), and under some conditions these procedures appear to be effective deterrents to rapid and inaccurate responding. Some investigators, however, have reported the occurrence of undesirable side-effects of punishment during learning tasks, including increases in the rate of off-task behaviors and 2 unusually high rates of errors when the punishment contingency is removed (Costello & Ferrer, 1976;O'Leary & Becker, 1969;Thomas, Becker, & Armstrong, 1968).…”

“…Previous experimental analyses of response consequences during learning emphasized the reliable benefits of punishment for incorrect responses (e.g., Heron, 1978). There is some evidence that punishment during learning may produce undesirable effects as well, but these have been reported much less frequently (e.g., Costello & Ferrer, 1976). It is possible that undesirable effects of punishment during learning are rarely reported because methodological limitations have precluded adequate assessment.…”

“…160-161) Skinner and Holland's (1965) recommended solutions for the problem of "racing" involve the use of mild punishment for incorrect responses as a means of increasing the "importance" of constructing correct responses on the first attempt, and other researchers have recommended similar procedures (Crosbie & Kelly, 1997;Munson & Crosbie, 1998). Other researchers have found that the effects of punishment on a learner's behavior are complex and possibly detrimental, however (e.g., Costello & Ferrer, 1976), and therefore the use of punishment during learning is not universally advocated. Prior to recommending the use of mild punishment during programmed instruction previously identified benefits and costs of punishment during learning will be examined.…”