Positive Reinforcement and Negative

Reinforcement may be used and applied in numerous ways, not just to simple behaviors, but to complex behavior patterns as well. For example, it has been used to educate institutionalized mentally retarded children and adults using shaping or successive approximation. Shaping is the gradual building up of a desired behavior by systematically reinforcing smaller components of the desired behavior or similar behaviors. Much of this training has focused on self-care skills such as dressing, feeding, and grooming. In teaching a subject how to feed himself, for example, a bite of food may be made contingent on the person simply looking at a fork. The next time the food may be made contingent on the subject pointing to the fork, then touching it, and finally grasping it and bringing the food to his mouth. Shaping has also been used to decrease aggressive and self-destructive behaviors.

Another successful application of reinforcement involves using token economies, primarily in institutional settings such as jails and homes for the mentally retarded and mentally ill. Token economies are a type of behavior therapy in which actual tokens are given as conditioned reinforcers contingent on the performance of desired behaviors. The token functions like money in that it has no inherent value. Its value lies in the rewards it can be used to obtain. For example, prisoners may be given tokens for keeping their cell in order, and they may be able to use the tokens to obtain certain privileges, such as extra desserts or extra exercise time. Most follow-up data indicates that behaviors reinforced by tokens, or any other secondary reinforcer, are usually not maintained once the reinforcement system is discontinued. Thus, while token economies can be quite successful in regulating and teaching behaviors in certain controlled settings, they have not proven successful in creating long-term behavioral change.

Systematic desensitization is a therapeutic technique based on a learning theory that has been successfully used in psychotherapy to treat phobias and anxiety about objects or situations. Systematic desensitization consists of exposing the client to a series of progressively more tension-provoking stimuli directly related to the fear. This is done under relaxed conditions until the client is successfully desensitized to his fear. Fear of public speaking, for example, might be gradually overcome by first showing the client pictures of such situations, then movies, then taking them to an empty auditorium, then having them give a speech within the empty auditorium, etc., until his anxiety is extinguished. Systematic desensitization may be performed in numerous ways, depending on the nature of the fear and the client.