There is even a whole area of psychology devoted to the study of motivational behaviors; how reinforcements encourage behavior, how we can use "punishing" consequences to discourage behavior, all of which have applications in every aspect of our lives.
Say, for example, our overriding concern is to get Tom, an autistic boy, to verbalize. As you might know autistic children are usually withdrawn from the social stucture, displaying little or no interaction with even their parents. There is also no verbalizations close to words. ( For more info on autism check out this link) So, if we had existed, even more than thirty years ago we would be pretty much in the dark on how to go about getting this little boy to talk. But using information that we have extrapolated from previous experiments, we were allowed to make some pretty good guesses.
Some things that have been done previously, are the pairing of two things together to create a desired response. You might recognize this theory as Classical Conditioning, one first explored by a man named Pavlov. He used dogs as his subjects. He took a response that he knew to be true - the dogs would salivate at the sight/smell of food. This stimulus was named the unconditioned stimulus ( US ), because it needed no pairing to induce the unconditioned response ( UR ), the salivation. Then he spent some time trying to pair an auditory tone with the delivery of the food. At first, of course, the sound didn't mean anything, it was merely an interruption. Soon the dogs learned that when they heard the tone, the food would soon be coming, therefore they began to salivate when hearing the tone. The previously unpaired tone, became a paired stimulus, or a conditioned stimulus ( CS ), which in turn elicited a conditioned response ( CS ), the salivation.
I know these are a lot of terms all at one time, but really, it will make sense after I give another example and relate it to our story of Tom.
So, what if we took this example a little further; many experiments have been done with rats, to test the theory of classical conditioning. They've tested startle responses, by shocking an animal many times, then trying to pair a brief tone before the shock. The the watch to see if the animal prepares, by showing these startle responses. With the normal shock, the rat's heart rate rises, blood pressure rises, breathing also speeds up and there is also the release of many substances into the bloodstream in response. Therefore, researchers can see that the conditioning has set in if the animal shows those same responses, when only the tone is delivered.
I hope this is making a little more sense now. So, now that we have gained all of this information, how can we apply this to Tom? Another theory that we need to be aware of is the existence of positve reinforcement. As I was explaining at the beginning, we are all creatures who will do almost anything to avoid pain, and we will also respond to "rewards".
Using our little friend again, the rat, researchers found something very interesting. They placed an electrode that ran from the "pleasure center" of the rat's brain to a stimulator controlled by a lever. The rat was allowed to press the lever all that it wanted. In the cage there was also water and food. The rats, almost without fail would ignore the food and water and continually seld-stimulate with the lever, until some of them would die, mostly from starvation. This definitely says something about our nature as creatures.
So, if we combine these two theories, and try to apply them to Tom, we come up with a very helpful procedure used in almost all forms of behavior modification. The man who is very prominent in this area is named Ivar Lovas he has done extremely extensive work with autistic children. Anyway, here is briefly what we've learned:
- The first thing before even considereing getting the boy to be able to vocalize, is getting him maintain eye-contact. Once this has been achieved, one can overcome many feats by using the same or similar procedures.
- The clinician would use a strong tone of voice, using the name of the child, to get his attention.
- If the child did not respond, the clinician would turn his head to face him or her.
- As soon as the child is looking at the clinician, verbal praise is accompanied by positive facial expressions, and reinforcement such as an M&M.
- The child is allowed to turn away.
- Then the procedure is done again. Repeating until the child no longer needs the tangible reinforcement of the food, and performs the task when asked.
This can then be expanded, to sitting, verbalizing beginning with sounds, thento syllables, and finally to words and phrases. These techniques are used for many other things, not only autistics. ( For a good site to further explain positive reinforcements check on this. ) When you tell your kids that if they eat their peas, they'll be allowed to eat some ice-cream, that is also delivering positive reinforcers. So, the area of behavior modification is a large one, going deeper into the mechanisms of this learning is what we're doing in this behavioral neuroscience class.
After looking at some of the sites about autism, I would like to pose a question to you, it is one that challenges many who are the doctors for autistics and also to the family that takes care of them. So once you take a look at the literature, see what you think:
DO AUTISTICS BENEFIT FROM THE THERAPY THEY ARE SUBJECTED TO, OR IS IT MERELY FOR THE EASE OF THE CAREGIVERS?
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