Positive behaviour support

Yesterday I had an interesting lecture on positive behaviour support. What I find interesting is that it is so counter-intuitive to what we do in our daily lives. There is a framework for positive behaviour support that is too complicated to be written here. But I am gonna extract some interesting points from the lecture.

Some key features of positive behaviour support:
a) an emphasis on lifestyle change
b) manipulation of ecological and setting events
c) teaching adaptive behaviour
d) minimising the use of punishers (use +ve reinforcement instead)

One important thing to note is that +ve reinforcement is not equal to bribe. Many people confuse the two. Imagine this scenario: you tell a child on Monday, "We will go to MacDonald on Friday if you finish all your work for the week." On tues, "Do you want to go to MacDonald on Friday? You better finish your work then." On Thurs - "Looks like we won't go to MacDonald on Friday will we? Then what happens on Friday? You will bring the child to Mac. See, in this case many people will think that this is positive reinforcement. However it is not. This is a case of bribery.

Remember: Reinforces loses reinforces "status" once it is expected.
(Yes, it may sound simple, but it is actually quite hard to come up with +ve reinforcement at intermittent intervals)

Why do we use punishers?
a) it's part of how our society operates - it's the way we have been shown and taught to solve behaviour problems (think about the things that you do!)
b) the use of punishment actually works and the presenting problem is reduced
e.g. if you do not keep quiet, you will get more work
c) we see others do it
d) more punishment related literature gets published (seriously, compare the number of articles there are on punishment and on rewards)
e) a need to establish control

Problems with using punishment
a) produces negative response (u r a teacher and u keep punishing your students... do u think they will like you??)
b) increase imitation
c) can produce overkill when the person dun understand what they were punished for
d) Increases sneakiness i.e. the person learn to avoid being caught
e.g. if you get caught speeding by the speeding camera... what is your immediate response?
- Immediate response: "crap! why did I speed! so stupid! should have driven slower!", afterwhich u will probably drive below the slow limit... but for how long? How long will this behaviour change last? at most a few weeks? (see! punishment dun work)
- you may then feel guilty cause you have to pay the fine, get demerit points.. (negative response!)
- But the ultimate end behaviour change will be --> in future you will make sure you know where the speed cameras are to avoid being caught!! (increase sneakiness)

Haha, I love that example. It is soooooooooo true!!

Personally, I agree that in the psychology field we are much more focused on the negative rather than the positive. More articles get published when it's -ve than positive. Positive psychology is actually quite a new field.

Before I end off, another interesting point brought up during the lecture is this about parenting. In the past, parents do not give children a lot of choices. They direct their child to do things. No negotiation or choice. However, nowadays a lot of parents want to be friends with their children. What they do now is to let their child have choices (e.g. do you want this or that?). It sounds good huh? That children get to have a choice? But what many parents do not understand is that having to make choices actually burden the child cognitively. And they may not understand the consequence of their choice. Think about it... when you were young, did you get many choices? Or more directives? You turned out alright didn't u? :)