IV. EXTINCTION
A.THE ISSUES AND DAILY LIFE ILLUSTRATIONS:
1. Reinforce the Undesired Behaviors
Many situations arise where we would like to give a little gift to make up for some unpleasant behavior, e.g. bring home flowers to end an argument with a spouse. However, the flowers might function as a positive reinforcer for arguing and increase the probability of arguments in the future. Likewise, dismissing the rowdy class may become a strong incentive to some members of the class to be rowdy in the future when they prefer not being in class.
A classic example of what we call extinction is the story of the boy who cried “wolf.” Whenever the boy yelled, the people responded by coming to his aid. When they arrived there was no wolf, and soon their actions decreased and were eliminated.The call of “wolf” was extinguished.
2. No Audience
Another daily life illustration of extinction is when the reinforcer removed is the person you are speaking to leaves, the removal of the listener reduces normal behavior. This generally will reduce one’s verbal repertoire. (If the person continues to talk when there is no audience, society wonders about the person, and social disapproval will also have an effect on the amount of behavior.)
B. THE DEFINITION OF EXTINCTION:
Extinction is the discontinuation of the reinforcement of a response, and the reduction in responding that follows this operation.
C. APPLICATION:
Q-1. The spouse who brings home flowers in order to end an argument is possibly reinforcing. If the spouse is positively reinforcing we would expect arguing to _______.
(INCREASE)
Q-2. If, after a behavior has been conditioned, we then withhold a reinforcement, the rate of a response returns to its usual operant level. Such a decrease in the rate of a conditioned response when it is no longer reinforced is called extinction. When after conditioning a behavior we withhold reinforcement, we call the decrease in the rate of response _______.
(EXTINCTION)
Q-3. Which of the following are probably examples of actually reinforcing the behavior you are trying to extinguish?
a. bringing flowers home to end an argument with a spouse
b. picking up a child to silence his temper tantrum
c. dismissing a rowdy class
d. looking somewhere else when a child is being obnoxious
e. a, b, and c are all correct
(E)
C. APPLICATION OF THE EXTINCTION PRINCIPLE:
Q-4. Telephones: If we consistently get no answer when we dial a telephone number, we stop dialing. This process is called _______ and is due to lack of reinforcement.
(EXTINCTION)
Q-5. Wolf: According to folklore, a boy was sent to guard a flock of sheep belonging to villagers. He had fun shouting “Wolf” again and again, bringing the villagers out to fight it off when there was no wolf there. Then a wolf did appear and carried off all the lambs while the townspeople refused to answer the boy’s cries. The reaction of the villagers illustrates which principle of learning?
(EXTINCTION)
Q-6. Fights: Peter got into some fights in school. Every time after a fight he would run home and then start crying to his parents who offered him their consolation. This attention reinforced his crying. In order to discontinue (extinguish) his behavior, Peter’s parents should stop _______ his crying.
(REINFORCING)
1. Temper Tantrums: Successful treatment of tantrum behavior in a 21-month-old child by removal of reinforcement has been reported by William’s. The parents and an aunt took turns putting the child to bed, both at night and for his nap. If the parent left the bedroom after putting the child in his bed, the child would scream until someone returned to the room. As a result, the parent was unable to leave the bedroom until after the child went to sleep. If the parent began to read while in the bedroom, the child would cry until the reading material was put down. A parent was spending from one-half to two hours each bedtime just waiting in the bedroom until the child went to sleep. It was decided to remove the reinforcement of this tantrum behavior. Consistent with the extinction principle, behavior not reinforced will discontinue. A parent or aunt put the child to bed in a leisurely and relaxed fashion. After bedtime pleasantries the parent left the bedroom and closed the door. The child screamed, but the parent did not re-enter the room. The child continued screaming for 45 minutes the first time he was put to bed in the first extinction series. By the tenth occasion, the child no longer whimpered, fussed, or cried when the parent left the room. Some time later, the child screamed and fussed after the aunt put him to bed. The aunt reinforced the tantrum behavior by returning to the child’s bedroom and remaining there until he went to sleep. It was then necessary to extinguish this behavior a second time. The second extinction series reached zero by the ninth occasion. No further tantrums at bedtime were reported during the next two years. All that was done due to the removal of the reinforcement. Extinction of the tantrum behavior then occurred. No unfortunate side- or after-effects of this treatment were observed.
Q-7. In William’s case of tantrum treatment _______
a. tantrum behavior recovered spontaneously following
b. the extinction procedure had an adverse effect
c. tantrums were extinguished
d. kind attention extinguished the tantrums
(C)
Q-8. Extinction is accomplished by _______
a. reinforcing the response
b. not reinforcing the response
c. punishing the response
d. preventing the response
(B)
Q-9. After the behavior has extinguished, reconditioning is generally slower than original conditioning.
a. True
b. False
(B)
Q-10. During extinction of a behavior the rate of responding increases.
a. True
b. False
(B)
2.Teachers and Parents: Teachers and parents who contend that removal or suspension from school will weaken a “bad” behavior might be surprised to observe the opposite effects a little vacation (suspension) may have! On the other hand, some teachers have had great success in eliminating a student’s disruptive behavior by strengthening appropriate behavior.
3. Ayllon has shown that if attention is not given to mentally ill patients in a ward when they perform certain bizarre behaviors, e.g. collecting junk, peculiar talk, etc., the number of these bizarre behaviors decreases. In this case, the patient was simply ignored when involved in a bizarre behavior but given attention when doing other behavior.
4. Alcoholics’ Behavior: One of the behaviors which Narrol, in a treatment program for alcoholics, attempted to extinguish was what might be referred to as the “something for nothing response” or “Rest Home Response” that often, Narrol stated, characterized hospital treatment of alcoholism.
D. IMPLICATIONS:
1. Rehabilitation: In many physical rehabilitation cases (e.g. rehabilitation for a stroke patient), it may be necessary for the patient to perform a simple behavior many times. The person may, because of his learning history, say that the behaviors he/she needs to perform are “childish.” The therapist must not be misled by the tokens, coins, etc. These are not reinforcers by proclamation, but rather defined as reinforcers when they increase behavior. Now when a patient takes a step or does a very small step, and you give him/her tokens and praise, one can envision an engineer or former athlete, saying “I am being offered a token to take a step, I used to be a tournament tennis player.” The built-in consequence that automatically reinforces walking for a child is not as effective in an adult who has to relearn a simple skill. A child when he walks may have the reinforcement of attaining objects more easily. Walking behavior is strengthened more than crawling because it gets the job done. The role of the therapist in this situation is to find reinforcers for the client. One can not expect behavior to generate if extinction procedures are being used.
2. Bring Under Control of Reinforcers in Order to Extinguish: At times when a behavior is emitted at a low rate it may fail to decelerate when all reinforcing consequences are removed. When trying to decrease a behavior to a lower rate, by reinforcing the behavior which is eventually eliminated we increase its rate and build it into an easier defined operant response. Now, after having built the behavior into an operant response with obvious consequences, we can extinguish it. We remove the reinforcing consequence, and the rate drops to a value far below the previous rate. This may be what happens in a practice called “negative practice,” which Dunlap made popular in the 1930s and 1940s.
3.Ineffectiveness Equals Extinction: When we say a person is ineffective we refer to extinction; the person is not getting the consequences available. As one becomes effective one gets her or his share of the goodies out of life.
4. Autism and No Reinforcement: Ferster cites an example of an autistic child whose behavioral development was very restricted because little of his behavior was reinforced. Ferster states it is hard to see this at first, because the boy’s mother did not seem responsive and moved busily around the house, accomplishing many tasks. At the same time the child was prevented from completing any action he started. When he reached for a lamp, his mother appeared as if by magic to seize his hand and hold it back. When he reached for the doorknob, again she intercepted him. When he approached his siblings, his mother separated them. When he held out a receipt he had received from the newsboy, the mother walked past and left him standing with no slip of paper in his hand. When the mother spoke, she did not speak to the boy. By interrupting or ignoring his attempts to do things for himself, he was preventing him from successfully completing an action of his own and reaping the consequences of his successful behavior.
DEFINITIONS:
Extinction
-stopping the reinforcement or escape contingency
-for a previously reinforced response
-causes the response frequency to decrease
Spontaneous recovery
-a temporary recovery of the extinguished behavior
-during the first part of each of the extinction sessions
-that follow the first extinction session