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Positive Reinforcement in Institutions

n ose who pose threats to themselves or to society at large, we requently commit to institutions. There, we permit them only

limited social relationships, deprive them of freedom of movement and ofopportunities for decision making, and forbid most of the amenities they could enjoy outside. We often justify these institutions as instruments for beneficial change. "Schools" for the handicapped are supposed to teach their pupils new skills to help them overcome their limitations. "Hospitals" for the mentally ill are supposed to cure them. "Correctional institutions" are supposed to rehabilitate lawbreakers.

Institutionalized Coercion

Locating these facilities in areas that are relatively unpopulated and difficult to get at (at least initially, before cities or suburbs grow up around them) indicates, however, what we really Lntend them for. They are supposed to keep people whom we have decided are retarded, insane, or criminal out of sight. We hand these "humane" facilities over to members of the helping professions-physicians, psychologists, nurses,behavior analysts, physical therapists, speech therapists, rehabilitation counselors, social workers, and correctional officers-and wash our own hands ofthe problems. "Out ofsight, out of mind" is a grand avoidance reaction by the community.

Their geographic isolation, their walls , gates, and security towers, and the public tendency to ignore the very fact oftheir existence leave these institutions almost completelywithout control from the outside. Whatever humanitarian impulses might have led to their initial establishment, their freedom from public accountability turns most of them into little more than warehouses for those whom society judges to be misfits. The immediate priorities of staff and administrative convenience, inmate docility, and obedience to rules and regulations replace longer-term educational, therapeutic, or

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correctional goals. Coercion then becomes the technique of choice for getting the residents to ..behave."

An institution that is operated mostly for the benefit of the staff attaches little significance to the deleterious side effects of coercion. And so we find coercion prevailing in the institutional management ofpeople with retardation or mental illness and ofthose incarcerated for committing crimes. When public or judicial pressure for reform does arise, it is short-lived and usually ineffective because it concentrates on physical facilities and administrative procedures. Rarely does an investigation evaluate the rationale and application ofbehavior management techniques. Through misunderstanding or incompetence, some institutional managers and members of the helping professions twist and alter the concept of reinforcement beyond recognition, attempting to transform even positive reinforcement into an instrument of coercion.

The Misuse of Deprivation. Those whom we have placed in positions of control over ourselves and others-teachers and school administrators, military officers, prison guards and correctional officers, police, government officials-are so accustomed to coercion that they often can comprehend no other way. If they do try positive reinforcement, their first impulse is to take something away from their controllees so they can then give it back in return for "good behavior." That is exactly what happened in some infamous prison projects that claimed to be using positive reinforcement. They imposed solitary confinement on inmates and then let them out for short periods if they showed the proper contrition; deprived them of food and then handed them morsels if they acted subserviently; denied them privacyand then gave them a few moments by themselves ifthey had not been seen engaging in suspicious social interchanges with other prisoners; gave them menial jobs and switched them to more desirable work if they performed uncomplainingly and without resistance. And then, with any lapse, real orperceived, they reimposed the deprivations.

Such techniques are, of course, completely coercive. They are based on socially imposed deprivation and on the escape and avoidance that such deprivation generates. Punishment by shocks or by deprivation makes escape reinforcing. Ifwe deprive prisoners, students, children, or others of their basic needs, rights, and privileges in order to create reinforcers, those reinforcers are negative,

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not positive. They may serve temporarily to keep orderliness in cell blocks, barracks, and classrooms, but they will also generate the long-term side effects of coercive control.

Deprivation, however, does contribute to the effectiveness of positive reinforcers: We have little interest in food right after a good meal, but food influences our actions powerfully as time passes since our last meal; the sexual appetite of sailors after a long sea voyage is legendary; although individuals vary widely, what we do to get money and what we do with money after we get it depend strongly on how much we already have. Nevertheless, even though deprivation makes positive reinforcers stronger, it is still not necessary to impose deprivations deliberately in order to make use of positive reinforcers. No one has enough ofeverything. It does not usually take much extra effort to discover reinforcers that are already effective without additional deprivation.

My concern here is with the use of deprivation as an instrument of coercion. In certain extreme cases, deprivation for a brief time can produce desirable consequences that are unavailable any otherway. After everyone else has given up, you can still set a child with retardation on the road to effective learning. First make her hungry. Then use food as a reinforcer for some basic behavior like self-feeding and following simple instructions. Once the child has learned those, you can develop other reinforcers and discontinue food deprivation. In cases of extreme retardation, or when previous incompetent treatment has made a child unresponsive to standard methods of instruction, both the child and the communitywill find the temporary hardship beneficial.

Even then, one uses deprivation only to enhance the attractiveness of a positive reinforcer, not to punish unsatisfactory behavior. Once the child learns some adaptive behavior, one quickly discontinues the deprivation, with no threat to impose it again. Taking away food, possessions, privileges, or rights just so that these can be given back in return for good behavior, and then taken away again to punish bad behavior, subverts the principle of positive reinforcement. Anyone who uses deprivation this way can expect the controllees to escape, fight back, and exert countercontrol, just as they would react to any coercive regimen.

It is far more effective simply to take advantage of naturally occurring deprivations. Many exist even without social intervention; that is the way the world works. Food, sex, and other biologically

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determined deprivations are built in. Without producing them ourselves or making them any more severe than they would be in the normal course of things, we can often put these deprivations to good use in teaching basic skills to beginners and to those with learning deficiencies.

As mealtimes approach, for example, food becomes a stronger and stronger positive reinforcer. Some people with retardation or mental illness seem sensitive to only a small number ofreinforcers, but food is one ofthe most reliable. The use offood as a reinforcer at mealtimes is a proven and powerful way to teach basic skills to those with learning disabilities. It isjustas useful in teaching typically developing children. Such teaching does not require us to deprive our pupils of meals if they fail to learn. Teaching methods are now available that guarantee learning, so meals need not be missed because of unsuccessful teaching. Even if we have not yet worked out a completely effective instructional program, pupils who have trouble learning do not have to go hungry. While we are perfecting our instructional plan, we can always let them earn a full meal by practicing something they already know how to do.

Eventually, the conduct learned at mealtimes enables pupils with retardation to function adaptively at other times, too. Their newfound abilities-carrying a tray from serving counter to table, using a fork and spoon, picking up spilled food, saying "please" and "thank you"-make it possible to take them to cafeterias and restaurants. There, new choices of food and drink become available to them and they experience new environments. While on route to their treat, they can be taught skills that make travel safe and enjoyable for them­ they can learn to read signs, interpret traffic signals, react to strangers, and so on. Their world begins to open up.

And then new reinforcers become effective as they learn how to interact with different environments and with people who are important to them. They learn to recognize signs of approval as precursors of other reinforcers, so people's reactions take on significance, becoming reinforcers in their own right. When that happens, positive reinforcers like food need not always be forthcoming immediately; delay ofgratification becomes possible. Food, one ofthe few effective reinforcers at first gets these seemingly behaviorless inmates ofthe local institution started. Before long, we find ourselves able to use the newly learned reinforcers to teach them more advanced behavior. Mealtimes then no longer need to be used as

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learning opportunities but can simply be enjoyed, both appetitively and as social occasions.

Ti.me-out and Its Abuses. A controversial form of punishment, particularly in institutions but also at home, is the "time-out" procedure. As a means of social control, various forms of time out have long been part of society's arsenal ofcoercive techniques. What is time-out? What does it accomplish? Does it differ in any important way from other kinds of punishment?

The basic feature of a time-out is the withdrawal of positive reinforcement. This usually means removing someone physically from an environment that has been making positive reinforcers available toanother environment thatmakes little orno reinforcement possible. It is a form of socially imposed deprivation. In practice, time-out may range from standing an obstreperous child in the comer to putting a violent patient into solitary confinement-the classical padded cell.

Children do have to learn the meaning of "no." Indeed, as they continually experience opportunities to explore the unfamiliar, and having already learned that some such situations result in disaster, they come actually to welcome rules and limits that serve to protect them from unpleasant consequences. A "time-out chair" or some other special place where children are sent after misbehaving can be a relatively painless way of teaching them that "no" denotes such limits.

As used in many institutions, however, and by parents who control largely by punishment, time-out-the withdrawal of positive reinforcement-is just as coercive as the application of a shock. Because time-aut inflicts no pain, it is oftenjustified as a benign kind of punishment. This reasoning is similar to justifying the use of drugs instead of straitjackets, ropes, or chains to immobilize an uncooperative patient. The cruelty lies less in the method than in the outcome. Isolation, physical restraint, and chemical restraint remove the victims from contact with all of the reinforcers that make life meaningful and worthwhile. Drugs can tum them into zombies, and padded cells can tum them into raving maniacs. Both kinds of punishment put an end to all learning except for various forms of escape and avoidance that serve as mechanisms of countercontrol. When the power of the authorities is too great for reprisal or deception, depression takes over.

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It i often forgotten that even a relatively mild time-out cannot be an effective punisher unless the punishee is removed from a positively reiriforcing environment. That is what the name, "time-out," refers to; it means time away from reinforcement. Removing a disruptive child, inmate, or patient into a seeming time-out is not going to prevent future disturbances unless the original situation was reinforcing in the first place. If it was not, taking the child out of it may actually reinforce the disruptive behavior.

And then, our interaction while removing a child, for example, may provide stronger positive reinforcement than anything the child was getting in the original situation. We talk to him and, especially ifhe resists, we pick him up and cany him, holding him close. When that happens, time-out itself becomes a positive reinforcer, making future disruptive behavior even more likely. We will strengthen the very conduct we intended to punish.

A child whom we have to place repeatedly in time-out is sending us a message: "I do not like it here. It is not paying off for me. Rather than being unsuccessful and having you ignore me, I would prefer you to cany me, kicking and screaming, into the bare room next door where you will have to sit with me and hold me in order to keep me from banging my head against the wall." Our response to that message has to be an examination ofour own conduct. What were we doing­ or not doing-that made the child prefer the time out?

If we were trying to teach, we will probably find that we were not being successful. Because our pupil was not learning, we were unable to reinforce, and the pupil found otherways to "succeed." The remedy in that situation is not to place the child in time-out, taking away further opportunities for either pupil or teacher to learn, but to revise our teaching. Go back to the last thing the child had learned successfully, so that positive reinforcement again becomes possible, and start over. Proceed more slowly this time, and take advantage of newly available methods for reducing and even eliminating errors from the learning process.* *A large technical literature shows that errors are not a necessary part of the learning process, but behavior analysts have not yet presented that material in easily available form for nonprofessionals. Behavior shaping-teaching new behavior by reinforcing gradually closer approximations to what is desired-can transform trial-and-error to trial-and-success in teaching motor skills like the production of tones on musical instruments or the pronunciation of words. Teaching long sequences of actions like shoe tying, spelling, or "top-down" computer programming can proceed errorlessly if the teacher starts from the end of the sequence and works backwards. With skillful environmental shaping-teaching new relations between behavior and environment

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Arranging a teaching program so that almost all behavior that occurs is reinforceable is a powerful way to improve the learning of people who find learning especially difficult. Time after time, with careful programming and positive reinforcement, children who were supposed to be incapable oflearning have been turned into learners. More often than not, even children medically diagnosed as hyperactive will participate constructively in class for long periods of time, causing no disturbance or distraction as long as they are being reinforced for successful learning. Effective teaching will usually make it unnecessary to punish a child for misbehavior, or to drug a child out of hyperactivity.

Prisons as Learning Environments. Most youths incarcerated in reformatories have impoverished repertoires of behavior. From the beginning, even before their imprisonment, they had only a limited armament ofadaptive skills. Many reinforcers were out oftheir reach and others were unknown to them. They were just as effectively deprived as if we had deliberately taken away their food, shelter, economic support, and all possibility of attaining the kinds of success thateducation and trainingmake possible. Such deprivations, not the results of biological processes, are socially imposed.

This is not to suggest that criminality is confmed to the poor or to the socially rejected. Serious crime exists at all economic and social levels. But homes and neighborhoods that suffer the harshest social and economic deprivation, and at the same time lack a tradition of upward economic mobility, also spawn the most visible forms of youthful criminality. Such communities do not place great value on-do not provide reinforcers for-conversing about anything except basic needs, reading anything longer than billboard phrases and newspaper headlines, writing anything more than signatures and perhaps a few expletives suitable for graffiti, or calculating anything more than the simplestcash transactions. Young people in depressed areas, deprived of effective learning environments, grow up unable

by changing the environment gradually from familiar to unfamiliar forms-children can learn errorlessly to copy, Wiite, and name letters ofthe alphabet; medical students can learn the basic structure of the nervous system so errorlessly that they find it difficult at first to believe they are actually learning anything. Procedures that establish equivalence relations among spoken words, Wiitten words, and pictures give children simple reading and speaking vocabularies that they were never explicitly taught and that they use even the very first time without error. Errorless teaching is an active field of research, with new methods and applications coming along rapidly.

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to talk, read, write, or calculate numerically. Written applications and job interviews are out of the question. Ambitions are necessarily limited to the immediately foreseeable resolution of coercive contingencies imposed on the one hand by the Law and on the other by the deprivations incompetence brings on. Their lives revolve around reinforcers that are limited to food, shelter, alcohol, sex, drugs, and money to purchase these. What they do learn is the most reliable way-sometimes the only way open to them-for obtaining basic reinforcers: Take them from someone else.

When the law catches up with youths whom the social system has failed to teach effectively, they are sent to "correctional" institutions that are supposed to "reform" them. After serving their term, they usually return to their old territory, having learned nothing that might help them get out of that environment, and even unaware of the desirability ofgetting out. If they have been reformed in any way, it has been by a sharpening of their ability to keep from getting caught.

Many do get caught again. The threat of imprisonment failed to prevent their first lawless acts, and actual imprisonment fails to prevent their repetition. These failures are to be expected; coercive control provides no alternatives for the lawbreaker who lacks socially desirable kinds of competence. Deprivations imposed within prison walls are hardly more severe than the familiar realities outside. Thrown back into the same old scene with no new coping behavior and now labelled as criminals, subject to even greater restriction, why should they be expected to act any differently than before?

Criminalityis a complexproblem-actually, manydifferent problems and with many roots. But in all its variations it is still behavior. Our everyday concern is not with an abstract concept, "criminality," but with criminal actions. To assume that criminal acts are subject to the same principles that control all kinds of behavior could prove incorrect. Yet, given the successful extensions ofbehavioral analysis to other kinds of complex human conduct, we cannot neglect this important class just because of preconceived notions that have little or no empirical support. Certainly, to reduce the incidence of criminality by redesigning the environments it springs from is an infinitely complex task. It is rarely possible to achieve the necessary control of the critical reinforcers, to eliminate the current negative reinforcers and replace them with positive. And so we dare not eliminate our prisons.

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But however one feels about the desirability of imprisonment, its failure to deter repetitive crime represents lost opportunities, even tragedies. Prisons and reformatories control reinforcers to an extent that is not permltted on the outside. While offenders are temporarily unable to engage in the acts that brought them to prison, it is possible to use positive reinforcement to teach them more adaptable and acceptable forms ofconduct. Before leaving prison, the offender could be equipped with new options, ways ofsurviving within rather than outside the law. Reducing the number of multiple offenders would also reduce society's ever increasing need for new prisons.

The use of imprisonment as an opportunity for education has met with so little success that law enforcement professionals view the notion with nearly complete skepticism; proponents are "ignorant do-gooders." The lack of success and the resulting skepticism, however, come from the mistaken notion that teaching can only be accomplished by coercion, particularly when the students are "criminals." Most educational programs within prisons have failed because they relied on coercive control. With positive reinforcement, it is possible to accomplish real corrections in misdirected life paths. Also, a well designed learning program with high levels of positive reinforcement, instituted before youths have become habitual offenders, costs considerably less in the long run than to prop up the standard system of coercive control.

This is notjust impractical theory. Positive reinforcement has been used successfully to replace juvenile offenders' incompetence with constructive skills, making new reinforcers available to them for the first time. A superb demonstration project that showed the effectiveness ofa well-planned and competentlyadministered positive reinforcement system has been almost completely ignored by professionals in behavioral science and in law enforcement. In this project, new capabilities permltted youngsters, on leaving prison, to enter new environments and succeed there without coming into conflict with the law. The techniques for getting them there are not difficult in principle. All correctional officers should be trained to use them.*

The project made courses available to youthful prisoners, starting with basic reading, writing, speaking, calculating, and remembering,

• The final report of this federally funded project Is available as: H. L. Cohen and J . Filipczak. A New Leaming Environment. Boston. MA: Authors Cooperative, Inc.

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and then going on to more advanced skills that made use of those prerequisites. The content and sequence of courses was carefully programmed. Guaranteeing that each course prepared students for the next one, and requiring high marks before they could move on, ensured success-continued reinforcement. No one was forced to take courses. Punishment did not follow if anyone preferred the usual prison routine rather than participating.

Simply making courses available was not enough, though. After all, if they had never experienced the advantages that elementary skills can bring, why should the prisoners have been interested in participating? Contrived reinforcers for learning were therefore necessary at first, until the students' new skills brought them into contact with more natural consequences. That is where a critical feature of the system, positive reinforcement for learning, entered the picture.

In order to get prisoners started, the project paid them for learning. That made it possible for those who did engage in the learning process to get things that would not otherwise have been available at all, regardless of how they acted in prison. High exam scores gained the learner a private space. Although sparsely furnished at first with a table, chair, bookshelf, and lamp-items that made continued studyfeasible-the space could be outfitted later according to the owner's personal tastes and resources. How were student prisoners supposed to obtain those resources? Having secured the space, they could then earn credits by continuing to show new learning in their courses. They could save and use the credits like money to purchase items in a store. The stock in the store was tailored to the preferences of those who were working for credits.

Paying the students for learning simply set up school as another job that was available to the inmates. The credits, the store, the private space, and other privileges were actually part of the school program-the job-and were enjoyed only during school hours­ while the prisoners were on the job. That the reinforcers the participants enjoyed were actually earnings probably helped account for the relative absence of resentment and hostility on the part of prisoners who did not take part. They all had their choice of jobs. Nobody was shut out. The reinforcers were available to anybody who selected the school job as part of his prison duties.

Private ownership created new reinforcers. Wall decorations, furnishings, furniture, music, and 1V became items worth working

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for, and learning continued. New skills created the potential for still more reinforcers that the store made available. The ability to write letters turned stationeryandwrttingmaterials into useful possessions. The ability to handle a job interview made certain clothing desirable for students who would soon be completing their prison term. The ability to read created a new pleasure, and books became desirable possessions. Later, as students became capable of new and more complex behavior, they were allowed to begin using their credits to buy privileges they could not before have been trusted to handle: telephone calls, visits in privacy by friends and relatives, and, starting in conjunction with their courses, supervised trips outside the walls. As the value of learning, itself, became apparent, the students eventually came to use some of their credits to pay tuition for courses that they requested-a requirement they would also meet outside.

When these students left, they were able to do things that made new reinforcers available. Their world had expanded. There was no guarantee, of course, that the old contingencies in their home environments would not take over again, but now they at least had a chance for something different. The evidence suggests that many capitalized on new opportunities that the nonpunitive approach had opened up to them. Fewer returned to prison.

It is too bad thatwe waited until these youths had been imprisoned before we attended to their needs. We could have been investing in those at-riskyoungsters before they got into serious trouble. Positive reinforcement now can eliminate the need for punishment later. The best way to prevent juvenile crime and give young people the opportunity for satisfying, productive lives is not to lock them up but to steer them in the right direction before serious trouble starts.

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1

This Coercive World

W e live in a coercive world, bombarded by warning signals and threats. The governmentwarns, "Obey the law or go to jail." Law enforcement agencies pay attention to us only

when we have done something punishable. In our churches we hear, "Sin not lest your souls be damned." The landlord never thanks us for the rent, but if we miss, tells us "Pay up or get out." When mortgage payments are delinquent, the usually unresponsive bank threatens to send the sheriff. Educators tell us, "Spare the rod and spoil the child," and bemoan the permissive society that forbids them the use of the rod and the switch. The boss orders, "Get here on time or be fired." Options like "Eat your vegetables or else no dessert" or "Say that again, and I'll wash your mouth with soap" teach children "what is good for them." Legal, business, and social institutions communicate with us most frequently by advising uswhatwe should do…or else. The common meaning of "Behave yourself' is "Do what I want you to do." Coercing us, pushing us around-threatening us with punishment or loss, or telling us what we have to do to escape or avoid punishment or loss-is the predominant technique for getting us to "behave."

Sometimes people tell us what they are going to do to us if we fail to act as they would like. When the threatener is also going to administer the punishment, the coerciveness is quite open. At other times, people warn us of dire consequences that will come from someone else, perhaps even from an impersonal Nature; those warnings, although technically coercive, are just good advice. When we remind someone to carry an umbrella in order to keep from getting wet, we do not have to be concerned that we are coercing them. But even this benevolent warning illustrates in a minor way our general acceptance ofcoercion. Although we need not worry ourselves about this mild and unimporta