EFFECTS OF INTERMITTENT PUNISHMENT ON SELF-INJURIOUS-BEHAVIOR - AN EVALUATION OF SCHEDULE THINNING

Although the use of punishment often raises ethical issues, such proce dures may be needed when the reinforcers that maintain behavior cannot be identified or controlled, or when competing reinforcers cannot be found. Results of several studies on the effects of intermittent sched ules of punishment suggest that therapists must use fairly rich schedu les of punishment to suppress problem behavior. However, residential c aretakers, teachers, and parents often have difficulty implementing pr ograms that require constant monitoring of the client's behavior. In t his study, we examined the feasibility of gradually thinning the deliv ery of punishment from a continuous schedule to an intermittent schedu le during the course of treatment for self-injurious behavior (SIE). R esults of functional analyses for 5 individuals who had been diagnosed with profound mental retardation indicated that their SIE was not mai ntained by social consequences. Treatment with continuous schedules of time-out (for 1 participant) or contingent restraint (for the other 4 participants) produced substantial reductions in SIE. When they were exposed to intermittent schedules of punishment (fixed-interval [FI] 1 20 s or FI 300 s), SIE for all but 1 of the participants increased to levels similar to those observed during baseline. For these 4 particip ants, the schedule of punishment was gradually thinned from continuous to FI 120 s or FI 300 s. For 2 participants, SIE remained low across the schedule changes, demonstrating the utility of thinning from conti nuous to intermittent schedules of punishment. Results for the other 2 participants showed that intermittent punishment was ineffective, des pite repeated attempts to thin the schedule.