Brief report: Identifying potential positive reinforcers in a residential treatment center for female adolescents who are conduct disordered
✍ Scribed by Daniel Houlihan; Daniel Sachau; James Vincent
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1991
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 485 KB
- Volume
- 6
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1072-0847
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This study compares the ratings of potential reinforcers for two sample populations, residentially placed females who are conduct disordered (CD) and normal females. It was anticipated that the CD population would rank potential reinforcers lower than the normal population; however, the results contradict this hypothesis It was found that females who are CD consistently rated potential reinforcers higher than the normal female sample. Possible explanations for this finding are addressed and future research needs are discussed.
Practitioners treating adolescents have often witnessed the wonders of simple positive reinforcement. Social reinforcement, token economies, home-based reinforcement programs, group contingencies, and contingency contracting are all popular and generally effective behavioral techniques for shaping the behavior of adolescents (Jenson, 1978). However, a common problem with 'reinforcement' programs occurs when practitioners try to shape behavior with rewards that are not reinforcing (Cautela & Kastenbaum, 1967; Forehand, 1986; Kazdin, 1989; Lutzker et al., 1988). The busy therapist may loose sight of the basic tenet that rewards must increase the occurrence of a behavior in order for the reward to be reinforcing. These therapists may instead rely on a few generic rewards. Many practitioners are acquainted with the indiscriminant colleague who grabs a handful of M & Ms and charges blindly into therapy. Kazdin (1989) has noted the: haphazard way that reinforcement is usually carried out in everyday situations.
With this problem in mind, a number of researchers have developed surveys for identifying potential reinforcers for various populations. These surveys ask individuals to indicate how rewarding they find a number of potential reinforcers. Surveys have been created for special needs children (Dewhurst & Cautela, 1980), autistic children (Atkinson et al., 1984), inpatient psychiatric