Operant conditioning occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. It is through this that an individual makes an association between a specific behavior and the results. This paper focuses on the effect of operant conditioning in the improvement of children's autism. For instance, the learning process can improve verbal repertoire and eating habits in children.
A psychologist known as Thorndike first developed the concept of operant conditioning in 1949. He developed the idea based on the observation that animals could adopt a specific behavior based on reinforcement and punishments. Later, Skinner sought to advance the theory further. According to Skinner, positive and negative reinforcements may result in a behavior change among animals and humans. Similarly, the psychologist developed the concept that positive and negative punishment results in a behavior change.
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Skinner determines that operant conditioning could be viewed as the element in which the consequences are the primary motivation (Cumbler et al., 2013). This aspect implies that an individual will engage or refrain from a specific behavior due to its consequences. If the outcomes are favorable, an individual is more likely to take up the action. On the other hand, undesirable results of behavior are likely to make an individual shy away. Mostly, the negative consequence is usually a punishment. Over time, an individual learns behavior to adopt and which not to be involved in at any given time.
Over time, operant conditioning theory has been used in different settings to understand people's behavior. Various scholars have utilized the aspect of operant conditioning in their respective areas of study. It has been viewed as the preferred approach while seeking to justify adopting a specific behavior type.
Autism, also known as "Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)," is a disorder of neural development having the characteristic of communication impairments, social interaction problems, repetitive stereotype behavior, and diminished interests. Early research interventions have improved "cognitive adaptive behavior" and change the brain's responses to the different social stimuli even though there is no well-known ASD cure (Schuetze et al., 2017) . Operant conditioning strategies involving the training of an individual's behavior through reinforcement can help improve social behavior such as communication and the individual's social interaction. Besides, the learning strategy can also help improve instruction following and naming of objects in children who have ASD. Furthermore, these reinforcement learning methods can also be used in the promotion of the way one behaves socially and in terms of communication as well as minimizing unusual behaviors among children. It helps an individual create a connection between a specific behavior and its effects or reward.
Focusing on a research study by Schuetze et al. (2017) to support the thesis, they supported the idea that operant conditioning as a learning process improves autism in children. For instance, they noticed in their study that “skin conductance response (SCR)" is a sympathetic response triggered by an emotional stimulus. It is also sensitive to alertness as a result of stimuli rather than stimuli pleasantness. According to the study, ASD children have also shown typical SCRs to crying face pictures and unusual threatening objects’ response such as a gun picture. Both of these types of stimuli are associated with “high arousal and negative valence.” The study also noted that dilation of the pupil in the eyes by both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli while passively viewing the face and non-face stimuli. These two studies research supports the contention that unusual or changing physiological responses to the “social and affective stimuli” can affect the formation of a learned connection between SCR and behaviors in individuals and children with ASD. Hence, the physiological responses that can be associated with operant conditioning are vital for improving autism in children.
The study has used each of the physiological, neuroimaging, and behavioral measures to determine if social and affective stimuli responses are unusual in ASD individuals. Even though the research report shows inconsistencies, the study reports unusual responses to reward in each domain. Moreover, the study ascertains that operant conditioning has an important impact in children with autism.
Parents and guardians of these children with ASD need to establish a motivation by asking these children if or keenly observing what the child may be interested in doing. The object or the task that is involved can be known to the enforcer or reward. According to the “ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine” (2018), it is important to reward participation during the learning process so that the process can be more motivating. An antecedent may be an event or an item presentation that happens before the behavior. Antecedent sometimes may trigger behavior in a child. In the operant conditioning process, children's behaviors are put into consideration by keenly observing and measuring them, not about how the individual feels but just measuring that can be defined and observed. The consequence of the behavior, which is the reinforcement, is then observed during the process. If it is seen to be positive, then the behavior is much likely to continue.
A good example that brings together these components can be expressed by taking an example of a child who is not interested in taking a bath. In that case, the child does not have the motivation that may result to taking a bath. And in this particular case, the antecedent which is the word bath, can trigger an undesirable response in the child. Involving the child in the argument of taking a bath may bring a continued undesirable behavior that will not motivate that particular child to take a bath. On the other hand, motivation assignment to the bath by first asking the child which toy they may want to play with, from the choosing of two major desirable goals, in the bath completes several aims. For instance, the reward of “playing with the toy” establishes motivation. The antecedent, which is the toy choice question, automatically assumes the happening of the bath. Choosing a toy makes the child focus on positive behavior motivation. In fact, the above example shows that operant conditioning also results in decreased stress during bath for both the child and their caretaker. However, it is important to use a system of reward rather than bribery while executing operant conditioning. Besides, reinforcement that may be given more often can lower the consequence value.
According to a study conducted by the "American Psychology association," as cited by Autism Parenting Magazine (2020) , there is a poor prognosis in children with autism who fail to develop speech by the time they are five years old. Furthermore, teaching speech to a child with autism using the operant conditioning method can help a nonverbal autistic child as old as four years to develop basic words when speaking. By using several motivations and reinforcements, children's speech may begin to get meaningful language characteristics. That shows that operant conditioning is an important learning process for children with autism to recover from their condition.
In further support of the thesis, a study by Sanderson (2020) , a student at “Penn State University” also noted some success associated with operant conditioning that she could identify while working with children with autism. Specifically, the student-related process with repetition. She noted that working with children with autism needs several repetitions. Hence the use of positive reinforcements maintenance and increases good behavior or benefits the child and their development. For instance, in the lower functioning autistic class, a class with low functioning autism with behaviors that inhibit their ability to conduct their daily life, there is the frequent use of operant conditioning. As a result, there is easy earning of the required reward. The experience presented in the study supports the important effect that operant conditioning may bring to the effort employed in the discovery process of children with autism.
Besides, in her experience with children with autism, Sanderson also noted that both higher and lower functioning children with autism were responding when their teachers were using reinforcers to direct their behavior. For instance, teachers used some small candy pieces, which the teacher gave out as rewards when they showed that they were making some effort to do what the teacher asked of them. That was a concept at the core of teaching independent functional skills.
Operant conditioning has also been noticed to be able to contribute to the development of behavioral toxicology. The learning method is used to train animals in the different behaviors that the toxicologists may be interested in studying. They make sensory functioning’s sophisticated assessments possible. In this case, operant condition excels in using intermittent reinforcement schedules to create a stable animal performance type required in the study of substances that only brings effect as a result of prolonged exposure. The scheduled and controlled behavior is also helpful in elucidating the precise behavioral technique involved in toxicity. For instance, during the early assessment of toxic substances, a sample that has been chosen with a sound thinking of scheduled and controlled performances can sometimes result in the best estimates even if the complex operant behavior integrity does not change. All in all, this study supports that operant conditioning can help manipulate behavior change. That can also apply to the improvement of behavioral changes in children with autism.
It can also be noted from Carr and McNulty (2016) that clinicians most often apply therapy approaches that are based on operant conditioning in the effort to treat various behavioral problems such as alcoholism, children with ASD as well as having difficulties in feeding. The study further states that the therapy approaches based on operant conditioning have the strongest evidence-based. For instance, the interventions that apply this externally driven top down strategy help in prompting the child to develop a particular behavior, always in conjunction with chaining or shaping then contingently respond to that particular behavior. There was evidence of a positive result of the operant conditioning approach intervention on increasing diet intake in children with ASD. That clearly shows that operant conditioning as a learning method can affect the feeding habit among children with autism. Hence operant condition can improve the weak behavior among autistic children.
In conclusion, operant conditioning is an important learning methodology that can help improve autism among children. Even though the rewards may be different, the operant conditioning process is shown to produce results in autistic children, as evident above. Such behaviors include feeding difficulty, which is common among these children, verbal repertoire, unusual interest, and the main problem with social interaction. Operant conditioning employs rewards and punishment to shape the child's behavior. Therefore, it is necessary to employ therapy approaches based on operant conditioning in these autistic children to help them quickly shape their behavior. However, their consistency in implementing the learning process to help these children is also an important factor. In that way, there would be a more rapid occurrence of progress towards the objective of behavioral change.
References
Autism Parenting Magazine. (2020). Top Advice on Operant Conditioning In Individuals With Autism - Autism Parenting Magazine . Autism Parenting Magazine. Retrieved 11 November 2020, from https://www.autismparentingmagazine.com/advice-operant-conditioning-individuals-autism/ .
Carr, A., & McNulty, M. (2016). The handbook of adult clinical psychology (pp. 64-66). Routledge.
Cumbler, E., Castillo, L., Satorie, L., Ford, D., Hagman, J., Hodge, T.,& Wald, H2013). Culture change in infection control: applying psychological principles to improve hand hygiene. Journal of Nursing Care Quality , 28 (4), 304-311. doi: 10.1097/NCQ.0b013e31829786be.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). How people learn II: Learners, contexts, and cultures . National Academies Press.
Sanderson, J. (2020). Autism and Operant Conditioning | Psych 256: Cognitive Psychology FA14 . Sites.psu.edu. Retrieved 11 November 2020, from https://sites.psu.edu/psych256fa14/2014/09/11/autism-and-operant-conditioning/.
Schuetze, M., Rohr, C., Dewey, D., McCrimmon, A., & Bray, S. (2017). Reinforcement Learning in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Frontiers In Psychology , 8 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02035
