Why Won't My Kid Listen To Me? The effects of intermittent reinforcement on the behavior of children
In this post I would like to talk about the big cookie in the room, REINFORCEMENT. What does it mean, and how can we as parents use it to our advantage?
Reinforcement and punishment fall under operant conditioning, or, pairing stimuli to change voluntary behavior. There are 4 types of behavioral operants: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.
Positive reinforcement is adding a stimulus to the environment to increase the likelihood of a behavior occurring again in the future. It is giving a piece of candy to your child whenever they share a toy with their sibling. They are much more likely to share that toy again in the future because they want to earn more candy.
Negative reinforcement is removing a stimulus from the environment to increase the likelihood of a behavior occurring again in the future. This would be removing chores from your teenager’s responsibilities based on a good grade on a test. Sure mom, I’ll study and pass my math test if it means I don’t have to pick up dog poop in the yard for a week!
Positive punishment is adding a stimulus to the environment to decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring again in the future. An example would be adding chores to your teenager’s list of responsibilities if they don’t pass that math test.
Negative punishment is removing a stimulus from the environment to decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring again in the future. The classic example of this is removing video games following an unwanted behavior.
Research has shown that the most effective of the above principles is positive reinforcement, and the reason behavior analysts rely on it so heavily: when implemented correctly, positive reinforcement gets results.
My little nerd heart was so happy when I found these handy-dandy charts that I love to show to parents:
Now that we understand reinforcement and punishment, let’s talk for a minute about how to correctly implement these procedures. It’s all going to boil down to this one word: CONSISTENCY. In order for reinforcement and punishment to work their magic, they must be delivered immediately following a behavior, and consistently.
Psychologist B.F. Skinner (156) identified that while behavior is influenced by reinforcement and punishment, there is a specific way rewards are doled out that can cause a behavior to persist over long periods of time, causing that behavior to become less vulnerable to extinction. This is called a schedule of reinforcement, or the exact way in which we dole out rewards to influence the strength of the response.
As parents do we deliver reinforcement every single time our child engages in a desired behavior? Do we deliver punishment every single time they engage in an undesired behavior? The answer is no, and that’s ok, but when it comes time to try to decrease problem behavior, understanding this is the key to success.
Intermittent Reinforcement
The type of reinforcement most commonly present in the home environment (read: not clinical) is called intermittent reinforcement. This is when reinforcement is not delivered according to a schedule or ratio of responses, but rather given completely at random. The recipient has no idea when reinforcement is coming.
Intermittent reinforcement functions exactly like a slot machine: you sit down at a pretty machine with sounds and lights and put in your quarter before pulling the lever. The wheels spin and the lights light up and if you don’t win anything you fear that you may lose the money you put in, so you try again. You put in your quarter, pull the lever and watch the wheel spin over and over, unwilling to leave the machine because what if the person who sits down after you wins the jackpot? That can’t happen, and this machine has to hit the jackpot eventually! So you feed quarter after quarter and watch the wheel spin and the bells and sirens play and bam! You hit the jackpot! You put your hands under the spout as quarters flow in to them and sirens roar and lights light up as your brain also lights up and releases a crazy amount of dopamine, making you feel like you just won a million dollars.
Why does this work?
Casinos are not dumb, slot machines are programmed to keep a small percentage (usually 5-25%) of the money and pay out the rest in random winnings and jackpots. If the payouts were predictable, for example, if every time you put in a dollar you won back 90 cents, your odds would be exactly the same on every lever pull but you would quickly get bored and walk away. What keeps gamblers going is the small, frequent payouts (2-10 times the bet), the occasional medium sized payouts (50-100 times the bet) and the dream of the major jackpot life-changer (over 1,000 times the bet). Studies show that most people will reinvest their small or medium sized payouts in the hopes of winning the major jackpot until they either tire of the game or run out of money. This unpredictable game for gamblers provides casinos with a very predictable 70% of their overall profit.
Intermittent reinforcement creates the strongest behavior chain out of all of the different types of reinforcement schedules for the same reason slot machines keep people coming back for more: you never know when it’s going to hit. As parents, we can use this to our advantage to shape up desired behaviors, our children are more likely to make their bed every morning if they have no idea which day you’re going to walk in and give them an extra hour on the iPad for doing it. This can also work against us when it comes time to try and decrease problem behavior. If a maladaptive behavior has been reinforced intermittently it’s going to take us twice as long to get rid of the behavior than if it was effectively extinguished. What does this look like? Let’s consider a behavior that all parents have experienced: tantrums.
My child engages in tantrum behavior every time she is told she can’t have chocolate 10 minutes before dinner is ready. She throws herself on the floor, screams, cries, and calls me “mean mommy”. The first time this happened I was so thrown off guard that I told her she could have one small piece of chocolate as she waited for me to finish making dinner. Then the next time she asked I flat out told her no and let her engage in her tantrum, ignoring it and continuing to make dinner as she screamed and kicked at my feet. Fast forward 4 days, we’re out at a restaurant and she sees the waiter deliver dessert to the table next to us before we’ve eaten our dinner. She asks for dessert and I say no. Cue tantrum. To save face in a public place I pull out a small piece of chocolate from my purse for her to eat as we wait for our dinner. It’s now two weeks later and I have been really good at not giving in to her demands and letting her have her tantrum before dinner but why oh why isn’t this behavior going away? When will she learn that she doesn’t get chocolate before dinner? The answer is that this behavior was intermittently reinforced and is now much stronger than it would have been if I had been on the ball from the get-go.
Let’s also walk through another impossibly annoying parenting struggle: getting kids to listen. Every morning I ask my child to get dressed and put her shoes on before we leave, and every morning it deteriorates to yelling and then finally helping her to do it because we’ve run out of time and are going to be late. This is intermittent reinforcement at its best. Sometimes I ask her to do it once, and then walk over and prompt her through the activity. Great! Other mornings I’m doing 10 different things at once and ask her about 15 times before I walk over and prompt her through the activity. She has no idea when I’m going to be on my game and when I’m going to be distracted so she has absolutely no reason to listen to me the first time I ask. If every time I gave a command, I gave it once and then followed through she would be more likely to listen to me the first time I give the command.
Going back to the main point about the effective delivery of reinforcement: CONSISTENCY. When we as parent identify a behavior we want to increase, intermittent reinforcement is our friend, it can shape up strong behavior chains and decrease the need for parents to constantly praise and reinforce behaviors. When we identify a behavior we want to decrease, intermittent reinforcement may as well be a dirty word. My advice to parents is when we sign on to decrease behavior we have to also sign on to do the exact same thing every single time the child engages in the problem behavior, and ensure all caretakers are aware of this as well. Putting in the work now leads to a heck of a lot less amount of work in the future, and after all, isn’t that what we’re all after?