B-8: Identify and distinguish among unconditioned, conditioned, and generalized punishers ©
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Unconditioned punishers are also sometimes called “primary” because they are shared by a whole species with no learning history required. They remain punishers throughout the lifespan.
Things that become punishers based on learning history are sometimes called “secondary.” Their value can often fluctuate significantly across a person’s lifespan.
Unconditioned Punisher
Definition: Punishment that works without prior learning (in other words, living things come into the world with a need to avoid these things “built in” to their biology).
Examples of unconditioned punishers: Extremely hot or cold temperatures, extremely loud noises, painful stimulation, starvation, extreme thirst, lack of sexual stimulation.
Why it matters: All organisms are born wanting to avoid stimuli that can harm or kill them. Unconditioned punishers are the product of an evolutionary process to keep organisms alive and reproductively viable.
Conditioned Punisher
Definition: A stimulus change that decreases the future frequency and occurrences of behavior that is based on an organism’s learning history with other punishers (in other words, organisms are not born wanting to avoid these things).
Example in everyday context: There is a woman in your office who works several cubes down from you. You find her to be particularly rude and have not had any pleasant interactions with her. Once, you went into the lunchroom while she was also taking her lunch, and she criticized your work performance in front of your friends. When you see her in the staff lunchroom now, you do not enter. This person’s presence serves as a conditioned punisher.
Example in clinical context: Staff at the residential treatment facility have to help a patient brush their hair every day. The patient dislikes having their hair brushed and tries to run away when it is time to have their hair brushed. Every time the client sees a hairbrush, they begin to scream. The hairbrush serves as a conditioned punisher to the client.
Example in supervision/consultation context: You are taking your ABA courses and you have a professor who gives the class pop quizzes and then engages in passive aggressive comments when students get answers wrong. You find yourself skipping class often. The professor’s presence has become a conditioned punisher.
Why it matters: Conditioned punishers acquired punishing properties through learning history, therefore not every organism shares the same conditioned punishers. Learning history and cultural norms influence what a person may regard as a conditioned punisher, and this will likely change over time.
Generalized Punisher
Definition: A consequence that has been paired with many different experiences of punishment until it took on punishing properties itself.
Example in everyday context: An individual has had many interactions with the police over the course of their life, and has contacted many different punishing consequences as part of these interactions (private events involving embarrassment/anger/anxiety, loss of money in the form of fines, loss of time for preferred activities due to being detained, loss of social standing among peers, etc). The interactions with law enforcement personnel now function as punishment for this individual.
Example in clinical context: A high school student with a history of significant reading difficulties and lack of appropriately trained teachers has had many aversive experiences involving books. For example, teachers and parents have ridiculed and yelled at her for not being able to sound out words, peers have excluded her from games because she is “stupid,” she has been deprived of preferred activities due to hours spent trying to complete homework, she has received additional punishment for aggressive behavior that happened as part of behavioral escalation triggered by the reading tasks, and she has experienced many aversive private events (shame, anger, resentment, hopelessness, etc). The presence of books is a generalized punisher for this student.
Example in supervision/consultation context: For many individuals, significant disapproval from authority figures (scowls, reprimands, written warnings, etc) have been paired with a variety of punishers, such as loss of privileges or job, low grades, loss of social standing among peers, and feelings (private events) such as shame, embarrassment, anger, etc. For these individuals, disapproval from a supervisor may function as a generalized punisher.
Why it matters: Stimuli becoming generalized punishers can have both highly valuable and highly maladaptive effects on a person’s life.