Joe, I have a question about extinction.
I love what Izzy says – behavioral patterns during extinction differ if it comes after past reinforcement or past punishment. Extinction burst occurs when the response is meeting reinforcement contingency and it is followed by extinction (reinforcement no longer occur after the behavior). But does extinction burst order when the response were previously punished?
I feel like all the graphs the I saw of extinction burst is after the reinforcement, not punishment.
Izzy says that the response will recover during extinction, it the response was punished before.
Answer: It is a bit more complicated than that. A behavior that is punished is being maintained by something, typically a reinforcer. A punishment contingency is then superimposed upon that contingency. Extinction of punishment, often allows the underlying contingency to have its affect, and the punished response returns. If both are placed under extinction at the same time, one may not get quite the same effect. If the underlying contingency is broken, extinction is introduced, prior to punishment, the punished response may not return at anywhere near the same rate
• How would you think about this worry activity in terms of eliminative and constructional goals? What would a good constructional outcome look like?
• What are your thoughts on the private events aspect of this? Forget about it and just focus on how they behave in the context of repetitive negative thinking? Or is there a means by which we might target the private worry behavior? We would anticipate that if we impacted non-linear contingencies that the worry would drop off, correct?
Answer: Our approach is as described in our book. It may include both topical and systemic interventions. First, we ascertained what it would look like if the problem were solved. In essence, the constructional interview. Next, we would have the client keep daily event logs. From that we would develop the therapeutic outcomes to be achieved. We considered GAD to be much like cigarette smoking. That is a consistent behavioral topography that occurs under a variety of situation, each of which may serve different functions.
For some functions, we used the anxiety as an opportunity to examine the behavioral requirements one faces and ascertain whether they can lower the requirement or increase their competency, for others we may find it recruits various forms of support from significant others, for yet others it may serve to allow the person a rationale for not doing things they really don’t want to do, and so on. It is often all of the above.
Under some conditions the pattern may be vestigial. That is, the consequences that established it are no longer potent (or as potent given the change in consequences for alternatives). Here Constructional Aggression Training (CAT) type (nonlinear topical) procedures might be used as described for the lizard phobia in the book. This replaces exposure procedures. What is often overlooked is what we addressed in our hallucinations paper. For generalized anxiety to be effective (consequentially) in some situations, it must occur in other situations for which there is no payoff. As we wrote, “For a behavior to be reinforced on certain occasions(SD), it must also occur under circumstances which will not lead to reinforcement (S-delta), and may even produce an aversive consequence. Its occurrence under what is traditionally termed S-delta, as well as under SD, serves as a conditional discriminative stimulus for the reinforcing verbal community.” Accordingly, once there is a solution for the SD situations, the S-delta conditions will often change without intervention or with minor topical interventions (here is where relaxation procedures might be used).
We may employ the CAT type procedure as we look at the functions and social contingencies and program for them. The Constructional Interview and weekly Logs will guide us in that respect.
The CAT procedure when done correctly, where the removal of the stimulus is under the control of the patient, not only reinforces “calmness,” but provides a sense of accomplishment and control that did not previously exist. It increases the likelihood of patient follow through and perseverance while working to establish other systemic elements typically related to component social repertoires. Some real successes are being obtained using CAT to deal with highly fearful situations. What is surprising to those implanting them is how quickly ti appears to work.