This paper focuses on operant conditioning (also known as Skinnerian conditioning) as a component to behavioral therapy, as it is traditionally used to help teach life skills to children with learning difficulties, such as autism. It focuses on a first-person narrative of a person who watched a friend struggle with operant conditioning with her child with autism. It concludes that operant conditioning can be, but is not always, successful.
Autism and Operant Conditioning
Before taking this class, I was dismissive of operant conditioning as a tool for learning and education in human beings. Instead, I thought of operant conditioning as something that people did with pets, teaching them to associate a particular behavior with a treat or a punishment, and I felt as if this type of learning was below the capabilities of most human beings. My own perceptions about this caused me to react in an ugly manner when a friend of mine described the behavioral therapy that she was going to be using on her child, who has autism, in order to help improve functioning. While I said nothing to my friend, I was enraged that she would be treating her child like a pet, literally offering him food rewards in exchange for desired behavior. I simply did not see how such an approach could help her son, who was already seemed so distant and removed from the average human experience, begin to function better in the everyday world. However, watching his progress under his behavioral therapy regime has led me to the conclusion that operant conditioning can be very helpful, particularly in reaching people with special learning challenges.
When applied to people with learning challenges, operant conditioning is often classified under the umbrella of behavioral therapy. "In such cases, therapists use positive reinforcers to shape behavior in a step-by-step manner, rewarding closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior" (Myers, p.519). Parents frequently use reward systems with neuro-typical children, but they may not be as highly emphasized as with children in special-needs scenarios. "In extreme cases, treatment must be intensive" (Myers, p.519). My friend's son was an extreme case, and the exercises that his behavioral therapist had my friend doing to encourage him to engage were difficult, not just for her, but for her son. However, they were ultimately successful.
One of his challenges was speech. Many children with autism have a difficult time with verbal communication. That does not mean that he was unable to communicate. He would use a picture chart to indicate what he wanted, and was capable of taking an adult and steering her towards a desired object. However, he would also occasionally say words, frequently not in an appropriate context. Knowing that he was physically capable of producing that word, the behavioral therapist would tailor operant conditioning scenarios to illicit that word. One of the challenges was to refuse to give him a cup of his preferred drink (a rice milk) unless he said the word "cup." He was capable of saying the word and would, occasionally, immediately say the word "cup" when he wanted a drink. At other times, he would refuse to say the word, and the scenario would become a stand-off; my heartbroken and frustrated friend refusing to give her child a drink and a crying and stemming six-year-old with autism, communicating in every other way available to him to indicate that he wanted a drink. Only when he finally said the word "cup" could he have the drink of rice milk. After what seemed to be an incredibly long several months, he began to routinely use the word "cup" to ask for his cup of rice milk.
However, the operant conditioning approach has not been universally successful. Many children with autism have a very difficult time with potty training. My friend's son is very fond of potato chips; in fact, he would eat potato chips to the exclusion of all other foods if his mother and father permitted it. The behavioral therapist's approach to potty training was to eliminate potato chips from the rest of his diet, but to reward him with potato chips for attempts at potty training. First, they gave him potato chips for sitting on the toilet. This part of the therapy was an immediate success; it literally took him about a day to figure out that if he sat on the potty, he would receive a potato chip. Next, they were still supposed to reward him for sitting on the toilet, and then give an additional chip if he urinated or defecated. This part of the therapy has largely been a failure. He simply does not seem aware of whether or not his bowels or bladder are functioning. Instead, from a layperson's point-of-view, he appears to be very much like a younger infant, and his bodily functions continue to surprise him. For example, unlike a toddler of potty-training age, he does not leave the room, crouch, or attempt to hide when going to the bathroom; he seems oblivious to the fact that things are coming from his body. Interestingly enough, he has come to associate being placed on the toilet with getting a potato chip and will attempt to urinate while sitting on the toilet. However, that has not translated into him going to the bathroom when he is about to urinate. Moreover, they have not reached the same result with defecation, perhaps because it has been more difficult to spontaneously have him defecate while sitting on the toilet.
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