Shifting Paradigms: The Behaviorist Context - Part I

Shifting Paradigms: The Behaviorist Context Part I

C.A. Childress, Psy.D. (2011)

Before entering into a discussion of developmentally supportive parenting and psychotherapy, I want to set the context of where we are currently with regard to parenting recommendations and psychotherapy.  The current theoretical paradigm governing our approach to parenting and child therapy is “behaviorism,” an approach that developed its formal organization in the 1940s and 50s.  Before we shift into an entirely different paradigm involving the neuro-development of brain systems, I’d like to first review the origin and the failures of the current behaviorist paradigm relative to parenting and child therapy.

Everything in psychotherapy begins with Sigmund Freud.  Back in the 1930s and 40s, Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, and variants of them, represented the dominant paradigm governing psychotherapy.  But in the 1950s and 60s, a backlash against Freudian/psychoanalytic theory developed, particularly within universities in the United States, which held that the psychoanalytic paradigm was “unscientific” because its basic tenets could not be subjected to experimental proof by the scientific method. Since the tenets of psychoanalytic theories could not be objectively observed and measured (e.g., one could not directly observe and measure an Oedipal complex), there was no way to scientifically prove or disprove their theories.  A movement arose within professional psychology to base psychotherapy within the scientific method, and many theorists and practitioners turned to the emerging psychological science of the 1940s and 50s regarding the modification of behavior with lab animals (primarily lab rats using an apparatus called a “Skinner box,” named after its developer, B.F. Skinner).

These “scientifically based” theorists combined the laboratory findings of Ivan Pavlov who studied the paired association of stimuli (i.e., the sound of a bell with food presentation to dogs; called Classical Conditioning) with the findings from modifying the behavior of lab rats in a Skinner Box (called Operant Conditioning; because the lab animal actively “operated” on the environment as opposed to Pavlov’s dogs who were more passive recipients of the association experience – and since Pavlov’s work (1930s) came before Skinner’s (1940s) Pavlov became “Classical”). Later, in the 1960s, a third set of research findings (Albert Bandura) having to do with observing a role model was added to the mix, and together this set of experimental findings was labeled “Learning Theory” because it was believed that this set of research findings explained how animals, including humans, learned.

The principles of Learning Theory proposed that behavior was the end-product, the result, of the organism’s learning history.  Change the learning history and you will change the behavior.  The principles of operant conditioning held a central role within Learning theory, and were essentially that; 1) behavior that is reinforced (rewarded) will increase (the studies primarily used food as the reinforcer with lab animals), 2) behavior that is punished will decrease (the studies primarily used electric shock as the punishment with lab animals), and 3) removing the reinforcement from a behavior will also decrease that behavior (called “extinction”).  The details of this process were extensively studied and are much more elaborate that the brief synopsis I provide here (involving concepts such as shaping, fading, stimulus control, cue discrimination and cue generalization, differential reinforcement schedules, behavior chains, etc.), but the reinforcement-punishment-extinction triad is the primary core of the operant conditioning model.

During the 1960s and 70s a movement arose within psychology to apply Learning Theory principles, called behaviorism, to child “behavior problems.”  In order to base child theapy within the scientific method, theoretical constructs were restricted to observable behavior only.  Motivations, needs, meaning, were all excluded because these constructs could not be observed and measured.  According to the behaviorists, the psychoanalytic paradigm of Freud and his colleagues had moved away from a foundation in the scientific method by trying to address the person’s inner experience, which could not be formally studied by the experimental method.  Behaviorism was steadfastly certain that it would not make the same mistake, so only observable behavior was an acceptable construct for theory and study.

Since its emergence in the 1960s, behaviorism has achieved a dominant hold on the field of professional psychotherapy, and behaviorism is far and away the dominant paradigm currently governing child psychotherapy.  Within the field of professional psychology, euphemisms for the behaviorist paradigm include “evidenced-based practice” and “empirically validated practice” and there is a considerable push within the professional establishment to have funding agencies limit reimbursement to ONLY behaviorist interventions. Such restrictions will have the effect of essentially eliminating all other non-behaviorist therapeutic approaches by cutting off the funding for these non-behaviorist approaches – although those advocating this restriction don’t explicitly use the term “behaviorist” but instead use the euphemisms of “evidence-based” and “empirically validated.” 

(note: the "evidence" that they talk about as "evidenced-based" is essentially that we can induce submissive behavior in children through the application of punishment... some "evidence."  Seems pretty self-evident, and we know that simply punishing children for "misbehavior" has not solved the problem.)

This effort at restricting child psychotherapy approaches to only behaviorist approaches becomes highly problematic once we understand how the brain grows and develops during childhood. Once we understand the inter-relationship of the brain systems involved in healthy child development, we come to realize that the recommendations of the behaviorist paradigm are actually the entirely wrong thing to do, and in many cases will actually make the situation worse from a neuro-developmental perspective.  Furthermore, there are very problematic moral and professional ethical concerns related to the use of behaviorist interventions.  But we’ll get to those later… 

(note: by the way, I’m a trained behavior therapist, although I no longer practice from a behaviorist model having now come to understand the neuro-development of the brain in childhood.  In fact, for me, knowing what I know about brain development and child development, I would personally consider it unethical and unprofessional practice for me to prescribe a behaviorist treatment plan for one of my child clients – with the possible exception of a child with severe autism (although I’d still likely go with a “DIR floortime” variant) or a child with significant mental retardation).

Back to the story… One of the first challenges facing the behaviorist child therapy model was to identify the reinforcer that was maintaining the child’s “behavior problem.”  Since child behavior problems occurred frequently despite punishment efforts designed to decrease the frequency of the “problem behavior,” there must be some positive consequence to the child’s “behavior problem” that is serving to reinforce the continued occurrence of the “problem behavior,” even when that behavior is subjected to punishment.

The answer to this “reinforcement of problem behavior” question emerged through the observation of the parent-child interaction process.  It was noted that when children display “behavior problems” they typically receive increased parental attention, while when they behave “appropriately” they receive no such parental attention, and they may actually be ignored by the parent who will engage in various non-child related tasks.  Since everyone knows that children love parental attention, this parental attention must be so reinforcing for children that they will continue to present the “problem behavior” because they have “learned” (remember Learning Theory) through the reinforcement provided by "negative parental attention" that presenting the problem behavior is a  way to receive parental attention.  Even when the parental attention involves anger and punishment, the reinforcing power of parental attention overwhelms the negatives of the interaction, and the term “negative attention” was born. 

According to behaviorist theory, children will present behavior problems in order to receive negative attention from their parents.

Therefore, one of the first goals of behaviorist child psychotherapy was to remove the proposed reinforcer of negative parental attention from a child’s “misbehavior” (i.e., place the “behavior problem” on extinction), so a procedure was developed called “time out from reinforcement” (which was later shortened to simply “time out”) that did just that.  Specific procedures and instructions were developed for parents (and were extensively studied in the laboratory) instructing parents to place their children in a “time out chair” and walk away whenever the child “misbehaved.”  The standard instructions for time out are for parents not to talk or dialogue with the child, but to do everything possible to remove their parental attention from the child’s “misbehavior” in order to eliminate the reinforcing effect of “negative attention” in maintaining the child’s “negative behavior.”  I will have more to say about all of this in my video seminars where I take behaviorism to task.  But let me just say here that there is no such thing as negative attention.  

Negative attention as a reinforcer is a myth and it has NO scientific validity. It is wrong, wrong, wrong.

But to return to the story… since the child is supposedly “acting out” to get parental attention, even if this is “negative attention,” then a second goal of the behaviorist model is to provide the child with positive reinforcement for “positive behavior.”  This typically involves recommendations to parents that they provide the child with praise (i.e., positive attention) for “good behavior.” This procedure of giving positive attention to "positive behavior" is sometimes referred to as “catch them being good” – a “clever” variant of what parents typically do which is “catch them being bad.”  

It is interesting to note that the research evidence on parental praise as a reinforcer has found that praise has NO measurable effect on the child’s behavior (cf., Roberts, Hatzenbuehler, & Bean 1981; Roberts, 1985).  Yet, despite the absence of research support for positive parental attention as a reinforcer, behaviorists continue to propose that parental praise is a reinforcer (it is also interesting to note that when a theory predicts a particular outcome, such as behaviorism predicting that parental praise is a reinforcer which, when delivered contingently to a desired child behavior, should increase the frequency of that behavior, and this prediction is contradicted by the actual research evidence, this is generally called “disconfirming evidence” for the theoretical model – meaning that the theoretical model is wrong – if your theory predicts xyz and xyz doesn’t occur, that means your theory is wrong.  Because that’s a basic tenet of the scientific method, I find it even more intriguing that behaviorism arose as a “scientifically based” alternative to the unscientific nature of psychoanalysis, but when the scientific method produces “disconfirming evidence” for the validity of the behaviorist model, behaviorists simply ignore the disconfirming scientific evidence and continue doing what they do and continue advocating for an inaccurate model.  It makes me smile and shake my head in disbelief).

Behaviorists sometimes also use star charts and point systems (called “token economies”) to reinforce “positive behavior,” although token economies are notoriously difficult to construct and maintain with children, and any competent behavior therapist will realize that using extrinsic reinforcers to establish a behavior requires that a typically time consuming and involved “fading” procedure will ultimately need to be constructed and employed otherwise “extinction” processes will occur when the delivery of the active reinforcer is eventually stopped.  The logical and theoretical inconsistencies within behaviorism are myriad and widespread, but there’s simply a tacit conspiracy of silence within professional psychology not to openly talk about them (la-la-la, I’m not listening, everything makes total sense, la-la-la, it’s scientific, I have research evidence, no, no no, I’m not listening, la-la-la). 

Its time professional psychologists begin to talk about the glaring inconsistencies and inaccuracies within the behaviorist paradigm, because behaviorism is a fundamentally flawed theoretical paradigm for use with children.  There is solid scientific evidence emerging from brain neuro-developmental research to suggest that the recommendations derived from the behaviorist paradigm are counter-productive and may actually be harmful (and I am actually being kind by adding the qualifier “may” to the phase “be harmful,” since I am of the personal and professional opinion that behaviorist approaches to child “therapy” are harmful to children and are ethically very problematic – I will discuss my ethical concerns elsewhere).

End of Part I

References:

Roberts, M.W., Hatzenbuehler, L.C., and Bean, A.W. (1981). The effects of differential attention and time out on child noncompliance. Behavior Therapy, 12, 93-99

Roberts, M.W. (1985). Praising child compliance: Reinforcement or Ritual. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 13(4), 611-629