

Positive reinforcement offers a desirable incentive as a reward to increase, strengthen, or replace a target behavior. In contrast, when implementing ABA strategies, reinforcements offer a way to increase a child’s target behavior. While positive punishment involves adding something unpleasant to a situation to decrease a child’s behavior, negative punishment involves removing something from the situation to decrease the target behavior. Punishment is a term that refers to decreasing specific target behavior. Often, this refers to a meaningful object or reward, such as: In simplest terms, positive means to add, while negative means to take away.

Let’s break down their meanings, mainly how they apply to children when implementing ABA strategies. Both punishments and reinforcements can be either positive or negative. Nor does it imply any form of physical, verbal, or emotional punishing. In ABA therapy, it’s essential to understand that punishment and reinforcement are not associated with our typical understanding of good versus bad. This form of conditioning is possible by making associations between one’s behavior and receiving a positive or negative consequence for that action. Operant conditioning is how one learns to increase or decrease specific behaviors. Measuring the Success of Positive Reinforcement.Let’s look at the ins and outs of punishment and reinforcement and how they can be useful in ABA. While understanding operant conditioning’s objectives may be straightforward, grasping the differences between punishment and reinforcement, both positive and negative, may take a bit more explaining. When it comes to replacing undesirable behaviors with those that are more appropriate, long-term actions, operant conditioning is often a preferred method of choice.
