DEALING WITH OFFENDING BEHAVIOUR: BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION Flashcards
what is behaviour modification?
this is a behavioural therapy based on principles of operant conditioning to manage offenders in prisons
what are token economies?
Token economy programmes as used to obtain desirable behaviours, and they involve a system of rewards being set up for desired behaviour.
what are rewards in token economies?
Rewards are usually tokens or point and these can be periodically exchanged for something that the individual wants.
what are token economies also known as?
secondary reinforcers
what are primary reinforcers?
they are exchanged with secondary reinforcers and they are things wanted by the person
what is the procedure of a token economy system?
- What is a desired behaviour
- What is a token
- What is a reward
- How the reward will be removed once the behaviour is achieved
what is generalisation?
the idea is that desired behaviour, once reinforced and established in an institution, would it be generalised to outside the institution so that appropriate behaviour would be established.
AO3: how is ‘supporting evidence’ a strength to behaviour modification as a way of dealing with offending behaviour?
one strength to behaviour modification as a way of dealing with offending behaviour is that there is supporting evidence. For example, Hobbs and Holt (1976) conducted a study which involved delinquent boys and the staff in the cottage agreed on several target behaviours and the boys in each cottage were rated on each target behaviour by two staff members. The boys went to a token economy store weekly and exchanged their tokens for a variety of reinforcers or tokens could be saved in bank and exchanged for more expencive reinforcers such as trips or going home. The programme was introduced into 3 cottages and a fourth was not implemented with token economies and were the control group. They found that the token economies resulted in an increase in the mean percentage of appropriate target behaviours for each cottage with no noticeable improvement in the comparison cottage. Therefore, this supports the idea that token economies do have an impact on the reduction of undesirable behaviour of offenders and young delinquents.
However, this lacks generalisability and has low ecological validity as it doesn’t track the behaviour of the delinquents when outside of the institutions.
AO3: how is ‘it is easy to implement’ a strength to behaviour modification as a way of dealing with offending behaviour?
one strength to behaviour modification as a way of dealing with offending behaviour is that it is easy to implement. For example, there is no need for expertise or a specialist professional as there would be no other forms of treatments needed. This means that token economies are very cost effective to society and they are very easy to follow for the individuals running and participating in them. Therefore, token economies have positive economic implications to society as they don’t require training expenses compared to anger management which is much harder to implement and is higher in costs.
AO3: how is ‘it is not applicable long term’ a limitation to behaviour modification as a way of dealing with offending behaviour?
one limitation to behaviour modification as a way of dealing with offending behaviour is that it only produces compliant behaviour within the institution but not in the long term. This is because once the tokens and reinforcement stops, so does the good behaviour, so the rewards that the offender gains from reoffending may be greater especially outside of institutions so the offender will probably revert back to their criminal ways. For example, Cohen and Filipczak (1971) used token economies which led to a more desirable behaviour than a control group within an adult prison and after 3 years, it was found that the rates of recidivism reflected the national statistics. Therefore, this suggests the benefits of behaviour modification may not generalise beyond the prison setting it is conducted in.
AO3: how is ‘individually tailored’ a limitation to behaviour modification as a way of dealing with offending behaviour?
one limitation to behaviour modification as a way of dealing with offending behaviour is that it only works if there individually tailored. This is because most systems do not target specific issues for each individual, so they may not be very appropriate for each persons development. Therefore, it would be difficult to apply to most prisons as too many rewards would be needed and therefore wouldn’t work.
