SELF‐INJURIOUS BEHAVIOR: SHAPING “HEAD‐BANGING” IN MONKEYS¹

Abstract

Head‐banging, a common phenomenon among the mentally retarded, was shaped, brought under stimulus control, extinguished, and re‐established in two monkeys through reinforcement and discrimination procedures of operant conditioning. The behavior was stable and led to lacerations, a condition that qualifies head‐banging as self‐injurious. The principles of the analysis of behavior used here may well be of value in the etiology and treatment of some human head‐banging.

The Functions of Self‐injurious Behavior: An Experimental‐epidemiological Analysis

“…This result was somewhat surprising because the inadvertent delivery of social-positive reinforcement (contingent attention) has long been considered to be the primary operant mechanism responsible for the development of SIB. That view was based on research (e.g., Lovaas, Freitag, Gold, & Kassorla, 1965;Lovaas & Simmons, 1969;Peterson & Peterson, 1968;Schaeffer, 1970) conducted at a time when most individuals with developmental dis-abilities received little by way of formal education and often lived in environments that were both physically and socially impoverished. Thus, it is quite possible that our results would have reflected a higher proportion of SIB attributed to socialpositive reinforcement (occasioned by socially depriving conditions) had the study been done a decade or so earlier.…”

Toward a Functional Analysis of Self‐injury

“…First, in light of data from numerous sources suggesting that self-injury is a learned phenomenon, behavioral researchers and clinicians generally have dismissed the importance of etiology, since the conditions that are necessary to develop or maintain a response may be totally unrelated to the conditions that are sufficient to alter or eliminate it. Second, with respect to the initial development of self-injury, functional analyses have been limited to animal studies (Holz & Azrin, 1961;Schaeffer, 1970), since experimental attempts to induce selfinjury in humans when it does not already exist would be regarded as unacceptable from the standpoint of subject risk/benefit. Third, the apparent severity of the behavior often suggests the need for immediate attention, thereby discouraging attempts to identify features of the social and physical environment that may serve to maintain self-injury (see Carr, Newsom, & Binkoff, 1976, for a notable exception).…”

Description of a Practitioner Training Program on Functional Analysis and Treatment Development

“…Skinner believed that an understanding of these cause and effect relations is the bedrock of the science of human behavior. In the ensuing decades, a number of researchers demonstrated the impact the application and removal of specific environmental variables could have on behavior (e.g., Allen, Hart, Buell, Harris, & Wolf, 1964;Schaeffer, 1970). Carr (1977) reviewed evidence that a variety of contingencies could influence problem behavior, such as positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, or reinforcement produced by the behavior itself (i.e., automatic reinforcement).…”