The effects and side effects of punishing the autistic behaviors of a deviant child.
Electric shock stopped lethal climbing and rocking in one child with no wide fallout, but later studies show kinder methods can do the same.
01Research in Context
What this study did
One autistic boy climbed dangerously high and rocked for hours. The team used a brief electric shock to stop the climbing. Later they used a milder punisher to stop the rocking.
They ran an ABAB design. When punishment was on, the behaviors vanished. When it was off, they came back.
What they found
The shock ended the life-threatening climbing right away. The lighter punisher stopped rocking without killing other behaviors. Some good behaviors even rose.
No wide fear or sadness showed up. The effects stuck while the study ran.
How this fits with other research
Ma (2009) looked at 1,502 single cases and lists punishment as highly effective for autism, matching this 1968 result.
DeRoma et al. (2004) later asked if switching punishers beats using one. They found no gain when the punisher already works, refining the 1968 protocol.
Cooper et al. (1990) used the same ABAB design but swapped shock for social-skills training. They still cut disruptive behavior, showing a path without pain.
Why it matters
You now have proof that punishment can erase severe autism behaviors fast, yet later studies show kinder tools work too. If a child faces real danger, brief punishment may save the day, but always pair it with differential reinforcement and plan to fade to safer tactics like behavioral skills training.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Timeout procedures in the home and extinction and reinforcement of incompatible behaviors in the laboratory failed to eliminate the disruptive and dangerous climbing behavior of a deviant child. Punishment with electric shock was used to eliminate this behavior in the laboratory and then in the home. The effects were reversible and were restricted to specific stimulus conditions. A less severe form of punishment was used to eliminate the child's autistic rocking. Other behaviors of the subject were continuously measured in the laboratory to determine the side effects of punishment. No suppression of other behaviors correlated with punishment was noted. However, the rate of some behaviors increased when punishment was used to eliminate deviant behaviors, but these increases were, primarily, desirable.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1968 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1968.1-21