We love B.F. Skinner.
The original behaviorist, Skinner was an American psychologist most famous for his work with operant conditioning — getting the desired behavior from a person or child through reinforcement, punishment and extinction.
But like Freud, Skinner’s time was in the 1950s and the 1960s, a time when behaviorism was a fresh and new approach to tackling problems with human behavior and emotions — a direct reaction to the psychoanalytic school of thought that was prevalent throughout much of international psychology. Cognitive behaviorism, a reaction itself to Skinner’s strict behavioral paradigm, acknowledged the importance of other factors in human psychology — you can’t treat people like mice in a maze. Well, you can, but you get far more effective results if you treat them more like humans instead of behaviorally-driven animals.
So it’s not surprising that Matthew Israel was a student of Skinner’s, and his theories on child care and development were molded at Harvard in the 1950s, according to this insightful article into how shock treatment became an acceptable form of treatment for children in a facility in Massachusetts.
Matthew Israel then went on to found the Behavior Research Institute in Canton in 1971, whose name was later changed to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center. To me, it sounds like something from 1984, because children don’t just receive the typical kind of “education” one might expect from such a place — they receive electrical shocks, administered to the skin, per a device that Israel himself has patented:
In 1994, Matthew Israel and David Marsh obtained a patent for an “apparatus for administering electrical aversive stimulus.” (An image from the patent is shown above.) They dubbed the device a Graduated Electronic Decelerator, or GED, its purpose being to “decelerate” a patient engaged in inappropriate behavior by administering an electric shock.
[…]
The patent specifies self-injury as the sort of behavior to be deterred. But, according to a January article in the Globe, therapists at the Rotenberg Center have been accused of being more liberal in their definition of “undesired behavior,” delivering shocks for offenses such as swearing or shouting.
[…]
The problem with utopian solutions in real-life communities like the Rotenberg Center, of course, is that not only the children need to learn self-control; self-control is also required of those with their fingers on the shock button.
Indeed. We soon hope the Rotenberg Center finds more humane methods to help people with the kinds of serious disorders they deal with. We wrote about the gross abuse of this “treatment” back in December 2007, and followed up with another post in January 2008. The practice is still going on, every day of the week, and was approved by the Massachusetts courts in the 1980s.
Because shocking a child just seems so… 1960s. Four or five decades later, and we’re still using the same outdated psychological methods and theories, ones that — for adults — have largely been replaced or dismissed as rudimentary, simplistic and inadequate.
Apparently, for out-of-control children, it’s still okay to shock them into submission.
(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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13 Responses to “Shock Treatment, but For Children!”
Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren at 4:10 pm on
March 23rd, 2008
To read this from you, John. Honestly.
B.F. Skinner did not «invent» behaviorism; if it was invented, it was invented by John B. Watson drawing on Descartes, Pavlov, William James, and others. Skinner invented operant psychology, AKA radical behaviorism. The inception can propably be dated to his 1936 paper «Two types of conditioned reflex and a pseudo-type», the pseudo-type being operant conditioning.
Skinner worked with mice for some years, though in 1944 he switched to pigeons, because they were easier to deal with. Skinner’s reaction was not to psychoanalysis, either: He reckoned Structuralism and Gestalt psychology as his opposition. In the thirties, Psychoanalysis was not a driving force in the laboratories.
In 1945, Skinner published «The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms» where he proposed how psychological terms such as thoughts and feelings can be re-interpreted as behaviors. Even before 1945, Skinner was concerned, as were most psychologists, about the problems posed by languate, thoughts and feelings. His 1945 paper was a giant leap. Language, thoughts and feelings are behaviors and should be studied as such. The main ontological difference between cognitive psychology and radical behaviorism is where they assume that behavior comes from (radical behaviroism assumes that behavior originates outside the individual whereas cognitive psycology assumes that behavior originates inside the actor). There are other differences, such as _how_ certain psychological factors should be studied.
B.F. Skinner was always an advocate against punishment. He mainly studied the effects of rewards in pigeons, and in his 1954 textbook _Science and Human Behavior_ he explicityly stated that punishment is a questionable techniqe. However, he conceded that punishment might be allowed when the alternatives are worse, but that a non-punishing solution should always be looked for.
The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center has an exmption from the general law against the use if aversive techniques and uses them in those cases where all other attempts have failed. Punishment works, but normally only under laboratory conditions where it is possible to control the side effects that Skinner enumerated and warned against. Israels defense is simple: In these rare and particular cases, nothing else has been shown to work.
Is finding alternatives only Israel’s responsibility? Why isn’t it the responsibility of the entire scientific community?
In response to Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren . . .
It’s child abuse. Matthew Israel, David Marsh, and the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center are monsters.
There are alternatives, but it’s not abuse or punishment. Go ask Aletha Solter, Ph.D., if you are still clueless.
Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren at 6:07 pm on
March 23rd, 2008
So she has met these particular children and evaluated them? Where can I read the report?
John M. Grohol, Psy.D. at 7:17 pm on
March 23rd, 2008
Rolf, I think you misread what I wrote. I did not say Skinner invented behaviorism, nor did I saw *Skinner’s* form of behaviorism was a reaction to psychoanalysis (but that behaviorism in general was). As one of the original and one of the most public proponents of behaviorism, he is certainly one of the “original behaviorists.”
Some of the worst crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of, “Well, we must do *something* because something is better than nothing.” Doctors originally drilled holes in people’s heads under this theory. But it’s a horrible justification for any action, because it plies on emotional reasoning rather than logic. I feel for these children and their parents, who are at wits end for solutions. I just don’t think electrical shock (applied to the skin) is an appropriate answer to virtually any question when it comes to the human mind and human behavior.
It is truly the most and one of the worst aversive techniques one could imagine. The fact that the person who invented the device to administer these shocks to children has created a minor industry plying his wares in this state doesn’t validate his techniques. Nor is the research literature exactly full of positive results of this technique (although it seems, not surprising, the studies showing positive results using this device happen to be by Israel or one of his colleagues at the center).
I don’t have any easy answers or easy alternatives to this form of “treatment,” other than to recognize it as a form of “treatment” that remains very controversial and not well-accepted amongst child professionals.
The Rotenberg Center has long been controversial for punishing students with two-second shocks, delivered through electrodes attached to their skin, and it is now permitted only on residents with court-approved “aversive therapy” plans.
Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren at 4:21 am on
March 24th, 2008
John,
none of us remember what schizophrenia could be like before drug treatment. Given that Moniz could win the Nobel prize, it must have been more terrible – at least in the most extreme cases – than most of us realize. Whereas schizophrenia before neurolepitcs hardly exists anymore, cases of extreme autism are readily available, and it’s not pretty.
I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with autists? They cover a vast range. Some are capable of working, dealing with others, and leading productive lives. Some, very few, do things to themselves that make two-second electric shocks seem like a brief tickle in comparison.
Whereas there exist ABA-inspired techniques, such as Lovaas, that help the vast majority of autists, autism is not well understood. Some research indicates that when autists hurt themselves, neurotransimtters are released that usually are associated with pleasure.
Shock treatment is controversial and rightly so. It’s not pretty. But neither are severely self-hurting autists. When the alternative to a shock treatment that takes away the self-damaging behavior is to pad them in and strap them down, I at least feel that it’s not obvious which to choose.
John M. Grohol, Psy.D. at 6:08 am on
March 24th, 2008
I don’t think it’s an either-or proposition.
Surely there are other effective, even amongst the aversive options, behavioral treatments for kids other than electrical shock or locking them up for the rest of their lives. See, for example, Matson, Johnny L.; Keyes, Joseph B. (1988). Contingent reinforcement and contingent restraint to treat severe aggression and self-injury in mentally retarded and autistic adults. Journal of the Multihandicapped Person, Vol 1(2), 141-153.
I agree, in general, that research in this area is severely lacking.
John M. Grohol, Psy.D. at 6:59 am on
March 24th, 2008
I would also point out this reference from Gerhardt, et. al. (1991):
In general, there appears to be empirical, ethical, and legal support for the continued availability of aversive interventions as treatment options, but only if sufficient safeguards are in place. [Emphasis mine.]
It appears that in the case of the Rotenberg Center, such safeguards were not in place in the past year when two children were shocked without authorization. Why should we believe them now when they say things have changed?
Psychology has an unfortunate infamous history of misapplying early ECT procedures inappropriately and without supervision. We seem to be repeating history, except this time with children.
There have only been 5 individuals followed-up long-term (in the research literature), over the past 30+ years, with this particular contingent shock device. Five. One couldn’t use the device, one only used it 20% early on (with positive effects), and one who used it all the time had his uneven treatment effects explained away by “as inconsistent application of the shock contingencies was related to increasing self-injurious behavior” (Linsheid, et. al., 1993). Increasing! The fourth attained some relief from self-injurious behavior, but only after the rates of such first rose and the researchers had to figure out a pairing procedure to keep them down (Williams, et. al., 1994). The fifth experienced great relief from head-banging behavior during the first 2 1/2 years of treatment and followup, but then it lost its effects and “the rate of head-banging began increasing thereafter, with the SIBIS losing its effectiveness to such an extent that it was no longer clinically useful” (Ricketts, et. al., 1993).
So you’re basically looking at a 50/50 effect on the clinical effectiveness of the device over the long-term. No better than chance. Ah, but you do have the potential for abuse with contingent shock, something you don’t have to worry about with placebo effects or chance.
Electric shock + severely autistic children + lax supervision = Unethical treatment & trouble
Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren at 1:04 pm on
March 24th, 2008
Oh, things have happende since 1988. DRO, Theory of Mind, non-contingent reinforcement, drugs; and Israel’s treatment is continually being challenged. There are other challenges as well: the anti-vaccination/mercury militia; those who oppose ABA for religious or ideological reasons; politicians, etc.
There still is a long way towards finding a cause and a cure. If there were promises of a solution within reach, probably more work would be directed towards it; but with no apparent prize few want to enter the competition, and so it is with autism: Most people i know who work with autism have it in the family.
Of course it’s not either/or. In those cases where shock treatment is being used, it’s not the only approach that’s used.
Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren at 1:35 pm on
March 24th, 2008
Sure, John.
The major gripe I have with your blog post is the unnessessary references to/misprepresentation of B.F. Skinner, who’d be the first to argue for alternatives to shock treatment.
However, shock treatment should not be dismissed offhand. And lax supervision of treatment of autism is legion - autistic children die, though thankfully not often, from treatments that are totally bogus.
Jerry Baker at 12:11 pm on
March 31st, 2008
I read “Walden Two” for a course at Iowa State, in 1957. As a result of (I think) a cover story about Walden Two in Harpers of April, 1963, I began intermittent correspondence with Skinner.
Skinner authorized Jim and Annette Breiling, of What Cheer, Iowa, to prepare a list of people interested in Walden Two. If I remember right, there were 128 people on the first list, and over 200 on the revised one.
Matt Israel wasn’t on either list. When I first met him, at Bill Sheppard’s Walden Two conference at Waldenwoods, Hartland, Mich., in August,1966, I asked him how he’d heard about the meeting. He replied, “I was talking with Skinner the other day…”
I saw him again, in early July, 1967, when I visited Cambridge, and Dick Fairfield took me to see him, and also to visit with Skinner.
That was right after I’d visited Twin Oaks, when it was beginning. If I remember right, it had 128 acres of land.
I organized “Intentional Community” meetings, that were held in 1967 and 1968, at the Robert Allerton Park Conference Center, of the University of Illinois.
The Breilings moved to Silver Spring, MD, and Jim worked for the NIH. I heard that Sheppard went to Oregon, either Corvallis or Eugene, but haven’t heard of him, for years. Don’t know where Jerry Mertens, of St. Cloud State University, is now, either.
I’m not a professional in the field of psychology, but have always had an amateur interest.
John M. Grohol, Psy.D. at 3:47 pm on
March 31st, 2008
Hi Jerry, thanks for sharing that wonderful bit of Skinner history with our readers!! That’s fascinating to read, and interesting to hear a little bit about the backstory on Walden Two.
It’s also interesting to note that no other psychologists since Skinner have proposed a better society in which to live. In some ways, Skinner was ahead of his time. In some other ways, he was far too focused on simplistic animal behavior and not giving enough credit to how humans differ from animals…
Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren at 2:29 am on
April 2nd, 2008
I might want to follow up this, but would like to know what happened to the commentaries I already posted.
Actually, I don’t really want to know what happened to them, I just want them back 
John M. Grohol, Psy.D. at 10:16 am on
April 2nd, 2008
We apologize. Your comments were marked as spam by our aggressive spam filter here, which has been undone.
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To read this from you, John. Honestly.
B.F. Skinner did not «invent» behaviorism; if it was invented, it was invented by John B. Watson drawing on Descartes, Pavlov, William James, and others. Skinner invented operant psychology, AKA radical behaviorism. The inception can propably be dated to his 1936 paper «Two types of conditioned reflex and a pseudo-type», the pseudo-type being operant conditioning.
Skinner worked with mice for some years, though in 1944 he switched to pigeons, because they were easier to deal with. Skinner’s reaction was not to psychoanalysis, either: He reckoned Structuralism and Gestalt psychology as his opposition. In the thirties, Psychoanalysis was not a driving force in the laboratories.
In 1945, Skinner published «The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms» where he proposed how psychological terms such as thoughts and feelings can be re-interpreted as behaviors. Even before 1945, Skinner was concerned, as were most psychologists, about the problems posed by languate, thoughts and feelings. His 1945 paper was a giant leap. Language, thoughts and feelings are behaviors and should be studied as such. The main ontological difference between cognitive psychology and radical behaviorism is where they assume that behavior comes from (radical behaviroism assumes that behavior originates outside the individual whereas cognitive psycology assumes that behavior originates inside the actor). There are other differences, such as _how_ certain psychological factors should be studied.
B.F. Skinner was always an advocate against punishment. He mainly studied the effects of rewards in pigeons, and in his 1954 textbook _Science and Human Behavior_ he explicityly stated that punishment is a questionable techniqe. However, he conceded that punishment might be allowed when the alternatives are worse, but that a non-punishing solution should always be looked for.
The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center has an exmption from the general law against the use if aversive techniques and uses them in those cases where all other attempts have failed. Punishment works, but normally only under laboratory conditions where it is possible to control the side effects that Skinner enumerated and warned against. Israels defense is simple: In these rare and particular cases, nothing else has been shown to work.
Is finding alternatives only Israel’s responsibility? Why isn’t it the responsibility of the entire scientific community?
In response to Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren . . .
It’s child abuse. Matthew Israel, David Marsh, and the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center are monsters.
There are alternatives, but it’s not abuse or punishment. Go ask Aletha Solter, Ph.D., if you are still clueless.
So she has met these particular children and evaluated them? Where can I read the report?
Rolf, I think you misread what I wrote. I did not say Skinner invented behaviorism, nor did I saw *Skinner’s* form of behaviorism was a reaction to psychoanalysis (but that behaviorism in general was). As one of the original and one of the most public proponents of behaviorism, he is certainly one of the “original behaviorists.”
Some of the worst crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of, “Well, we must do *something* because something is better than nothing.” Doctors originally drilled holes in people’s heads under this theory. But it’s a horrible justification for any action, because it plies on emotional reasoning rather than logic. I feel for these children and their parents, who are at wits end for solutions. I just don’t think electrical shock (applied to the skin) is an appropriate answer to virtually any question when it comes to the human mind and human behavior.
It is truly the most and one of the worst aversive techniques one could imagine. The fact that the person who invented the device to administer these shocks to children has created a minor industry plying his wares in this state doesn’t validate his techniques. Nor is the research literature exactly full of positive results of this technique (although it seems, not surprising, the studies showing positive results using this device happen to be by Israel or one of his colleagues at the center).
I don’t have any easy answers or easy alternatives to this form of “treatment,” other than to recognize it as a form of “treatment” that remains very controversial and not well-accepted amongst child professionals.
The Rotenberg Center has long been controversial for punishing students with two-second shocks, delivered through electrodes attached to their skin, and it is now permitted only on residents with court-approved “aversive therapy” plans.
John,
none of us remember what schizophrenia could be like before drug treatment. Given that Moniz could win the Nobel prize, it must have been more terrible – at least in the most extreme cases – than most of us realize. Whereas schizophrenia before neurolepitcs hardly exists anymore, cases of extreme autism are readily available, and it’s not pretty.
I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with autists? They cover a vast range. Some are capable of working, dealing with others, and leading productive lives. Some, very few, do things to themselves that make two-second electric shocks seem like a brief tickle in comparison.
Whereas there exist ABA-inspired techniques, such as Lovaas, that help the vast majority of autists, autism is not well understood. Some research indicates that when autists hurt themselves, neurotransimtters are released that usually are associated with pleasure.
Shock treatment is controversial and rightly so. It’s not pretty. But neither are severely self-hurting autists. When the alternative to a shock treatment that takes away the self-damaging behavior is to pad them in and strap them down, I at least feel that it’s not obvious which to choose.
I don’t think it’s an either-or proposition.
Surely there are other effective, even amongst the aversive options, behavioral treatments for kids other than electrical shock or locking them up for the rest of their lives. See, for example, Matson, Johnny L.; Keyes, Joseph B. (1988). Contingent reinforcement and contingent restraint to treat severe aggression and self-injury in mentally retarded and autistic adults. Journal of the Multihandicapped Person, Vol 1(2), 141-153.
I agree, in general, that research in this area is severely lacking.
I would also point out this reference from Gerhardt, et. al. (1991):
In general, there appears to be empirical, ethical, and legal support for the continued availability of aversive interventions as treatment options, but only if sufficient safeguards are in place. [Emphasis mine.]
It appears that in the case of the Rotenberg Center, such safeguards were not in place in the past year when two children were shocked without authorization. Why should we believe them now when they say things have changed?
Psychology has an unfortunate infamous history of misapplying early ECT procedures inappropriately and without supervision. We seem to be repeating history, except this time with children.
There have only been 5 individuals followed-up long-term (in the research literature), over the past 30+ years, with this particular contingent shock device. Five. One couldn’t use the device, one only used it 20% early on (with positive effects), and one who used it all the time had his uneven treatment effects explained away by “as inconsistent application of the shock contingencies was related to increasing self-injurious behavior” (Linsheid, et. al., 1993). Increasing! The fourth attained some relief from self-injurious behavior, but only after the rates of such first rose and the researchers had to figure out a pairing procedure to keep them down (Williams, et. al., 1994). The fifth experienced great relief from head-banging behavior during the first 2 1/2 years of treatment and followup, but then it lost its effects and “the rate of head-banging began increasing thereafter, with the SIBIS losing its effectiveness to such an extent that it was no longer clinically useful” (Ricketts, et. al., 1993).
So you’re basically looking at a 50/50 effect on the clinical effectiveness of the device over the long-term. No better than chance. Ah, but you do have the potential for abuse with contingent shock, something you don’t have to worry about with placebo effects or chance.
Electric shock + severely autistic children + lax supervision = Unethical treatment & trouble
Oh, things have happende since 1988. DRO, Theory of Mind, non-contingent reinforcement, drugs; and Israel’s treatment is continually being challenged. There are other challenges as well: the anti-vaccination/mercury militia; those who oppose ABA for religious or ideological reasons; politicians, etc.
There still is a long way towards finding a cause and a cure. If there were promises of a solution within reach, probably more work would be directed towards it; but with no apparent prize few want to enter the competition, and so it is with autism: Most people i know who work with autism have it in the family.
Of course it’s not either/or. In those cases where shock treatment is being used, it’s not the only approach that’s used.
Sure, John.
The major gripe I have with your blog post is the unnessessary references to/misprepresentation of B.F. Skinner, who’d be the first to argue for alternatives to shock treatment.
However, shock treatment should not be dismissed offhand. And lax supervision of treatment of autism is legion - autistic children die, though thankfully not often, from treatments that are totally bogus.
I read “Walden Two” for a course at Iowa State, in 1957. As a result of (I think) a cover story about Walden Two in Harpers of April, 1963, I began intermittent correspondence with Skinner.
Skinner authorized Jim and Annette Breiling, of What Cheer, Iowa, to prepare a list of people interested in Walden Two. If I remember right, there were 128 people on the first list, and over 200 on the revised one.
Matt Israel wasn’t on either list. When I first met him, at Bill Sheppard’s Walden Two conference at Waldenwoods, Hartland, Mich., in August,1966, I asked him how he’d heard about the meeting. He replied, “I was talking with Skinner the other day…”
I saw him again, in early July, 1967, when I visited Cambridge, and Dick Fairfield took me to see him, and also to visit with Skinner.
That was right after I’d visited Twin Oaks, when it was beginning. If I remember right, it had 128 acres of land.
I organized “Intentional Community” meetings, that were held in 1967 and 1968, at the Robert Allerton Park Conference Center, of the University of Illinois.
The Breilings moved to Silver Spring, MD, and Jim worked for the NIH. I heard that Sheppard went to Oregon, either Corvallis or Eugene, but haven’t heard of him, for years. Don’t know where Jerry Mertens, of St. Cloud State University, is now, either.
I’m not a professional in the field of psychology, but have always had an amateur interest.
Hi Jerry, thanks for sharing that wonderful bit of Skinner history with our readers!! That’s fascinating to read, and interesting to hear a little bit about the backstory on Walden Two.
It’s also interesting to note that no other psychologists since Skinner have proposed a better society in which to live. In some ways, Skinner was ahead of his time. In some other ways, he was far too focused on simplistic animal behavior and not giving enough credit to how humans differ from animals…
I might want to follow up this, but would like to know what happened to the commentaries I already posted.
Actually, I don’t really want to know what happened to them, I just want them back
We apologize. Your comments were marked as spam by our aggressive spam filter here, which has been undone.
