Operant conditioning is introduced by B. F. Skinner through his theory, Skinner’s Theory, which introduced reinforcing stimulus. Despite of positive or negative the stimulus is, behaviour is likely to recur based on a reinforcer. From our findings, his contribution on this field gives a very high impact in audiology and speech sciences area of studies, to be specific. Many treatments for hearing loss and speech-language problems today was based on reinforcement and punishment method. This theory may act as an alternative way in helping the clinician to gain an accurate result during assessment. In this paper, we would like to emphasize on applying operant conditioning in managing the problem mentioned earlier.
Two approaches provided for paediatric
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Overcorrection is a punishment method which may be helpful with adult aphasia patients. The process involved to reduce the unwanted behaviour need a person to correct the environmental consequences of an inappropriate act and should be followed by the right form of act (Goldfarb, 2006).
In his research paper, he did mention about Foxx and Azrin (1973) experiments on some procedures were taken to stop self-stimulatory behaviour in patients with developmental delay (DD) and ASD. Even though the outcome was not completely stop the behaviour but overall it was a positive trend. It turned out that overcorrection procedure was the most efficient in handling the related problem compared to “other four procedures included (1) physical punishment by a slap, (2) positive reinforcement for non-self -stimulatory behaviour, (3) a distasteful painted on the hand, and (4) free reinforcement” (Goldfarb, 2006). The method was the overcorrection paired with a verbal warning. After the combination occur, the warning itself was sufficient thus act as the punishment. As a result, the number of hand-mouthing, the self-stimulatory behaviour, reduced remarkably from 100 per hour to zero per