Redirecting the Motivation for Undesirable Behaviors

Once upon a time I worked at a school on the campus of the Minnesota Zoo. While there I learned that a lot of the work of zookeepers involves training animals how to move on and off exhibits so the keepers can manage their routines and maintain their living spaces. They make liberal use of cues and reinforcements.

It may seem disrespectful to use animal training techniques to manage the behavior of children (not just students with AS by the way), but this tactic only makes explicit the motivations that are always present in human behavior.

One of the ways to manage undesirable behaviors is to replace intrinsic motivation with extrinsic motivation and then remove the extrinsic motivation.. Here’s why that might work.

In a number of studies with human subjects and simians, the following pattern emerges:

1. 1. The subject does a behavior voluntarily and repeatedly (playing a game, solving a puzzle, moving an item.) indicating that they prefer that behavior and are intrinsically motivated to perform it.
2. 2. The researcher reinforces the behavior with food or some other extrinsic reward. Essentially, the subject is now being “paid” for what they did before for “free.”
3. 3. The researcher withdraws the extrinsic reward.
4. 4. The frequency of the behavior drops to a level less than the original. Sometimes the behavior is extinguished.

Try this with your child. If there is a behavior that you would like to decrease, try explicitly reinforcing that behavior for a time, (I know it sounds crazy to reinforce an undesirable behavior—but finish the process) then remove the reward.

I think this works because the subject experiences unmet expectations once the reward is removed. As a result, the negative experience of frustration balances or negates the intrinsic motivation and decreases the frequency of the behavior