I sort of get it, although I would NEVER use any kind of physical abuse to train a animal.
This is what I think it means. My Aunt Sandy told that the worst thing she could do to punish my cousin Brent was to put him in the time out chair, he just couldn't stand to sit in one spot, but when she tried it with her daughter, Heather, it didn't have the same effect at all because Heather just amused herself. She sang, told herself stories, took her clothes off and put them back on. Time out was okay for her.
Ginger
Ginger I wouldn't use physical punishment of any kind either, and I seriously doubt Karen would, in fact, I think it's safe to say she wouldn't. But, the point is that punishment means that it causes a behavior to go down in frequency. Something aversive could be punishing, or it may not be. If something like hitting an animal does not make the behavior go down in frequency, it is not punishment it is just plain abuse with no behavioral outcome. I am not willing to use positive punishment (adding something aversive to change behavior, like hitting, jerking with a leash, poking or whatever) to change behavior because I can change it with just positive reinforcement.
Sometimes people will say "I did x" but I wasn't punishing them or the animal didn't feel it was being punished (don't get me started on how I feel when people start saying what an animal is "feeling", but I digress) anyway, they will say that they didn't "punish" the animal they just poked it, or jerked it, or squirted it, but the point is that if those things caused the behavior to go down in frequency it was punishment and was very likely aversive (or it wouldn't have changed the behavior).
What is punishing for one being may not be for another. If my husband gets mad and yells because, let's say, the bathtub gets clogged it is extremely aversive to my cattle dog Bill. It has no effect whatsoever on my Dachshund Winnie. He cannot yell around Bill, period, end of report or Bill will have an emotional meltdown.
Hope that makes sense.
She LOVES excited drama as a reward, so that's what I use as a reinforcer most of the time. 
