Like reinforcement, a stimulus can be added positive punishment or removed negative punishment. There are two types of punishment: positive and negative, and it can be difficult to tell the difference between the two.
Below are some examples to help clear up the confusion. What is Positive Punishment? The following are some examples of positive punishment: A child picks his nose during class behavior and the teacher reprimands him aversive stimulus in front of his classmates. A child touches a hot stove behavior and feels pain aversive stimulus.
What is Negative Punishment? A child fights with her brother behavior and has her favorite toy taken away reinforcing stimulus removed. Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Important Information Regarding Covid In table 1, note that punishment and reinforcement have nothing to do with good or bad behavior, only if it increases or decreases the likelihood of the behavior to recur. There are several schedules of reinforcement that can impact behavior.
When a behavior plan is initially set up, continuous two is used to establish and reinforce the behavior. Once the behavior has been established, continuous reinforcement can change to intermittent reinforcement which is termed thinning. There are four types of intermittent reinforcement. They are:. Fixed interval where the person is reinforced by a set number of responses.
Variable ratio where the person is reinforced after a variable number of responses. Variable ratio intermittent reinforcement is the most effective schedule to reinforce a behavior. Fixed interval: rewarding a person at the end of each day.
Similarly, children who are punished by teachers may come to fear the teacher and try to avoid school Gershoff et al. Consequently, most schools in the United States have banned corporal punishment. Second, punishment may cause children to become more aggressive and prone to antisocial behavior and delinquency Gershoff, They see their parents resort to spanking when they become angry and frustrated, so, in turn, they may act out this same behavior when they become angry and frustrated.
While positive punishment can be effective in some cases, Skinner suggested that the use of punishment should be weighed against the possible negative effects. Make sure you understand the distinction between negative reinforcement and punishment in the following video:.
Still confused? Watch the following short clip for another example and explanation of positive and negative reinforcement as well as positive and negative punishment. In his operant conditioning experiments, Skinner often used an approach called shaping. Instead of rewarding only the target behavior, in shaping , we reward successive approximations of a target behavior.
Why is shaping needed? Remember that in order for reinforcement to work, the organism must first display the behavior. Shaping is needed because it is extremely unlikely that an organism will display anything but the simplest of behaviors spontaneously. In shaping, behaviors are broken down into many small, achievable steps. The specific steps used in the process are the following: Reinforce any response that resembles the desired behavior.
Then reinforce the response that more closely resembles the desired behavior. You will no longer reinforce the previously reinforced response. Next, begin to reinforce the response that even more closely resembles the desired behavior.
Continue to reinforce closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior. Finally, only reinforce the desired behavior. Shaping is often used in teaching a complex behavior or chain of behaviors. Skinner used shaping to teach pigeons not only such relatively simple behaviors as pecking a disk in a Skinner box, but also many unusual and entertaining behaviors, such as turning in circles, walking in figure eights, and even playing ping pong; the technique is commonly used by animal trainers today.
An important part of shaping is stimulus discrimination. This discrimination is also important in operant conditioning and in shaping behavior. They use shaping to help him master steps toward the goal. Instead of performing the entire task, they set up these steps and reinforce each step. First, he cleans up one toy.
Second, he cleans up five toys. Third, he chooses whether to pick up ten toys or put his books and clothes away. Fourth, he cleans up everything except two toys. Finally, he cleans his entire room. Rewards such as stickers, praise, money, toys, and more can be used to reinforce learning.
How did the rats learn to press the lever in the Skinner box? They were rewarded with food each time they pressed the lever. For animals, food would be an obvious reinforcer. What would be a good reinforce for humans? For your daughter Sydney, it was the promise of a toy if she cleaned her room. Ratio schedules tend to produce high rates of responding because reinforcement increases as the number of responses increases.
Skinner made extensive use of this procedure in his boxes. For instance, he could train a rat to press a bar two times to receive food, by first providing food when the animal moved near the bar. When that behaviour had been learned, Skinner would begin to provide food only when the rat touched the bar.
Further shaping limited the reinforcement to only when the rat pressed the bar, to when it pressed the bar and touched it a second time, and finally to only when it pressed the bar twice. Although it can take a long time, in this way operant conditioning can create chains of behaviours that are reinforced only when they are completed.
Behaviours can also be trained through the use of secondary reinforcers. Whereas a primary reinforcer includes stimuli that are naturally preferred or enjoyed by the organism, such as food, water, and relief from pain , a secondary reinforcer sometimes called conditioned reinforcer is a neutral event that has become associated with a primary reinforcer through classical conditioning. An example of a secondary reinforcer would be the whistle given by an animal trainer, which has been associated over time with the primary reinforcer, food.
An example of an everyday secondary reinforcer is money. We enjoy having money, not so much for the stimulus itself, but rather for the primary reinforcers the things that money can buy with which it is associated.
Kassin, S. Essentials of psychology. Porter, D. Music discriminations by pigeons. Thorndike, E. Animal intelligence: An experimental study of the associative processes in animals.
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies. New York, NY: Macmillan. Watanabe, S. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour, 63 2 , — Figure 8.
Skip to content Chapter 8. Learning Objectives Outline the principles of operant conditioning. Explain how learning can be shaped through the use of reinforcement schedules and secondary reinforcers.
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