Web Divergence Activity Week #1 (Due Tuesday)
What I would like you to do is to find a topic from section 1.2 that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube clips that demonstrate something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. Please use 3 or more resources.
Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter, and why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you found related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about it. At the end, please include working URLs for the three websites. Keep in mind that it will be easier if you keep it to one topic.
By integrating/synthesizing I mean to take what your read/experienced from the internet search (and from chapter 1 if you like) organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using that information. This is hard for some people to do - many students write what we refer to as "serial abstracts." They are tempted to talk about the websites rather than the topic proper and this what you DON'T want to do! They will talk all about website #1, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #2, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #3, and then write some kind of conclusion. Serial means one after the other...again, this what you DON'T want to do! If all three sites are on the same one topic it will be easier.
At first it is a real challenge to get out of the habit of writing "serial abstracts," but I assure you once you get the hang of it it is much easier to write using the integration method. And besides this is the way researchers and scientists write their technical reports and findings - many of you will have to be able to do this for other classes and for jobs that you may eventually be hired for so now is a good time to learn this skill. At this point don't worry about a grade, worry about doing your best to have fun with the topic and then integrate it into your own words to share what you found and now know. We will work on citing the sources later....
Let me know if you have any questions.
When reading this chapter, I kept asking myself…“What are the pros and cons of reinforcement?”
I looked at the pros and cons of reinforcement in several contexts: in the treatment of anxiety and depression, child rearing, and dog training.
As an aspiring counseling psychologist, I find the use of behavior modification in therapy, particularly reinforcement, very interesting. When thinking about it, therapy really is all about reinforcing behaviors, especially when working with individuals who suffer from anxiety, depression, paranoia, or any type of phobia. When an individual with one of these disorders shows improvement in their condition, therapists give them praise. Therefore, they are positively reinforced for the behaviors allowing for progress in their treatment and will likely continue to repeat these behaviors. This process also brings to mind another process called systematic desensitization. For example, if the individual is afraid of birds, the therapist would create a hierarchy of events which cause the individual to become anxious when thinking/seeing birds. The therapist then helps the individual conquer the events that cause the least anxiety. Granted nothing bad happens in the process (birds pooing on the individual or attacking them), the individual can become more and more comfortable and possibly overcome their fear of birds just by being reinforced throughout the desensitization process that the birds will not harm them.
Of course, there is also a negative side to using reinforcement when dealing with somebody with a mental disability. For example, the website explains how friends and family members may actually sabotage an individual who suffers from depression without intending to. Instead of encouraging the depressed individual to become active, friends and family members can get into the habit of “helping” the individual out by basically waiting on them hand and foot. Instead of helping them recover, they reinforce the individual for “doing nothing and letting others take care of his problems.”
Next, I looked up the pros and cons of reinforcement on child rearing. Because I have no children, I am less educated about the pros and cons of reinforcement for this purpose. I couldn’t agree more, though, with this statement:
“During the first 15 years or so of a child’s life, he is extremely impressionable. Children and adolescents are like putt in a parent’s hands. The way they are treated when they are young, molds and shapes them into the adults they grow up to become. If a child only receives negativity from his parent, he will grow up believing that he will fail at everything he attempts. However, if a child receives consistent positive reinforcement, he will know that he can achieve whatever he sets his mind to. Positive reinforcement creates a strong, driven and successful adult.”
Thinking about the above statement, I think about the mangled relationship between my aunt and my cousin. Neither of them were in an ideal situation when my cousin was born which was probably the root of their problems. My aunt constantly rides my cousin’s butt about not doing things (cleaning, blah, blah, blah) which makes my cousin feel inferior. When my cousin does some things around the house, my aunt does thank her, which is great, but it always seems to be that no matter what my cousin does, there is always more negativity than positivity. Because of this, my cousin feels like she is not good enough for anybody or herself. While their relationship now is quite ruined (it sometimes gets better than heads south again), I think that they could still work together and make things work for the better. Working things out in this situation would be very difficult for them though because to me, reinforcement involves a lot of time and consistency in order to gain the desired outcome.
Obviously, there are many arguments for the use of reinforcement over punishment in child rearing situations but I can’t really think of any cons of using reinforcement (unless you accidentally reinforce a bad behavior) in child rearing. Maybe this is one thing I’ll have to learn for myself as I become a parent some day.
Lastly, I looked up the use of reinforcement when training pets. This topic is actually something that I am dealing with right now because I just got a new puppy this summer after losing my other dog. Before moving back to school, I was with my pup all day long and found myself using reinforcement tactics quite often. I taught her how to sit, shake, give me high fives, and roll over by positively reinforcing her with treats and not acknowledging wrong behaviors. She is very smart and learned quite quickly and I was dubbed the hero of the house! I also used quite a bit of punishment as well. While she is quite a fun dog most of the time, she has devil in her eyes and likes to dig holes, play keep away with anything and everything, and bark. In hopes of nipping these behaviors in the bud, I would punish her by putting her in her kennel (which I don’t think works very well because she loves her kennel…who knew?!). As of right now, she still likes to occasionally dig holes, play keep away, and bark so we may need to resort to different tactics!
Overall, I believe that across the board, reinforcement is probably the best option, but I understand that there are right times and situations for everything and therefore acknowledge that punishment can be useful as well.
http://www.sociatropin.com/blog/positive-vs.-negative-reinforcement/
http://parentingmethods.suite101.com/article.cfm/positive-reinforcement---how-to-reward-good-behavior
http://information.i-love-dogs.com/dog-articles/dog-training/3668-Negative-Reinforcement-Versus-Positive-Reinforcement-Training.html
One of the terms that were brought up in this section was valence. Valence is defined by the text as the psychological value placed on a person, place or thing. The valence placed on an object can be either pleasurable or aversive. This is a good term to use when talking about behavior modification because the consequence of the behavior emitted usually places either pleasurable or aversive valence on the subject. If the subject experiences pleasurable valence, it is likely that he or she will continue to emit the preceding behavior. If the subject experiences aversive behavior, one can assume that he or she will be less likely to repeat that particular behavior.
But not everyone places the same value on things. What might be considered pleasurable valence to one person might be considered aversive valence to another. For example, if most guys were to hear from a girl, “You’re pretty”, they might take it as they are ‘too girly’ or otherwise as an insult. The same reaction might also occur if these words were coming from a male, to another male. Reverse roles however, and the expression, “You’re pretty” brings about a pleasurable valence. Surely, gender differences place a huge effect on how valence is perceived. In other contexts however, culture plays a huge role in how valence is perceived.
As a Psychology major and Anthropology minor, I am interested in cultural differences from an individual standpoint.
Cultural differences can sometimes be extremely obvious. They can also be extremely subtle. Did you know that in many countries in the Middle East such as Iran, a thumbs up gesture is considered offensive? Say for instance you were setting up a training program in Iran. You decide to use a reinforcing gesture every time the trainee does something correct. This gesture happens to be a ‘thumbs up’. While you, the trainer, believes it is reinforcing, the Iranian might take it as a punishing gesture. The behavior that you were attempted to modify will more than likely take longer to change.
This is a problem not faced by only people of the Industrial/Organizational field, but also in Marketing fields. Understanding a particular culture before one releases a product may increase the probability that their product will do well. Why wouldn’t the Chevy Nova sell very well in Spanish speaking countries? Well, in Spanish, “No va” means in English, “No go”. Great name for a car isn’t it? Had the makers of Chevrolet modified the release name of the Nova, perhaps their sales would have been better.
Parenting can be a tough concept for many people, especially when it comes to discipline. A mother might send her son his room as a punishing technique. While the mother sits back in the living room and thinks about how successful this punishment will be, the son is sitting in his room playing video games, having the time of his life. The mother failed to take into account that the aversive valence she placed on the room sentence was actually pleasurable valence when perceived by the boy. The second link will bring you to a clip from Arrested Development. Tobias, Maeby’s father, is attempting to bring some order to his daughter’s lifestyle. He attempts to use a punishing procedure in which he tells his daughter that if she doesn’t want to go to school, she’ll have to help him with his aspiring acting career. This negative reinforcement however, is less than effective to Maeby than Tobias knows because she secretly works in the movie industry. Tobias thinks Maeby helping him brings aversive valence when in reality, he is only bringing pleasurable valence.
All of the preceding anecdotes describe particular situations in which either miscommunication or misinformation played a role when attempting to utilize a reinforcement procedure. As you can see, it is vital to understand your subject before attempting to modify someone’s behavior. Whether it is a cross-cultural training program, a new parenting technique, or a marketing plan, knowledge of one’s values has more power than you think.
http://polorovereto.unitn.it/~colombetti/docs/GC_AppraisingValence05.pdf
http://www.hulu.com/watch/1954/arrested-development-discipline-daddy
http://iba8010kelly.alliant.wikispaces.net/file/view/Culture+and+Innovation+-+An+integrative+framework+for+cross-cultural+consumer+behavior.pdf
The topic I choose to really put my focus toward in the first part of the chapter is the reinforcement/reinforcer/reinforcing areas of behavior modification. I choose to focus on this area because I work with youth and reinforcement is the main tool we use to modify the behavior of our youth rather than any type of punishment. I personally believe that this form of modification works better on children and animals than the punishment form. I have found three clips demonstrating this that use both human and animal examples of reinforcement in action.
I think reinforcement for desired behavior works better because in certain situations it is a possibility that it would be difficult to communicate why a punishment is being made. If a person or an animal is unable to understand what or why they have done something wrong than they will never correct the behavior. When something positive is given to them continuously they want to perform that particular behavior more.
It is important that the reinforcer and reinforcing continue to happen even after that positive behavior has been occuring for awhile. If you teach a dolphin to jump through a hoop for a piece of fish, but eventually stop giving the reinforcer (fish) to the dolphin than it is no longer going to jump through the hoop. Reinforcing the behavior continuously is an extremely important aspect of reinforment. This can also be true for situations dealing with a variety of different reinforcers. Even just using sentences with positive valence can be a reinforcer for many different people and animals in a variety of situations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v8U7bnY2TQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hCFqs8Esu0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AepqpTtKbwo
As I read the chapter of 1.2 I found myself looking hard at the portion of self-reinforcing and reinforcement. While being a psychology majors, we are required to take numerous electives in psychology whether that be course like psychology and law, psychology and gender differences, or psychology of personality. Through taking these courses I am always astounded how much each of them connects with the other ones. I was greatly influenced in psychology of personality by personality disorders. Although many of these personality disorders may deal with a biological aspect, this disorders are typically classified by certain behaviors that a person performs. The self-reinforcing topic of this chapter really got my thinking about one disorder in specific, and it is that of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This disorder can be classified by certain behaviors (criteria) that a person emits, therefore showing this disorder. This relates perfectly to the behaviors we have talked about in this chapter. These behaviors obviously have consequences, and these consequences may lead toward a person with a disorder like NPD to be diagnosed. I am interested in this subject because a lot of therapy for those with personality disorders are done through the use of behavior therapy, especially that of NPD. I was always interested in NPD because I feel like narcissism happens in a lot of people, and I am still curious what the cause of NPD actually is.
When a person has NPD, they probably emit behaviors like the following, a high sense of grandiosity, a strong need for admiration, little to no empathy, grand sense of self-importance, obsession with ideas of power and success, belief that one is very unique from others, and is often very envious of others. These types of behaviors emitted typically have consequences that are negative, and may keep people with NPD from maintaining long-lasting relationships. These behaviors typically will classify a person as having NPD.
I believe this disorder, as well as some other personality disorders, would relate strongly to the topic of self-reinforcement. According to one website that spoke of people with NPD,
“…despite this exaggerated self-image, they are reliant on constant praise and attention to reinforce their self-esteem.”
The self-esteem of those with NPD is something that constantly needs to be reinforced by not only others, but by themselves. In order to do this a person might go out of their way to seek positive reinforcements like compliments. Another possible way a person with NPD could search for reinforcements would be to convince others that they are as amazing as they themselves believe. Before doing this a person with NPD would need to convince themselves that they are amazing. This is where self-reinforcement plays a large role in this disorder. The text states that, “giving yourself a pat on the back” is a form of self-reinforcement. After studying NPD, I have found that this may be a type of reinforcement that persons with this disorder take too far. NPD remains one of the hardest personality disorders to treat. One of my websites talked about the procedures health care professionals take in trying to help people with NPD. These professionals must show a feeling of great respect for the person with NPD, but at the same time avoid reinforcing the person’s behaviors of grandiosity. This seems like an extremely difficult challenge in my opinion. I feel that a person with NPD is effected greatly by self-reinforcement (themselves constantly thinking they are amazing, and telling themselves that, and then truly believing that), as well as by reinforcement from others (others constantly praising them and reinforcing their behaviors). I am passionate about this subject, and hope that my understanding of the material related to this topic in the correct way.
http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydisorders/a/narcissisticpd.htm
http://www.mental-health-today.com/narcissistic/dsm.htm
http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx36t.htm
When reading the chapter the thing that stood out to me most was the part on self-reinforcement. I found its part in the chapter to be interesting and to me it had a slight twist. Throughout the chapter the examples had been focusing on what other people or things do to reinforce or punish one another. Then the idea of using reinforcement towards ourselves came about. Reinforcement as defined by the book is a way to increase the frequency of a behavior. I am interested in self-reinforcement simply because I want to do a better job of using it. Goals I have set aside for myself do not always meet my standards and therefore I do not reinforce myself all that often.
My first link is by Israel Golddiamond who is sited in the book for his work with self-reinforcement. I believe the abstract of the article states something very important, “What is actually at issue is the agent who defines whether or not the response required for reinforcement has been met.” When dealing with reinforcement there are different ‘reinforcers’ that are sought out. In self-reinforcement the ‘reinforcer’ is no other than the person seeking the reinforcement themselves. I find it interesting that self-reinforcement can sometimes be difficult to measure or attain because the levels at which the reinforcement is attained are not set by any certain standards other than what a person has set for themselves; What may be good enough for one person may not even touch what is enough for another.
Also, self-reinforcement comes into play when a person is inappropriately reinforcing themselves in the eyes of others, like telling a bad joke. I have a clip from Scrubs linked below which demonstrates this idea. JD believes his jokes are hysterical, but to everyone else around him he’s just a dork with bad jokes that they have to suck up to. I find this approach to self-reinforcement kind of entertaining. The ‘bad joke’ thing happens to me quite often and instead of being somewhat ignorant about my comments being funny I do not positively reinforce myself. Instead I take the reactions of others and turn it into a different kind of reinforcement, almost as a punishment. Some people however seem to neglect the reactions of others and conclude in their heads that they have done something funny or whatever the situation may be. This type of reinforcement boarders with the section mentioned in the book about punishment and how if a person misinterprets reactions, instead a punishment they self-reinforce.
As mentioned above the different variations of self-reinforcement have no boundaries and can even mix in with other parts of the behavior modification process. Each individual sets his or her own levels at which self-reinforcement is reached. Personally, finding a better level at which self-reinforcement is reached might be a behavior modification I should consider.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312028/pdf/jaba00054-0141.pdf
http://www.shiftshappen-site.com/Self-Reinforcement.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTsXQ_wPZAA
While reading the chapter, I was not quite clear on what negative reinforcement was. So while researching for this assignment I thought it only logical to figure out exactly what it was. Negative reinforcement is what happens when there is an aversive behavior that is stopped because of a positive consequence. Negative reinforcement is easier to remember now, by looking at the word. There is a negative situation and reinforcement, means to increase a behavior, so something good has to happen in order to reinforce.
Some examples I read were as follows:
A girl’s mom nags her to do dishes, when she does the dishes, her mom stops nagging. This one made most sense to me, because it happened a lot growing up. The problem was that this technique never worked on me. In this situation the antecedent would be the mothers nagging, setting the situation for the girl to do the dishes (the behavior) and the consequences would be the mother leaving the girl alone.
Another example that worked for me, someone who is chronically late, is bad traffic, and leaving earlier to not run into traffic. In this situation the antecedent would the need to go to school/work/ etc and the behavior would be leaving early, and the consequence having no traffic.
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/proj/nru/nr.html
http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/Faculty/wasserman/glossary/reinforcement.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/20051/positive_negative_reinforcement.html
Punishment caught my eye in this chapter. There wasn't much information on it and I wanted to see some other opinions to learn more.
Overall, punishment decreases a behavior. A behavior leads to a consequence, and that consequence can be a reinforcer or a punisher. The reinforcer is something positive that will increase the likelihood of that specific behavior occurring again. Whereas the punisher is negative or aversive and decreases the chance of a behavior happening again.
The fist link explains in detail how punishment can be used to significantly alter a child's behavior. As someone who currently works with teenagers this website seemed quite interesting to me. If I were to use punishment to alter behaviors in the children, clear expectations would have to be made. This is so when I would impose a punishment on an individual, he or she knows exactly what they did to cause the punishment. The punishments themselves need to be clear. At my job, the punishments are the same for every teen, and they also depend on how the child misbehaves. Clear and consistent punishments are also required for them to be an effective way of eliminating behaviors.
The other two links are videos that portray punishments to some quite erratic behavior. Brian spells it out for us after Peter tries to turn the stairs into a water slide. By not taking Peter to the hospital, Brian is punishing him for attempting such a crazy thing. Peter's pain was aversive, therefore punishing him. We can assume that he will not likely try turning the stairs into a water slide again.
The last video clip also shows an aversive outcome to a behavior. Falling and flying off the treadmill for this poor girl is a punisher. We do not know for sure if she will get on a treadmill again, but she will definitely be hesitant about it.
Implementing punishments to change behavior is possible. There has to be consistency and clarity when imposing rules and instigating a punishment for children. Being punished or experiencing a punisher will decrease the likelihood of a certain behavior occurring again. Falling down the stairs and face-planting on a treadmill would certainly make me cautious.
http://www.ehow.com/way_5192881_behavior-modification-techniques-using-punishment.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCoNzaSMjtI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMY4g41lqH8
While reading section 1.2, I was just curious about the use of punishment in parenting. Punishment in parenting is a controversial usual when it comes to spanking and physical punishment. I think everyone has heard about the “to spank or not to spank?” issue. The first website I looked at was http://www.essortment.com/family/parentingtipsi_saqr.htm. This website tried to explain that for punishments to work, the child has to have done something wrong. Otherwise, the punishment eventually becomes ineffective. The website also states that the “punishment needs to be consistent.” Children might test boundaries and start to experiment if the punishment is not consistent enough. However, there can also be consequences for punishing too often or severely. The child might eventually rebel later on down the road if punishment is too routine and too severe. The last paragraph says that punishment is actually the least effective method for discipline. According to the website, positive reinforcement is the most effective discipline method.
The second website I looked at was http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0902-maag.html. The title of the article written by John W. Maag is “Parenting without Punishment: Making Problem Behavior Work for You.” The author’s stance is that punishment is completely ineffective. The article says that parents often incorrectly use the terms “punishment” and “discipline” interchangeably. The author says that discipline actually is synonymous with the word “reinforcement.” The author goes on to set up a situation in which a child puts his hand near the burner of a stove; therefore, the parent slaps the child’s hand. But the author says that this didn’t stop the behavior but reinforced it which leaves me confused because the slap should have let the child know that putting his hand near the stove was wrong and deserving of punishment. The author tries to explain by saying that the punishment actually ended up reinforcing the child because he received more attention from his parent.
The last website I looked at was http://www.awareparenting.com/twenty.htm. The title of the article is “Twenty Alternatives to Punishment” by Aletha Solter, Ph.D. Some examples of these alternatives are make small concessions, find acceptable alternatives, look for underlying feelings, let natural consequences occur, change the environment, hold your child, communicate your own feelings, and diffuse the situation with laughter. This list makes up the majority of the article and at the bottom, it tells us to read Dr. Aletha Solter’s article “Don’t Spank Your Children.”
All of the websites I found regarding punishment and parenting agreed that punishment was not the way to go and that it actually reinforced bad behaviors by offering the promise of attention from the parents. The websites all gave alternatives to punishment and the first one actually said that positive reinforcement was much more effective than punishment when it comes to parenting.
While reading section 1.2, I was just curious about the use of punishment in parenting. Punishment in parenting is a controversial usual when it comes to spanking and physical punishment. I think everyone has heard about the “to spank or not to spank?” issue. The first website I looked at was http://www.essortment.com/family/parentingtipsi_saqr.htm. This website tried to explain that for punishments to work, the child has to have done something wrong. Otherwise, the punishment eventually becomes ineffective. The website also states that the “punishment needs to be consistent.” Children might test boundaries and start to experiment if the punishment is not consistent enough. However, there can also be consequences for punishing too often or severely. The child might eventually rebel later on down the road if punishment is too routine and too severe. The last paragraph says that punishment is actually the least effective method for discipline. According to the website, positive reinforcement is the most effective discipline method.
The second website I looked at was http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0902-maag.html. The title of the article written by John W. Maag is “Parenting without Punishment: Making Problem Behavior Work for You.” The author’s stance is that punishment is completely ineffective. The article says that parents often incorrectly use the terms “punishment” and “discipline” interchangeably. The author says that discipline actually is synonymous with the word “reinforcement.” The author goes on to set up a situation in which a child puts his hand near the burner of a stove; therefore, the parent slaps the child’s hand. But the author says that this didn’t stop the behavior but reinforced it which leaves me confused because the slap should have let the child know that putting his hand near the stove was wrong and deserving of punishment. The author tries to explain by saying that the punishment actually ended up reinforcing the child because he received more attention from his parent.
The last website I looked at was http://www.awareparenting.com/twenty.htm. The title of the article is “Twenty Alternatives to Punishment” by Aletha Solter, Ph.D. Some examples of these alternatives are make small concessions, find acceptable alternatives, look for underlying feelings, let natural consequences occur, change the environment, hold your child, communicate your own feelings, and diffuse the situation with laughter. This list makes up the majority of the article and at the bottom, it tells us to read Dr. Aletha Solter’s article “Don’t Spank Your Children.”
All of the websites I found regarding punishment and parenting agreed that punishment was not the way to go and that it actually reinforced bad behaviors by offering the promise of attention from the parents. The websites all gave alternatives to punishment and the first one actually said that positive reinforcement was much more effective than punishment when it comes to parenting.
I choose a general concept about the effectiveness of both punishment and reinforcement. The first source I wanted to incorperate was a video on youtube that simply demonstrates the mechanics behind both concepts with the use of a bannana and also is rather different than a text book defnintion. from there I pursued the effectiveness on animals and found an article called Why punishment fails;
what works better. The article cites three typical concerns with problematic dog behavior such as jumping on people, jumping on furniture and others. Basically it explains how using an aversive consequence such as kicking a dog will not stop the behavior but just cause the dog to become frightened of the person. By using an alternate behavior such as having a dog sit to greet someone and postively reinforcing the behavior with something positive such as a treat, it eliminates the behavior. "Punishment teaches an animal what you don’t want
it to do but fails to teach it what you expect of it."
Punishment can be very hard to get correct and can confuse the animal making them fearful. With punishment the behavior must be punished all the time which is hard to do since you may not always be around to catch the behavior, you have to punish the dog within seconds so they no what they are being punished for and the punishment has to be at the right level of aversity because if its too aversive it will frighten the dog. With punishing children it seems to be in close proximity with the rules of punishing animals.
"Children rarely learn good behavior by being punished - they just become experts at avoiding punishment." The article cites some additional problems with punishment such as creating dishonesty, causing unpredictable reactions from the punishment. Alternatives to punishment after a child has developed a pattern of dishonesty is to first model the behavior than explain to the child how you value honesty and then praise the child when they exhibit honesty. So overall it seems in most areas in life that positive reinforcement has multiple benifits while punishment may be easier to create it is much harder to correct behavior with it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKBGVV6PDX4&feature=related
http://veterinarymedicine.dvm360.com/vetmed/data/articlestandard//vetmed/382008/550620/article.pdf
http://parentingmethods.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_pitfalls_of_punishing_children
The topic I have chosen from 1.2 is self reinforcement. This topic caught my eye, because I believe that type of reinforcement is the most important because you must be in control of yourself before controlling other people. This belief goes along with the belief that you must love yourself before being able to love someone else. The book explains this by using the expression of “give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done”, which leads to you feeling better about yourself and being in more control.
Though those beliefs may lead to narcissism and cockiness, I believe it is necessary to have self confidence and to reward yourself once in a while. The article, “Remember to Reward Yourself” explains why you should reward yourself, especially when your out of your comfort zone. It also explains why you should approach yourself from a position with possibilities instead of focusing on the things you haven’t accomplished.
A way of approaching yourself with a position of possibilities would be to reward yourself before you do something. For example, according to the article on lifespy.com, you would eat ice cream before starting your week diet, so you are actually reinforcing your behavior for the week ahead. You wouldn’t eat ice cream at the end of each day just because you followed your diet all day long, you would wait to do it to reward yourself.
That being said, it is good to reward yourself once in a while, but not all the time; especially if you are reinforcing a bad behavior. For example, the television show, “The Office” shows how if someone tells a bad joke, gets a laugh out of it one time then they will keep repeating, for they think they are funny. The consequence of telling a bad joke would be a blank stare, which is what most of the cast does when Michael Scott tells his “that’s what she said” joke. This would usually punish the joke teller, but instead it is self-reinforcing him because he actually thinks it’s funny.
Overall, rewarding yourself is essential to self reinforcement, but it is not always good. After reading through these articles and watching the clips, I have learned that you should reward yourself with ice cream, but be cautious when others are giving you a blank stare after a joke. On a serious note, I have learned that self-reinforcement will increase your confidence, rather than decreasing it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wf2pP7T0Y
http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/motivation_articles.asp?id=86
http://www.lifespy.com/2009/rewarding-yourself-2/
While reading the second section of chapter one I found the hardest thing to keep track of was the difference between negative reinforcement and punishment. How I see negative reinforcement as something happening to deter the behavior. Actually how the book describes Negative reinforcement as taking something aversive away by doing a certain behavior. One website I found when I typed in examples of negative reinforcements had examples such as, if an insect bites you, the behavior that is reinforced it to scratch it. Another example is if the negative stimulus is that you have a headache, the behavior that is reinforced is to take a pain reliever.
Punishment is different by when there is a bad behavior it leads to an aversive punisher. By having a punishment or an aversive consequence for a behavior the amount of the behavior reoccurring is usually lessened. For example if a dog keeps running into the road and the owners put in a shock fence, the bad behavior is the leaving the yard, the punishment is the shock, and the lessen is to avoid the consequences by not repeating the bad behavior.
For me the word negative usually means something undesirable. But in this case negative can be seen as both undesirable and subtractive. By removing a negative stimulus the positive action will increase the desirable behavior. In a cartoon that I found, the wife put a punching doll in the fridge to keep her husband on his diet. The Negative part that he would take away would be the fact he is getting punched in the face every time he opens the fridge. The positive outcome will hopefully that he looses weight.
Though it will take several different examples to fully be able to recognize the differences between Negative reinforcement and punishment I feel after investing some time into it I can understand the differences and similarities better than before.
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/svinicki/ald320/negrnf.html
http://www.animalbehaviorassociates.com/pdf/RMN_punishment_negative_reinforcement.pdf
http://www.offthemarkcartoons.com/cartoons/1992-02-20.gif
After reading the section, I decided I wanted to learn more about self-reinforcement. Although other people can greatly influence a person’s behavior, I feel that their own feelings about their behavior are an even greater influence. For example, if I find a dress that I absolutely love but my friends don’t like it, I’m likely to get the dress anyway because of my own feelings about the dress.
Bandura came up with his own theory called the social cognitive theory. He said that “self-regulated behavior is essential to the learning process”. This means that along with reinforcement and punishment from others for certain behaviors, it’s important to understand that a person reinforces and punishes themselves. Understanding this main concept can help to further grasp what influences self-reinforcement. It’s not just a person’s feelings that influence their behavior. There are external factors that can help to change a person’s self-reinforcing behavior. For example, clothes are external factors that are involved with a person’s behavior, like what clothes they’re going to wear that day.
Self-reinforcement is an important concept in a person’s life. What they tell themselves about certain actions can shape their life. For example, if someone continually thinks that they are fat, whether they are or aren’t, their body image is going to be hurt. On the positive side, if someone chooses to think positively about themselves, it’s likely that they’re going to have a positive self image. It’s important not to forget that self-reinforcement is just as significant.
http://www.depnet.com.au/universe1/causes/susceptibility/self-reinforcement/
http://pdfcast.org/pdf/social-cognitive-theory-of-learning
http://bmo.sagepub.com/content/1/2/147.abstract
I plan to become a school psychologist, so I chose a topic that is relevant to working with children and adolescents: reinforcement versus punishment. As defined by the text:
Reinforcement is a procedure used in behavior modification to increase the frequency of a behavior, whereas punishment is a procedure used to decrease the frequency of a behavior.
The three links that I chose will explain the effects that reinforcement and punishment have on children and adolescents. Every article, website, and video I watched was in agreement that reinforcement is “better” to use than punishment. Why is this? Although punishment may give immediate results (such as a well-behaved child), there is often a lack of communication from the parert/caregiver to the child. Many parents admitted to physically punishing their children, because they (the parents) were angry. The child may not be learning “don’t do this.” Instead “just don’t get caught.”
Is there any “good” method of punishment? Since its meant to decrease the frequency of a behavior, it seems to be important in child and adolescent development. As society has changed, so have our standards and expectations. Although physical punishment used to be “accepted,” many people in today’s society believe you can rear a happy/healthy child using no form of punishment in their upbringing. Even common punishments that don’t involve physical contact seem to be slowly phasing out. An example is the time-out. This was interesting to me, because I have always learned that time-outs are effective and don’t inflict any pain (physical/psychological) on the child. A new alternative to the time-out that I had never heard of is the time-in. This is when the parent/caregiver and child spend time alone together to communicate about maintaining peace. They don’t talk about right and wrong. I understand the idea behind a time-in, but I think it’s important to know the difference between right and wrong. This doesn’t mean you single out the child as always being wrong, but I think it’s important to have continual conversations about rights and wrongs. How else will they learn?
Reading about reinforcement was very interesting to me. I started researching punishment first, and learned that reinforcement was more ideal. Then I started to read about reinforcement, and learned it may not send the message you want it to. I agree that reinforcement is the “better” choice over punishment, but it has to be done correctly. If a child is having a temper-tantrum and the parent/caregiver gives a very sympathetic response, it may be reinforcing the child to have a temper tantrum everytime they want to get their way. It’s important to know exactly what behavior you are reinforcing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPHcw2vz9H0
http://peaceful-parenting.suite101.com/article.cfm/timein_versus_timeout
http://parentingwithoutpunishment.org/
I thought as I was reading this section that reinforcement would be a good topic to cover in my divergence. Reinforcement is when you reward a behavior to increase its frequency.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdNWJ54bQX8
I thought it would be interesting to have a video about using reinforcement in dolphin training because we had used that as an example on the first day of class. In this video the trainer talks about using positive reinforcement on the dolphins to get them to do tricks. He states that they use a whistle or a spray bottle for a "misty shower". He says it depends on what each dolphin likes.
http://life.familyeducation.com/communication/behavior-modification/29734.html?page=2
This is true for children as well the second link I found talks about ways to use positive reinforcers with children. It also cites the fact that the reinforcer must be specific to the child and must be something they like. Obviously if someone wants me to do something for them and they offer me liver I would not care to do what they want but if they offer me money I may do the desired behavior! It also mentions the importance of letting children finish their sentences and starting with a positive statement because all people respond better to positive statements.
http://parentingmethods.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_pros_and_cons_of_rewarding_children
Even though positive reinforcement is generally the best way to go there are some cons to the situation as well the third link that I found discussed some of these. According to the website "small rewards, such as stickers, can be helpful in teaching young children to complete tasks. These however, can cause dependence on outside motivators rather than learning internal motivation and developing a sense of pride for “a job well done.”". The website addresses the fact that there is a belief that rewards narrow a child's ability to set goals for themselves and to do something because it is the right thing to do. It decreases children doing things for themselves and not for an outside motivator. Personally I can see this to be true in theory but I think this is another aspect of using reinforcement that makes it a more difficult system to use. It is important to use it to teach the values but not to rely soley on that.
"A reinforcement procedure is intentionally designed to increase the frequency of a specified behavior,” the text states in section 1.2. I thought that it was interesting and wanted to learn more because I never really understood that reinforcement was always for the increase of behavior. I realize that even when it is a negative behavior, we still can reinforce it. I have thought about when babies cry at night. We want to run in and comfort the child, but he/she will not learn to sleep through the night. Every time you comfort the child at night, you reinforce the behavior of crying.
The video captures reinforcing procedures in a positive light. The owner commands the dog to sit, and it does. Then the owner gives the dog a treat as a reward for obedience. The text makes it a point to say that all behaviors have consequences. I like the idea that behaviors can be reinforced as the text describes.
Another example of reinforceable behavior is B.F. Skinner and his pigeon. What made this interesting is the question of free will. Reinforcement rejects the idea that we act upon our own volition in every situation. What we find is that behavior can be trained, or reinforced, and our actions are the product of outside factors. It’s as simple as teaching your child potty training. When he/she successfully uses a toilet, he/she is rewarded. Thus each time the child performs the correct action; it is praised in order to encourage the same action to occur again.
The final video is an example of encouraged behavior that some people would feel is unethical. I think this relates to reinforcement because the dog trainer is reinforcing obedience by allowing the dog to hump her leg. It got me thinking about how easy it would be to take give inappropriate reinforcement in other situations. It would be like getting your dog drunk after it obeys you. Although it is not necessarily wrong to let your dog hump your leg, it could definitely be negatively perceived. In a research setting, it seems that it would be important to pick appropriate rewards as reinforcement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GylLf7-Gg3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AepqpTtKbwo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaA4k4SdTg
I have noticed a large number of posts dealing with positive and negative reinforcement and its use in our evolving society. For this reason, I decided to focus a bit more on the opposite side of the coin and discuss punishment, along with its drawbacks and positive uses.
Like reinforcement, punishment can be either positive or negative. If boy A in middle school were to walk up to another boy B and punch him in the arm, the boy B may do a number of different things in response. Boy B may punch boy A in the nose and knock him flat in front of all of their friends. The punch to the nose and the embarrassment felt would serve as a positive punishment to boy A, leading him to hinder this behavior for, possibly, the rest of his life. Boy B could also run to a teacher, who may take away his recess privileges for 2 weeks. The removal of this boy's recess would serve as a negative punishment, changing his behavior for, possibly, the rest of his life.
Having used this example, many in the reinforcement/punishment debate refer to their use in regards to parenting. Many involved in this debate tend to favor using only reinforcement OR punishment. I recognize a need for punishment and reinforcement to work together. There are, naturally, different ways of allotting this balance between the two based on the various stages of a child's life. As a baby or toddler, punishment and reinforcement do little to nothing, as a child of these ages lacks an ability to relate behavior to consequences, be they positive or negative. As a child grows and develops, reinforcement is a necessity to utilize early and often. This is the best course of action to prevent negative behavior. However, there has never been such a thing as a perfect child with perfect behaviors. When a child partakes in a negative action, punishment is a great deterrent, essential to guiding the child back to the right path. A tap on the head or the removal of something that the child finds pleasurable for a specified amount of time can work wonders.
The issue of this debate lies mainly with those that misuse and misunderstand punishment. Many hear the word punishment and immediately think physical pain. There are a number of instances of parents, teachers, or other care-givers utilizing corporal punishment in an attempt to gain an intended end in the child's negative behavior. While often this can be a very effective way to deal with behavioral issues, reinforcement or lesser punishment will work just as well and will leave the child with less resentment and, in the case of many, less physical injuries.
http://itn.co.uk/caeab0e50e741ec6af0f7baa767fced0.html
http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/talk/discipline.html#
http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/Faculty/wasserman/glossary/punishment.html
While reading this chapter, I could understand easily than previous chapter. Because I took a class which related to social psychology. And I could remember about reinforcement and punishment. Especially, reinforcement was most interesting part in this section. Also, my major is youth education and counseling in Korea so I did research about reinforcement in education.
Reinforcement mean intentionally planned to increase the specified behavior. Through these link I firmly believe that it have several advantages in education. Especially, if teacher can use properly in way of education for student, it can be a great strategy. Also, someone who would like to train their animal they usually use reinforcement procedure.
http://blogs.roanoke.com/thehappywag/2010/08/30/discipline-or-reinforcement-prefered-dog-training-methods/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGxb3yhMR2E
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-138751342/effective-reinforcement-techniques-elementary.html
When I read about Reinforcement in Chapter 1, it made me think of little kids when they first start to walk and how to encourage them to keep on trying. The parents need the right tools of reinforcement to modify their toddlers behavior. Since you want the toddler to not give up, you have to know how to increase the frequency of the wanted behavior. My topic is how parents should act toward their toddler so the kid does the desirable behavior. I am interested in this topic because I feel like toddlers are brand new to this world and as their parents they mold their child’s behavior by encouraging good behavior. The You-tube clip demonstrates a little girl who is trying to walk on her own with the help of a little stroller, but where the reinforcement comes from is her mom sounding very excited that her daughter chose to do this own her own. Having a happy voice and encouraging words like “that a girl” like her mother used, will reinforce this little girl do repeat the behavior.
http://www.essortment.com/all/babywalking_rznn.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r9YtZh9IDM&feature=related
http://www.theparentreport.com/resources/ages/infant/development/70.html
Reading section 2 was kind of difficult for me. I kept confusing the terms and thinking too much about the definitions and confusing myself even more. The difference between negative reinforcement and punishment were particularly difficult for me to get straight, and still I am having difficulties. That is why I am choosing to blog about negative reinforcement.
Negative reinforcement and punishment are particularly confusing for me because of the word negative. When seeing "negative reinforcement" I think, well there's an oxymoron, and tend to actually think about punishment. By definition negative reinforcement is "the removal of something aversive," aversive being something unpleasant. So, negative reinforcement is the removal of something unpleasant. If you increase the behavior desired, something negative will be removed. Punishment according to the text is something that "occurs when the consequence of a behavior leads to a punisher (an aversive (negative) outcome) decreasing the likelihood that the behavior will likely reoccur less often (less frequently) in the future." Or a decrease in a behavior because a negative experience is introduced because of that particular behavior.
Thinking about different examples of negative reinforcement makes remembering and distinguishing it from punishment a lot easier for me, than just reading the definition. In order to be a negative reinforcement a behavior will be increased in order to remove something perceived as negative. Removing a noise, such as a set belt reminder, will increase the behavior of buckling up in the car. In order to get rid of a headache you take a pain reliever. The negative aspect being the head ache, the increased behavior being taking medicine. The behavior of buckling up and taking medicine has been reinforced.
If punishment is the act of decreasing a behavior because a negative stimulus is put in place I now tend to think about sports, or parenting. When I was in high school I played softball and can remember having to sprints for every time we did not swing on the third strike. Not swinging on the third strike was the behavior that was decreased because of the negative stimulus of sprints. In parenting, time-outs could be considered a punishment. If a child is doing a behavior that is undesired and put in time out as a consequence that behavior will be decreased because of the negative stimulus of time-out.
The difference between punishment and negative reinforcement may seem easy to some, and in fact it makes more sense to me now too after writing it out and explaining it, but the two terms are confusing to a lot but is something that is actually very different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrsR5Rm2LYo&NR=1
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/proj/nru/nr.html
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/svinicki/ald320/negrnf.html
While reading through this chapter, I found myself having a lot of difficulty distinguishing between negative reinforcement and punishment, among other terms i kept mixing up. I left a few question marks next to those sections in the reading, and once I saw what this activity was asking of us, I quickly decided to dig further into these concepts. I'm currently going to school with the intent of being a school counselor, and I am a huge fan of reinforcement techniques, so I feel it would only benefit me to learn more about this.
As I researched through these topics I discovered that it is very common to confuse negative reinforcement and punishment, so I don't feel quite so dumb. However, I now see that they are a lot less confusing than I originally thought while reading the chapter.
Negative reinforcement, as reinforcement always goes, is trying to strengthen a behavior, where as punishment tries to weaken a behavior. The reason they get confused, for the most part, is just the use of the word negative, which is associated with punishment.
"Driving in heavy traffic is a negative condition for most of us. You leave home earlier than usual one morning, and don't run into heavy traffic. You leave home earlier again the next morning and again you avoid heavy traffic. Your behavior of leaving home earlier is strengthened by the consequence of the avoidance of heavy traffic."
The above example really helped me to grasp the idea of negative reinforcement. Negative doesn't mean bad in this context, it simply means to take away what was once bad by performing certain behavior. Punishment, however, strives to stop a certain behavior. This is obviously very different from reinforcement, but due to the use of "negative" i had some issues grasping the concept until I read into it further.
I now realize that negative reinforcement surrounds me much more than I ever consciously realized. My mom has ALWAYS been a huge fan, for example, when I got grades in school it meant I had to do less chores around my house. In my home punishment wasn't used nearly as often, and I feel like that really worked out in the long run. Afterall, I turned out to be such a good little boy. :D
http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/Faculty/wasserman/glossary/reinforcement.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/20051/positive_negative_reinforcement.html?cat=25
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/proj/nru/nr.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRvhoRVfAss&feature=related
Some of the information in this chapter was familiar to me but I was more curious about self-reinforcement. I found it interesting the way the book described the difference between behavior being reinforced by others, and self-reinforcement being conducted by one's self. I am clear on the definitions of reinforcement and self-reinforcement but when it came to distinguishing the two by giving my own examples within the reading, I wasn't sure if I was completing the assignment correctly.
Doing some outside researched helped me understand the difference a little bit more; but it raised other questions, also. I understand that being influenced by others can have a great impact on your behavior, whether aversive or pleasurable, so I ask if self-reinforcement can take both paths as well? For example, I will continue to sing even though I'm a bad singer because I enjoy singing (which would be pleasurable). Or, I will not sing even though others tell me I'm a good singer because I don't believe I am (aversive self-reinforcement).
Whether one is trying to self-reinforce aversive or pleasurable behavior, I understand the concept as the act of doing what one needs to do in order to fulfill a goal or behavior. Personally, I know I am not a good singer so I only sing when the music is loud enough to drown me out or when I'm alone. I learned to do this by listening to myself sing once, thus why it is self-reinforcement. I also don't believe people when they say things such as, "You don't sing that bad!" because I think they're just trying to be nice.
http://www.depnet.com.au/universe1/causes/susceptibility/self-reinforcement/
http://www.specialconnections.ku.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/specconn/main.php?cat=behavior§ion=main&subsection=pbsint/self
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BVvNE78lyc
(this is just something I found as a humorous example of a girl that clearly can't sing but enjoys doing it for her viewers anyway! However, I have no idea if she knows this about herself so it may not even be a good example!)
I am particularly interested in the use of reinforcement for changing a behavior. Growing up much of my reinforcement was either negative (removing myself from an aversive situation), or a form of punishment was used (either physical or verbal). While these undesirable forms of behavior modification worked for me, I must say that there are lasting affects (anger and aggression are some examples) and I would rather not pass them down to my children. In no way did my parents abuse me, I was a very spirited child, to say the least, and probably had many spankings coming, but that's what they knew worked. I would just like to try things differently. This is a fairly hot topic in recent years. Generally people only focus on whether or not to use physical punishment, for instance spanking, but verbally disciplining a child can be even worse. We need to be aware of many factors such as tone and volume, not to mention body language as well when speaking to a child.
Positive reinforcement if used properly can make a great deal of difference in changing an individuals behavior. All three of my links pertain to positive reinforcement and the benefits that it provides. One of these benefits being a longer lasting change in behavior. Though a punishments or a negative reinforcement work to change the effects are not long lasting. I am more apt to work-out just because of the gains I have seen, rather than to work-out just to get my wife to stop nagging at me. Also I would be more apt to run to get into shape as opposed to running as a punishment for showing up late to practice.
The first article has information that is not as comparable to the rest of my links, so I feel like I should speak to it a little. Though many children do benefit from medication for ADHD, and that's great for them, I sometimes wonder if the same results could be achieved without the use of medication. If I had to put money on it, I would say that if I was born a few years later I probably would have been medicated myself. This is just my opinion, but I think that far too many people are being medicated today for problems that could be addressed in another manner. Time, patience,understanding and effort seem to be in short supply these days. With that little bit of preaching done, enjoy the articles and video clip.
http://www.athealth.com/Consumer/farticles/Rabiner.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA96Fba-WHk&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement
http://www.kidsdevelopment.co.uk/BFSkinnersBehaviouralTheory.html
testing
testing 123
After reading these two sections, I really wanted to focus my blog on the reinforcement. I really wanted to focus on the importance of positive reinforcement and how this has a big impact on behaviors, especially that of children.
I decided to focus on this topic because I work in a setting with children and we use positive reinforcement a lot. I work with children who have mental or handicap disabilities and with my training for his job, I was taught the importance of always using positive reinforcement with the children. Many of the children I work with have goals set for them to accomplish. It is hard to get certain children to perform or achieve these goals, but with the use of positive reinforcement, these children are learning good behaviors and learning that these behaviors are good and valued.
Positive reinforcement is really anything that is given or done after a behavior that is to promote or increase the likelihood of that behavior again. Positive reinforcement is a topic that comes with some criticism. Some people feel that positive reinforcement doesn’t always work or that it is too hard to come up with ways to reinforce kids. However, positive reinforcement has been proven to significantly increase the likelihood of good behaviors or tasks to be performed again by children. Positive reinforcement has been proven to work better than punishment, especially with children who have behavioral issues. An aspect that comes with positive reinforcement is that you have to be consistent with your actions and the reinforcement. Whenever the good behavior occurs you need to make sure to reinforce it. It is also important to make sure that you reinforce in a timely manner. If you wait a long time after the good behavior was performed or shown to reinforce, the child may get confused to what they are being reinforced about. They may think they are being reinforced for something else rather than that good behavior you are meaning to reinforce them about. So it is always important to reinforce the good behavior as soon as it happens.
One of the big issues with positive reinforcement is figuring out what is exactly a good reinforcement. It is hard to decide what a good reinforcement tool is at times, because what may be a good reinforcement to one child or person may not be the same for the other child or person. I have learned that through my job. There are reinforcements that I know work wonderfully with some of my children, but then don’t work at all with the others. People also think that reinforcements have to be material or objects, which can end up costing lots of money. This however is not true, positive reinforcements do not have to be material things. You can show reinforcements in many ways. Material things are a good way to start off positive reinforcement, because they may really help the individual know that they did a good thing. When time goes on though, you can change that reinforcement to different things. Reinforcement can include verbal reinforcements, which include praises, or words of approval, or appreciation toward the individual’s action. Reinforcements can also be nonverbal, they can be a pat on the back, touch on the shoulder, or a high five. All these can be used as positive reinforcements rather than material objects.
Positive reinforcement is an excellent tool to help show and individual that a specific behavior is good or approved of. This will hopefully teach and help the individual understand that this behavior is good and that good things come from performing these behaviors.
http://parentingmagazine.info/importance-of-positive-reinforcement-from-teachers.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Importance-of-Positive-Reinforcement-to-Control-Safe-Behavior&id=4874485
http://www.specialconnections.ku.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/specconn/main.php?cat=behavior§ion=main&subsection=classroom/positive
After reading the chapter, I chose to focus on the punishment aspect. Thinking about punishment in general, led me to think about the topic of "spanking" a child. Spanking has long been a hot topic among parents about whether it is right or wrong. Spanking as a punishment is meant to decrease the wrong behavior that the child demonstrated. This topic interests me because I want to have children and currently have mixed views about when spanking should and should not be used. I as a child, personally was never spanked. My parents had other ways of punishing me that were just as or more effective as punishing. They did not believe in spanking us because they did not want us growing up to believe that hitting is okay to do.
Punishment in general is meant to decrease negative or unpleasant behavior. There are certain forms of punishment that can be more effective and spanking has shown that it can have the opposite effect. Some research has shown that using spanking as a form of punishment can actually make the child's behavior worse. They attribute it to feeling bad and then that feeling will show in their behavior.
All of the websites I looked at, focused on the same idea: some parents who view spanking as a negative thing, are still somewhat likely to spank when put in certain situations. The different situations can bring about certain behaviors of the parent that are not readily apparent and then turn to physical punishment. Scholars have been pushing to eliminate any type of physical punishment because it can create negative consequences. This is not a bad thing because spanking a child can lead to the child thinking that it is okay for them to hit another child. Also, they can grow up thinking that it is okay to hit their child and will likely end up doing that when they have children. This can lead not only to spanking not only their child but it can also lead to abuse of partners and others as well. One thing that needs to change is the fact that many people think that spanking is the only way to punish their child and have it work when they do something wrong. When they are in the moment when the child is doing something bad, they often don't take the time to think about other forms of punishments that can be even more useful. That is something that every parent needs to be aware of; that there are other forms of punishment that can be affective when a child is doing something wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0MaZXfzT20
http://www.askdrsears.com/html/6/t062100.asp
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=108&sid=233ce474-15a0-425b-850f-187f4382eafe%40sessionmgr110&vid=2
After reading the sections, I decided to focus on positive punishment. This lead me to corporal punishment/spanking and then led me to the interesting phenomena of positive punishment working as a reinforcer, which I found super interesting. Here’s hoping that I didn’t digress too far off topic.
Of the four sites I decided to use, all agreed that in certain situations- and especially with young children- that using aversive attention to punish a child can increase the likelihood of the bad behavior. Little kids love attention, and when they are ignored for doing good and yelled at or struck for behaving poorly, the attention-seeking child will act out in order to get the attention, be it aversive or desirable. While the aversive nature of the attention in a punishment, the attention itself becomes the reinforcer. Even aversive attention can satisfy a child’s “Look at me now!” needs.
When the child gets older and stops needing as much attention, the reinforcer for the bad behaviors becomes the idea of retaliation or revenge. Typically, people do things that we know are bad because we want to do them. When someone punishes their child for misbehaving, the older child could feel angry about the punishment and misbehave to spite the parent. The punishment is still present in the actions taken by the parent, but the child may come to enjoy and even have a desire for the feelings they get after getting revenge for the punishment. Therefore, the revenge and associated feelings are a reinforcer.
The general consensus was also that punishment in general is a highly ineffective measure for teaching behavior to a child. With negative punishment, the child only learns how to act through trial and error of learning what NOT to do. With positive punishment, as seen above, the child learns to become an attention-seeker for whatever type of attention they can get. In this case, it’s aversive attention. The advice for what kind of behavior-modifying tactics to employ was to stay away from punishments as much as possible. Instead, reinforcement techniques would produce faster, more effective results that would last longer.
Articles I used:
http://life.familyeducation.com/behavioral-problems/punishment/42962.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/70056/corporal_punishment_does_hitting_really_pg2.html?cat=25
http://www.articlesbase.com/parenting-articles/attention-seeking-temper-tantrums-toddlers-can-put-us-through-how-to-discipline-them-to-make-them-stop-1845193.html
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-do-you-know-about-childrens-misbehavior.html
After reading the first section I am interested in learning more about reinforcement because I never realized how much it is used in our every day routines. The most common example that I have heard to explain reinforcement is teaching a dog how to sit. But there are more examples that maybe most people wouldn’t think about. If a boy tells a girl that her outfit is nice, she is likely to wear it again, or something similar to it. We see these kinds of instances every day and we don’t even realize it. The websites I looked at each touched base on different areas of reinforcement, which made it easier to explain positive and negative reinforcement separately and not based on each website.
There are different kinds of reinforcement that take different roles when used. The first one I want to explain is positive reinforcement. The example about the girl and the nice outfit is an example of positive reinforcement. The most seen types of positive reinforcement are to give rewards or praise. Because praises and rewards are significant in reinforcing, consistency is just as important. I came across a website that explained how teachers many times don’t like to use positive reinforcement for their students because they don’t feel the need to reward them for something they are supposed to be doing in the first place.
Another form of reinforcement is negative reinforcement. Negative Reinforcement is described by a particular behavior that is strengthened by the consequence of the stopping or avoiding of a negative condition. An example given for negative reinforcement is driving in traffic. A person learns to leave early from their home if they get stuck in traffic at the normal time they leave. It is believed that the concept negative reinforcement is hard to teach because generally people don’t want to learn a concept if the word negative is involved.
http://www.sspca.org/PositiveReinforcement.html
http://allpsych.com/psychology101/reinforcement.html
http://www.specialconnections.ku.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/specconn/main.php?cat=behavior§ion=main&subsection=classroom/positive
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/proj/nru/nr.html
After reading chapter 1.2, I was still confused about what exactly negative reinforcement was. The chapter defined negative reinforcement as the removal of something aversive, and then went on to give an example of removing a splinter from a finger. However, after the reading I was still confused about the difference between negative reinforcement and punishment. My great confusion about negative reinforcement caused me to become very interested in better understanding the topic.
The first website that I viewed informed me that negative reinforcement is when a behavior is reinforced by removing a stimulus. The website also cleared the confusion of associating the word negative with unpleasant. The word negative when dealing with negative reinforcement simply means that a stimulus is removed. The website explained that negative reinforcement increases the frequency of a behavior because it removes something unpleasant. The website provided many helpful examples to help clear up my confusion. One example mentioned in the website involved a seat belt alarm going off when an individual starts their car. The seat belt alarm is a negative reinforcement because the alarm serves as the stimulus which is removed once the individual puts on their seatbelt. Another example that the website provided dealt with cleaning your room to end your mother’s nagging. The mother’s nagging (stimulus) served as a negative reinforcement because the nagging is removed once you clean your room.
The next source I viewed was a Youtube video .The video provided an example relating negative reinforcement to the real world setting of a job. The boss gave his employee a list of tasks that needed to be completed and stated that his employee needed to complete the tasks given or else he would be fired. The boss was continually watching the employee making sure that the employee was working on the tasks, causing the employee to feel uncomfortable. The boss constantly watching the employee served as the negative reinforcement or unpleasant stimulus. The employee continually worked on the tasks that the boss had ordered him to complete to prevent him from getting fired. However, the boss then gave the employee a letter stating that he was going on vacation. The employee then quit working on the tasks that the boss had assigned him because the boss was no longer watching the employee’s every move. In other words, the boss who served as the negative reinforcement was removed which caused the behavior of completing the tasks assigned to stop.
The last resource I used to research negative reinforcement was another Youtube video. The video contrasted negative reinforcement vs. positive reinforcement, using clips from The Family Guy. The video accurately displayed the concept that negative reinforcement requires a stimulus to be subtracted or removed to increase a behavior and positive reinforcement requires a stimulus to be added, causing an increased behavior. The video used humor to accurately describe positive and negative while also showing humorous video clips to show the differences between the two types of reinforcement.
After doing some further research, I now understand what negative reinforcement is and what it is not. Negative reinforcement is simply the removal of a stimulus causing a behavior to be more frequent or more likely to occur. The stimulus that is removed is viewed by the individual as unpleasant; therefore they behave a certain way to remove the stimuli.
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05_conditioning/negative_reinforcement.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRvhoRVfAss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_9ZZaPDtPk&feature=related
While reading the two sections I decided to look more into positive reinforcement because I’m very curious about how it works with behavior. I wanted to learn more about the techniques used when implementing in someone’s behavior. My resources are based on the process on how it works. I thought it was interesting while watching (even though it was all from television shows) the videos on how easy it was to manipulate someone’s behavior by using positive reinforcement.
It was interesting that you can use positive reinforcement for anything such as training a dog or to even use in the classroom to make the kids behave the way the teacher wants them too. Within all the sources the reinforcer will use a positive item or a verbal response that will make that behavior or action happen again.
I didn’t think that it was that easy, just a repeated action or noise over and over again will shape someone behavior maybe without the other knowing or realizing that are actually being conditioned to behave a certain way. Also, by recognizing someone’s good behavior, such as in a classroom, others will recognize the good behavior and want to follow that good behavior. One example from one of the websites was when a kids walks in the room quietly and hangs his bag up. The teacher said a positive comment loud enough so that the rest of class would hear and the rest would follow and be quiet when they come into the room just like the student the teacher praised before that.
The videos do a great job at showing an example at the modification of one’s behavior. By doing some research on the topic I found a series of different methods in which one can use to modify and all use similar techniques to do so, by rewarding them, or a beeping sound that triggers them to act that way. They have the behavior they want to fix or manipulate and they do something to fix it (give the individual chocolate) and they will respond and continue to do that after.
I learned a lot by doing some extra research on the topic of positive reinforcement and how it can be used in a lot of different settings and different environments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA96Fba-WHk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfZfMIHwSkU&feature=related
http://www.ehow.com/how_4556420_use-positive-reinforcement-classroom.html
http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/dogs/tips/dog_training_positive_reinforcement.html
After reading the sections, I decided to do my blog on reinforcement and how I believe it to be more effective than punishment at least in IO context. I am interested in IO psychology and I believe reinforcement should be used more in an organizational setting. Reinforcement is a procedure used in behavior modification to increase the frequency of a behavior, whereas punishment is a procedure used to decrease the frequency of a behavior. When I think of punishment/reinforcement the picture that pops into my head is a dog getting trained, but the uses of punishment/reinforcement extend well beyond the realm of PetSmart.
Punishment is what is usually implemented in an organization and is counterproductive for both the employees and the employer. Punishment in an organization involves a write up, a suspension or even termination. None of these punishments really helps amend the behavior to fix the problem for the future. More often than not, the employee is suspended/terminated (counterproductive) and the organization loses an investment (employee). Organizations need to implement more reinforcement into their settings to increase job satisfaction, productivity, organizational commitment and decrease absenteeism/tardiness and in the long run it would help the organization save time and money. I know from personal experience and I have had a very colorful job history (from a button factory to a bartender) When I did something wrong I definitely heard about it and if I did something above and beyond what was expected of me I rarely, if ever, got even a pat on the back. This results in an organization that punishes bad behavior regularly and praises good behavior sporadically (if ever). I believe punishment is never as effective as reinforcement. Organizations want the probability of their employees working hard to be high.
Work hard --> Get praised --> Probabilty Increases
Work hard --> No praise --> ???
As we can clearly see, getting praised for hard work ensures the organization that the employee will continue to work hard.
The job I hold currently is the best job I’ve ever had when it comes to positive reinforcement (I won a brand new laptop just for having perfect attendance and I received positive/negative feedback weekly in the spreadsheet form and my supervisor has a weekly meeting with me). Now I understand not all organizations have the budget to do something as extravagant as a brand new laptop, but even a boss coming up to an employee sincerely thanking them for the work they have been doing is proven to be just as effective as getting a brand new laptop. In a lot of organizations, the only reason a boss meets with an employee is when he/she has been doing something wrong. I am not saying that employees need to be praised for every good deed they do, but employees need to be given feedback (positive and negative) on a weekly basis. It helps to make a lot of the meaningless jobs out there feel more meaningful which in turn enhances job satisfaction which is a key element in the overall well-being of an organization. I believe that having a job that means “something” would be a psychological need and according to Maslow, self-actualization can never be met until psychological needs are taken care of first and furthermore I guarantee a person striving to reach self-actualization will have higher motivation to achieve in the workplace instead of someone trying to meet psychological needs.
I am also not saying that organizations need to completely do away with punishment all together, but I would like to see punishment as a last resort or used in combination with positive reinforcement. For example. An employee in a factory is producing far below quota/potential. Boss informs employee in detail what he/she is doing wrong (warning, write-up) and doing right (an employer can usually always find something about an employee to praise) and they work together to set difficult, attainable accepted goals and the boss informs the employee what he/she may get (bonus, raise, promotion, and inevitably some form of recognition/praise) once said goal(s) are achieved. When all reinforcement options are used than the next levels of punishment are to be used, because sometimes, in the end, an employee may just not be the right fit.
Careers and professions like being a doctor provide a lot of autonomy in the aspect that they can provide their own feedback in how they are doing and do not need reinforcement implemented into their jobs because the job itself is rewarding and a reinforcer. I hope someday to have a career in which I do not need to be told how I’m doing because I will already know the answer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_9ZZaPDtPk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKBGVV6PDX4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbjuziVtzKA
http://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/stories/1996/11/18/focus3.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWDdSSZqoV4
The topics I chose to cover in the first couple sections were reinforcement and punishment which control most of our behaviors. I've learned about these, and most of the concepts a lot before so I decided to apply them to the concept of changing child behavior because many people aren't quite one hundred percent sure on what WORKS when it comes to punishing and rewarding their children. So many people rely on one side or the other, and neither of those may be a good idea if relied to strongly upon. I thought it would be interesting to delve a little deeper and find out what some of the consequences and benefits would be to each side, and what works best.
By definition, punishment refers to changing a behavior by either adding something unpleasant to the situation (positive punishment), or taking something pleasurable away from the situation (negative punishment). Reinforcement is the act of changing behavior by either adding something pleasurable (positive reinforcment), or taking away something unpleasurable (negative reinforcment).
Punishment is something that adults and parents have been applying to children for many years to supposedly change behaviors. However, some of the most traditional ways of punishment (like spanking, and other types of corporal punishment) have little to no effect on what they're actually trying to do-- which is change the behavior. Often times adults will continue applying these types of punishments to the children with little or no modification to their behavior.
Some ways that have been found to be more effective tend to be ignoring the behavior (which would be a type of negative punishment because you are eliminating the attention that you would normally give to the misbehavior), or reinforcing better behaviors by rewarding them when they behave in a new, positive way. Some examples of rewarding new behaviors would be to explain the desired behavior, and explain that if each time it is done (or done regularly) they will be rewarded with things like their favorite snack, an extra bedtime story etc..
It is important to instill both punishment and reinforcement, because too much of one of these could prove to not change the behaviors at all. For example, if one is only instilling punishment with their child, and no reinforcement for good behavior, the child will continue to act out in negative ways because they are receiving the attention of the punishment. Although it's not GOOD attention, it's still a reinforced attention that they will seek because they aren't being reinforced in other ways. Using only punishment can also have negative consequences for the child in the future for a number of reasons: They may tend to have a lack of trust for authority, a rebellious attitude, they may learn to lie, cheat, and sneak to achieve their goals, as well as be more aggressive, and resentful on top of other emotional problems in the future. Additionally, the most important thing to remember is to be consistent so that the children know exactly what to expect from their good and bad behaviors.
http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0605-stein.html
http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/children/parents/behavior/201.html
http://www.nationalyouth.com/behaviormodification.html
After reading both sections in the chapter, I was very interested in the effects of positive and negative reinforcement. They both aim to do the same goal but in complete opposite ways. Positive reinforcement involves rewarding someone for a wanted behavior. An example of positive reinforcement would be rewarding a dog for going outside to use the bathroom instead of the house. Negative reinforcement involves the taking of an aversive stimulus to increase certain behavior or response. An example of negative reinforcement would be the beeping of a car when you don’t have your seat belt on and the only way to stop it is to buckle up your seat belt, which then causes the beep to stop. So my question to myself was which reinforcement is better, positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement?
Positive reinforcement is great way to create a good environment for learning. Positive reinforcement is the preferred way of training dogs. It solidifies the owner’s dominance over the dog. The dog recognizes that the owner is its main source of food/affection so when it’s rewarded it learns to keep doing that behavior to please its owner so that they are rewarded. Negative reinforcement can scare the dog away from the owner in these situations. The dog can misinterpret negative reinforcement as cruelty and fails to link their behavior and the punishment they are receiving for it.
With humans, it’s easier to distinguish between negative and positive reinforcement. Some situations that we use these reinforcements on humans are in schools, the workplace, and with psychological issues. Both positive and negative reinforcements are used in schools, although it is primarily dominated by negative reinforcement. Some examples of negative reinforcement in a school would be getting yelled for a behavior that is unwanted, detention for not getting assignments done or misbehaving. The thought behind this is, students will more likely learn to not do certain behaviors because they don’t want to get embarrassed by getting yelled at or having to do extra work for their bad behavior. This type of reinforcement works a majority of the time. It’s more effective in my mind because of the age of the kids. They are not mature enough yet to understand on their own the pros and cons of misbehaving in certain situations. This could also be a good reason why positive reinforcement is used mainly in the workplace.
Since adults are more mature and responsible there will be less unwanted behavior from them. Positive reinforcement used in the work force can greatly improve employees work performance and attendance. It’s important for employees to feel wanted in a company so even a simple good job today for excellent performance can reinforce that behavior or work ethic to continue. Other ways of using positive reinforcement in the work force would be pay raises, extra days off, and promotions. These things help workers to strive for excellence and rewards from their employer and create the type of employees wanted by companies.
Another good use of both reinforcers would be to help treat psychological issues. In this case there’s no dominant type of reinforcement. Both can be used to help stabilize patient’s mental problems. Some tactics that are used to create some positive reinforcement would be positive thinking. Creating a positive attitude by smiling and focusing on the things people like about themselves can be rewarding and can help create a positive thinking. Negative reinforcement can be used with simple techniques like breathing exercises or other stress reliever exercises. They can help reduce stomach aches, headaches and panic attacks and make a person feel a lot healthier about themselves.
So to answer my question, in every situation there’s a type of reinforcement that is better than the other. So really, there is no quote on quote better reinforcement. The main thing to remember when using reinforcement it to make sure it is being understood clearly and is effective to change or promote the types of behavior a person desires.
http://www.freeonlineresearchpapers.com/advantages-disadvantages-using-positive-negative
http://www.vetinfo.com/positive-reinforcement-dog-training.html
http://www.stresscenter.com/mwc/depression-treatment/positive-vs-negative-reinforcement.html
In section 1.1 it defines what the ABC's stand for and how you can manipulate a situation or another person with your own behaviors. I sort of see it as for every action there is a reaction, pleasurable (good) or aversive (bad).
The "antecedent"(the setting, as I understand it) is the before, so it could be the setting of where this behavior takes place, then after is the consequence of the behavior. The section states that "most of us are completely unaware of the majority of behaviors we emit (do) day to day," I agree and disagree, I think a lot of times in a situation we know the behavior we need to use to get what we want or as stated "manipulate", to get our way or the reaction we are looking for. There are situations and times when we don't know what consequence of our behavior will bring. I also agree with what’s stated in the section, “day to day we are generally unaware of the ABC’s,” but I still say at times we do know what our behavior can bring as far as consequences.
Manipulating a person in a situation isn’t always a bad thing, you can gain something you want or need but also at the same time you can take advantage of someone else in a negative way with manipulation.
I like the fact that no matter the antecedent, the behavior will be different for each person in the situation and the consequence can be the same or different in any situation, but our behaviors can be different because of the type of environment we are in as well. I cannot wait to learn more about our own behaviors so I can be more a aware of my own and how I conduct myself in certain situations, but also be able to understand behaviors that other people do in their everyday life and why.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcAXP1dtIsY&feature=&p=75CDAB3F601F5FA7&index=0&playnext=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuGIgf-ICHM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAp4d9qMVd8&feature=related
The topic I chose to focus on was punishment. I initially wanted to look into punishment for drug usage, but every site was against punishment and all for rehabilitation and therapy. With that said, I chose to look at punishment in the household, focusing mostly on doing chores and housework.
I chose this topic mostly because I live with eleven people and as you can image, it gets a little messy and often times chores and housework do not get done. After reading the information it quickly became clear that a consequence and a punishment are fairly different things. In my past experiences I had always seen these two concepts as interchangeable. A consequence is seen as what happens because of the behavior and a punishment is an additional thing added onto the consequence.
It is better to explain to a child their consequence for their behavior rather than just punishing them each and every time. A punishment should be a rare occurrence for a bad behavior and should always be followed through with (meaning if you say you’re going to take away the computer for a week, take away the computer for a week.) If you are not following through with these punishments, the child will not take it seriously and most likely slack on his/her chores. If this is done correctly, punishment will reduce or eliminate the negative behavior.
This topic fits well into the chapter because for most, chores are an every day occurrence and often involve other people. By understanding the difference in a consequence and a punishment, we can better understand the best approach to getting things done.
http://www.helium.com/items/891844-how-to-get-your-kids-to-help-with-chores
http://life.familyeducation.com/behavioral-problems/punishment/42970.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-punishment-and-consequences.htm
The topic I am interested in is self-reinforcement. Instead of others responding to our behaviors and actions, we reinforce ourselves to act a certain way. In self-reinforcement, a subject gives himself a consequence depending on his behavior. The notes use the expression “give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done”, as an example. This fits into the chapter by giving us another idea of reinforcement, other than simple positive and negative reinforcement.
I am interested in this because I would like to see how self-reinforcement is used among athletes. I play a college sport and would like to know how I can reinforce myself to do better during practice and a game.
Many athletes use a self-talk to reinforce themselves before a game. When doing this, the words you use to motivate yourself are very important. The same word should not be used constantly. The repetition of one word will make your self-talk boring and ineffective. A great example is the word “good”. When you use this word over, and over again, it does not affect you like the first time you used it. Before a game, an athlete should think of other words like “good”, such as fabulous, amazing, and awesome. It is important to vary you content during self-reinforcement.
It is also important to use the right expression. It will not help you to just say the words; you have to use emotion to show how important it is to you to do well. Your self-reinforcement voice should be motivational and enthusiastic. There are many ways to do this such as increasing the emphasis on syllables in words, increasing/decreasing volume, and changing the pitch of your voice. For example, a girl on my rugby team used a high pitch, squeaky voice to motivate herself during a game. It is really weird and catches people off guard, but it works well for her. When you use the right expression, it will help maintain the meaningfulness.
http://members.cox.net/brushall/mental/free2_1/ex2_1.pdf
http://www.iihf.com/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/Sport/Coaching_manuals/7_Level_II_Building_Self_Esteem.pdf
http://www.unicommons.com/node/22180
For my activity I decided to explore the ABC of Behavior Modification a little bit more and to focus more on the Antecedent aspect as it relates to the Behavior and Consequence parts as well. When thinking about the Antecedent part of the ABC's the term social norms came to mind. By emitting a certain behavior in a normal situation during the day, the consequence of your behavior can have adverse or humorous effects on the people around you depending on what kind of behavior is emitted.
When emitting a matched behavior among a large group of people, the Antecedent may change which causes the bystanders of the emitted behavior to emit their own behavior and in turn create new consequences. This point can be proven by the second link posted in the bottom of this post.
Echoing what is said above, I find it interesting that depending on the Antecedent and Behavior emitted, the Consequence could be a good outcome or a bad outcome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY-nw-79aQM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBf9fMx_RpQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk0yiv1wkd4
After reading section 1.2 I was intrigued by the term Valence and what it constitutes. I was also a little confused and I thought that by researching it, I would better understand it as a whole. Valence refers to the emotional value associated with a stimulus. Also the degree of pleasure or aversion felt towards an object or event. This term fits into this chapter and in particular behavior modification because it is all about emotions, and a persons behavior is linked to his/her emotions.
There are two types of Valence, positive and negative. A positive valence could be a familiar face and a negative valence could be someones fear. Positive emotions are aroused by positive events, the same goes for negative emotions being influenced by negative events. These two types of valence seem relatively black and white. When you are experiencing a happy emotion you have a postive valnce and when you are afriad or angry, you have a negative valence. However, Everyone has crossed a path in their life where they became confused about something that was important at that time, whether it was deciding whether you had to move away or if you wanted to break up with someone you love, there are mixed emotions involved. This creates a conflict between positive and negative valences.
Overall, valence is a concept that is not heard of often, yet easily understood and everyone utilizes their emotions on a daily basis.
Sorry I forgot to show the sites I recieved my information from. My topic was about Valence.
http://dictionary.sensagent.com/valence+(psychology)/en-en/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valence_(psychology)
http://www.healthcaremagic.com/healthpage/valence-psychology
I think the abc's of behavior modification are one of the most interesting concepts I was able to take from the readings. The Abc's of Bmod are very easy to understand and the concepts form the basic structure of what behavior modification is... you have your antecedent, followed by a behavior, and then the consequence that ensues due to the behavior. We can set the occasion to elicit a behavior, once that behavior is emitted then the consequence will either bring with it punishment or reinforcement.
Dr. Maclin says that the abc's will be referred back to many times through out the readings and that's why I think it is very important to understand. The main goal of the abc's are to figure out what behaviors we want to modify, adjust our antecedents, try to emit the correct behavior, and then be reinforced for emitting the pleasurable behavior.
If I want to lose weight I will adjust my antecedent so that I can only have healthy food options in my fridge, then my behavior will be to eat healthy food, and then we will lose the target weight. If we want to change the behavior in other people we must show them what behavior we are expecting from them so they can respond correctly, our antecedent is to tell them what we expect or to show them exactly what the target behavior is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN9dLFXbXpE
http://www.livestrong.com/article/140865-abcs-behavior-modification/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NlPqFMbn5s
The topic that interestingly struck my attention was the small mention of Naturally Occurring Punishment. I decided to research natural subconscious human actions, divulge into the behavior that causes them, and the positive or negative effect it creates.
I decided to research was the act of blinking. Blinking is a bodily function that cleanses and moisturizes the eyes using tears, as well as protects the eye from irritants.
Sometimes when the eyes get irritated, they become red, itchy, puff and painful. In most instances, this situation seems sporadic and can be confusing as to why. According to Dr. Neal Schultz from DermTV, the only thing to directly touch the skin of our eyes our our finger tips. If chemicals or allergens come into contact with they skin of the eye, it will cause the eyes to have adverse effects. If a woman paints her nails and rubs her eye without waiting long for the nail polish to dry, it is likely that her eye will become irritated and thus reduces her probability of rubbing her eyes with wet nail polish. If a man empties the garbage and proceeds to rub his eyes without washing, it is likely that the man will develop a painful stye; therefor increasing his behavior of washing his hands to prevent further complications to arise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayk14HfP7Oc
http://www.ohiolionseyeresearch.com/swollen_eye_lids.htm
http://www.medicinenet.com/sty/page2.htm#tocf