November 15th, 2011

Operant Conditioning Continued...

B. F. Skinner

Yesterday in class we reviewed operant conditioning, and were asked to write down an example for each method (positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment). Since I have already gone over operant conditioning, in my last post, I will skip strait to the examples I came up with:

Positive Reinforcement-- teacher sees student behaving in a way which is desirable and gives student a gold star. Teacher knows that other students will follow suit in hopes of receiving a gold star. 

Negative Reinforcement-- teacher sees that tasks are being completed on time, so teacher stops nagging student.

Negative Reinforcement (2)-- teacher receives student's work early, so teacher excuses student from next assignment.

Positive Punishment-- teacher sees student being off-task and gives him or her a lecture. Teacher hopes other students will stay on-task to avoid being lectured. 

Negative Punishment-- teacher sees student misbehaving and takes away his or her playground time. Teacher hopes other students will behave for fear of losing their's too.  

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I realize this post is fairly short, but I will be writing another post right away due to the fact that...  yesterday we moved into a new approach and I would like to talk about that approach in its own post. 

I would once again like to thank whoever is taking the time to read my posts.. it's hard to believe that this assignment is almost finished.

Sincerely,

Natasha.