心理学中惩罚与加强的比较分析

MSEL102

Compare and Contrast of Reinforcement and Punishment

Zilin p0907391

2012/3/6

Compare and contrast of reinforcement and punishment including the positive and negative type of each, examples of them.

A positive reinforcer is a consequence that increases the frequency of a behavior or maintains the frequency. What is reinforcing is defined by what happens to the frequency of the behavior. It has nothing to do with whether the organism finds the reinforcer 'pleasant' or not.

Positive reinforcement:

It’s the adding of an appetitive stimulus to increase a certain behavior or response.

Example: Father gives candy to his son when he does a good job in spelling it’s a Positive reinforcement. If the frequency of spelling correct increases or stays the same, the candy is a positive reinforcer.

A negative reinforcer increases the frequency of a behavior or maintains the frequency. It is not punishment. These terms are often confused. A negative reinforcer increases or maintains the frequency of the behavior that terminates the negative reinforcer. In this case the negative reinforcer is present before the behavior. The organism performs a behavior that terminates the negative reinforcer. The behavior that terminates the negative reinforcer is likely to increase or be maintained in frequency.

Negative reinforcement:

It’s the taking away of an aversive stimulus to increase certain behavior or response.

Example: Teacher reproaches student who use cellphone in class. If student stop to use it reproaching will be stop, stopping of reproaching is a negative reinforcer.

Along with reinforcement it belongs under the Operant Conditioning category. Operant Conditioning refers to learning with either punishment or reinforcement. It is also referred to as response-stimulus conditioning. In psychology, punishment is the reduction of a behavior via application of an adverse stimulus ("positive punishment") or removal of a pleasant stimulus ("negative punishment"). Extra chores or spanking are examples of positive punishment, while making an offending student lose recess or play privileges are examples of negative punishment.

The definition requires that punishment is only determined after the fact by the reduction in behavior; if the offending behavior of the subject does not decrease then it is not considered punishment. There is some conflation of punishment and aversive, though an aversive that does not decrease behavior is not considered punishment

Positive punishment:

It’s the adding of an aversive stimulus to decrease a certain behavior or response.

Example: Mother yells at a child when wasting food. If the child eats out all the food the yelling is positive punishment.

Negative punishment (omission training):

It’s the taking away of an appetitive stimulus to decrease a certain behavior.

Example: A teenager comes home an hour after curfew and the parents take away the teen's cell phone for two days. If the frequency of coming home after curfew decreases, the removal of the phone is negative punishment.

Distinguishing "positive" from "negative" can be difficult, especially when there are lots of consequences and the necessity of the distinction is often debated. For example, in a very warm room, a current of external air serves as positive reinforcement because it is pleasantly cool or negative reinforcement because it removes uncomfortably hot air. Some reinforcement can be simultaneously positive and negative, such as a drug addict taking drugs for the added euphoria and eliminating withdrawal symptoms. Many behavioral psychologists simply refer to reinforcement or punishment—without polarity—to cover all consequent environmental changes. Others would disagree with the above examples because there is no behavior that is increasing or decreasing in frequency.