Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement both increase the behavior in question. So,
if you're on your test question, and you see a question about this kind of thing, you're
like 'man that's operant conditioning for sure.' First thing you want to do is say, what
behavior are we talking about? Does it go up? Or does it go down? If it goes up, if
it's increased or maintained, it's been reinforced. It's keeping ongoing, why does shoe tying
keep on happening? Because it becomes self-reinforcing. If it stopped being reinforcing
you would expect shoe tying behavior to diminish. I can ride a bike, but it's been a lot of
years, but if I get on a bike I'll be a little probably unsteady at first, not having done it for
years, but I bet I'll get it back quickly, it'll reestablish pretty quickly. Negative
reinforcement and positive reinforcement shouldn't be considered good and bad. People totally
screw up when they start thinking it means good and bad. Think of it mathematically,
it means adding and subtracting. Positive reinforcement, the response has increased,
that's reinforcement, due to the presentation of a pleasurable stimulus after the response,
something is added to the situation that the organism likes. The organism might be a rat,
a pigeon, a dog, you could go down to Sea World and watch them train all kinds of interesting, right,
mammals that swim, and people. So if the response goes up, it's reinforcement. If it's because
the consequence was pleasurable to the organism, then it's positive reinforcement. If the response
is increased due to the removal of an unpleasant stimulus, well it's still reinforcement because
the response has increased, but now its taking away something from the situation, negative,
as in subtracting, something that the organism doesn't like. One of my favorite examples,
you'll remember this, but not most of these people. But back in the day when they first tried to get
people to use seat belts, people just didn't use them. They thought it was ludicrous, so
the data supported that you should wear it, so public health measures were undertaken,
laws were written, and engineering solutions were designed where when you got into a car,
it would go 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.' An aversive stimulus would be terminated if you buckled
your seat belt. So, what did people learn to do more quickly? Buckle the seat belt to
prevent the aversive stimulus. So the seat belt buckling went up, because it took away
an unpleasant stimulus right? Now when people go, 'Well, I tried giving them reinforcement but
it didn't work.' Then they probably tried to treat an individual like a group. People don't have
time, especially in education, like I can't treat all these thirty kids individually,
I would suggest that, not only do you have time, but that if you do so you will save yourself
tremendous amounts of time finding out what reinforces some kids. Gold stars work for
some kids! They don't work for some kids, right? So you have to figure out what a kid
is valuing to see what will reinforce them for it to be effective. Some kids don't
like buzzers, some kids will go making crazy noises that will drive us all nuts, right?
So what's aversive to one kid may not be aversive to another kid. Punishment now, we got the
response decreasing, and we've got positive and negative punishment. If the response is
decreased, it's punishment. If it goes down, it's punishment. Now, if it was because you
presented an unpleasant stimulus, as a consequence, now you're adding that to the situation right?
As such, now we have positive punishment. If it's because the consequence removed something
pleasurable from the organism, then you've got negative punishment. So here's a couple
situations for you. So, if I've got a kid and he's throwing spitballs in class, and
I say 'you're going to the principle's office right now!' I'm 'punishing' the kid. Well,
he kept on doing it. Well if he kept on doing it you didn't punish the kid. Spanking is
positive punishment, if it works. I didn't say it was a good thing to do, right? If a
kid is doing something and the parent says stop doing it, they keep doing it, and the
parent now applies an aversive stimulus, they have added that as a consequence. That's the positive
part, it just means it's added. If the kid stops doing it, in other words if the response
decreases, then it was punishment. But if the kid does it again and keeps on doing it,
then it was by definition reinforcement. Some kids being so starved of attention will take
negative, right? Not negative, right? They'll take what we consider to be bad attention
over no attention at all, right? So you tell this kid, 'you better stop the spitballs,
you go to the principals office!' This kid goes, 'alright then.' Goes out down the hall... takes
a while to get to the principal's office... gets to the principal's office, supposed to see
the principal. The principal's not in. Is the principal ever in? Nope. Sit down, principal's
busy. Killing time, principal finally comes, busy, says, 'what'd you do?' Don't do that
again or you'll get in trouble. Alright. Goes back down the hall. Now the kid is coming
back in, he keeps throwing spit balls, teacher is exasperated, 'I don't know what to do with
him, I punished him!' No, you didn't, right? The classroom situation, the kid's throwing
spitballs, he's getting laughter, right? Presentation of positive consequences, right? So he's going
'ohhh yea!' People are laughing, doesn't like being in the aversive classroom, you just
removed him from the aversive classroom. You had the opposite intended effect because you
didn't really understand behavior. And most people don't understand this, so instead of
blaming themselves for misapplications of very straight forward principles, they blame
the kids for failing to conform to their expectations for what should happen. So if you raise
kids, or teach kids, you should know this stuff. It depends on the target behavior,
figure out what you want to go up, or what you want to go down and its direction, whether
it's going up or going down, and whether a stimulus was removed or applied. This is just
some examples out side of that. Positive reinforcement, you turn in your homework on time. Teacher
praises you, gives you a dollar? No, not necessarily. Could give you a gold star, or could just
say 'great job, thanks for bringing that in.' Makes you feel good, If it makes you feel
good, right? If it doesn't, then it might not be an effective reinforcement right? But if
it does, then the kid's probably going to turn in homework on time again, meaning it's
been positively reinforced because you presented this pleasurable consequence. Got a headache,
headache's aversive. If I take, there's your contingency, if I take an aspirin, and if
that aspirin makes my headache go away, then in similar situations in the future when I
have a headache, I'm more likely to take an aspirin. Right? Because it's negatively reinforcing.
It removes an aversive stimulus to do the behavior more. Positive punishment. You don't
clean up your room when your parents ask you to, your parent yells at you, that's aversive
right? They don't like being yelled at, these kids. Well, what if they don't care? Then
it wouldn't a very effective behavior change strategy, right? But if it works, and the kid then stops
doddling and cleans up the room, right? What's happening there? The non-cleaning is going
down and cleaning is going up, so it depends on how you define it, right? If I get pulled
over and given a ticket, and I'm pulled over in front of my workplace, that I have colleagues
go by and see me getting pulled over, and I stop speeding in that area, or stop running
that red light. Was it because they added embarrassment, or because they added
a ticket, or delay? Or is it because they removed money from my wallet when I had to
pay the fine. It could be both. Yes. Exactly, usually lots of things are in operation, but
very few people take the time to pull them apart like this. So really, what we're talking
about is understanding that you're looking at a target behavior and you're analyzing
it. Applied behavior analysis has great, great impact on lots of areas of life, not the least
of which include the treatment of autism and teaching children, etc., and I gave you this
little graph, right here for your own helpfulness. You get into my test you can use a scratch paper,
right? Drop down this little thing and you'll get, doesn't matter what question you get,
you'll know exactly what the answer is because you'll go, 'well, what behavior are we talking
about, what's the target behavior? And what's the consequence?' If the behavior's going
up, it's reinforcement, correct? Behavior goes down, it's punishment, no matter what we thought
it was going to do. Whatever it did is how we label it. If I'm applying a stimulus,
and the behavior's going up, it's positive reinforcement. If I'm applying a stimulus,
and the behavior's going down, it's positive punishment. If I'm removing a stimulus, and
the behavior's going up, it's negative reinforcement, and if I'm removing a stimulus, and the behavior's
going down it's negative punishment. It's that simple, but if you don't know it that
well, it will easily confuse you. As a parent, as a teacher, as a person taking a test. As
a person working with employees, this happens everywhere, believe me, right? We are all reinforced
for things, and punished for things, and we get our behavior shaped as a result. If you
get a raise, maybe you're more likely to do what got you the raise. If you get a pay deduction,
maybe you're less likely to do certain kind of work behaviors to compensate for that.
So it is applying to all of our lives. There's some pretty amazing applicability to this
information. And you have this in your notes. Now, check out this slide here. There's a
lot we could say about punishment but in the interest of time we won't go into great detail
about punishment, but are you writing stuff right now? Are you circling stuff right now?
Or have you already read this slide? And read the bottom where it said, in white font, are
you right now behaving in a manner consistent with previous reinforcement of writing down
white-fonted material? Ahhhhhhhhhh! You see I'm not a rat. I'm not a pigeon, you
can't condition me to do stuff. I found that out by accident once, where I was really not
very savvy with PowerPoints, And the second PowerPoint, or whatever came up in the sequence,
and like everything came up and there was some white fonted stuff on the bottom, I
was talking about what was on top, and everybody went... I'm like 'I'm not talking about that
yet!' But I couldn't override the conditioning. I couldn't. Me telling them, I'm trying to
stay up at the top of the slide didn't make them stay at the top of the slide! The conditioning
told them to go where? To where the reinforcement is. This is the information I need for my
test, that's where I'm going! Boom! I said 'wow, that's a powerful demonstration.' And
if you already read that slide, you might go 'ahhhh, I see what you were going to do.' Punishment
rules apply quickly after the behavior, use the lowest effective level, be consistent,
give an explanation appropriate to the age, always reinforce alternative desired behaviors,
use physical punishment rarely, and carefully. Because otherwise they just learn to escape
you or avoid you, and you model some pretty maladaptive coping strategies. If you use physical
punishment harshly and arbitrarily, what it implies to the kid receiving it is, 'as an
adult when I don't know what to do, I hit people.' So, guess what the kid is more likely
to do? Kids with high levels of physical punishment are more likely to use physical aggression
in school. It's not that you can't use it, it's that you need to be careful about it,
you need to be consistent with it, use the lowest possible level of it, then as soon
as they're able to start getting their behavior modified by other consequences, like taking
away privileges, or toys, or whatever, telephone, or driving rights, or whatever it is. Those
should be used instead of physical punishment because they're more effective in the long run,
for a lot of reasons, and they don't come with the side effects.