To understand any situation involving punishment or reinforcement just ask two q

Question

To understand any situation involving punishment or reinforcement just ask two questions: Does the behavior increase or decrease (was it reinforced or punished)? Was something added to the situation or taken away (positive or negative) to cause the change in behavior? Notice that negative reinforcement is NOT a fancy name for punishment. It has the very opposite effect as punishment. It increases the behavior whereas punishment always decreases the behavior Of course, many things we learn through operant conditioning have nothing to do with a parent's punishment or reinforcement but instead as we move and operate in the world we're being reinforced or punished through the consequences of our actions. Okay-- Here's your assignment. Consider this scenario: A girl is teasing her brother- he yells at her and she stops. (From this day forward he develops the habit of yelling at people who bother him.) She calls him a name so he hits her and she stops calling him names. (Now he begins hitting people whenever they bother him.) Sh sneaks up and bites him and he runs off to his room. (She loves this and starts biting other children at school to get her way.) Now the boy and girl start fighting all the time and eventually the mom can't take it and strides into th room, forces the stop fighting and are completely quiet. She sighs and walks back into the next room, finally able to relax in peace. The next time the and intimidates them into being quiet, and from then on she uses this kind of coercion with t frequently. The family atmosphere becomes increasingly unpleasant for everyone m into separate corners, and yells at them and berates them for their behavior. They children start having conflict the mother immediately yells at them hem This is what is known as a coercive family environment, where different members of the f and intimidation to get others to do what they want. Describe how negative reinforcement is at the root of this coercive environment. (Spell out exactly how negative reinforcement is working here.)

Explanation / Answer

Negative reinforcement revolves around aversive stimuli, aversive stimuli is the one that is unwelcome by the concerned individual, and hence he/she will do his/her best to avoid this stimuli before hand, which would lead them to perform a certain behavior that would help them avoid the coming of the stimuli.

Negative reinforcement works like a mathematical equation wherein you just have to subtract a certain behavior in order to avoid the unwelcome stimuli.

If we take the girl and the boy, the girl stops fighting (the behavior) with her brother in order to avoid the shouting (aversive stimuli) .Soon the brother stops fighting (The behavior) with her sister as she begin biting (aversive stimuli)

If we look at the mother, she get annoyed with the constant fighting of the two children, so she begins to yell at them (aversive stimuli), which in turn alleviates the fighting between the two siblings (the behavior).

So to increase the propensity of a calm environment, ironically, negative reinforcement (coercive force in the above context) is used.

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