In behavioral psychology, reinforcement refers to consequences that increase the likelihood of an organism's future behavior, typically in the presence of a particular antecedent stimulus.Definition of reinforcement from the American Psychological Association Retrieved on January 30th, 2024 For example, a rat can be trained to push a lever to receive food whenever a light is turned on; in this example, the light is the antecedent stimulus, the lever pushing is the operant behavior, and the food is the reinforcer. Likewise, a student that receives attention and praise when answering a teacher's question will be more likely to answer future questions in class; the teacher's question is the antecedent, the student's response is the behavior, and the praise and attention are the reinforcements. Punishment is the inverse to reinforcement, referring to any behavior that decreases the likelihood that a response will occur. In operant conditioning terms, punishment does not need to involve any type of pain, fear, or physical actions; even a brief spoken expression of disapproval is a type of punishment.
Consequences that lead to appetitive behavior such as subjective "wanting" and "liking" (desire and pleasure) function as rewards or positive reinforcement. There is also negative reinforcement, which involves taking away an undesirable stimulus. An example of negative reinforcement would be taking an aspirin to relieve a headache.
Reinforcement is an important component of operant conditioning and behavior modification. The concept has been applied in a variety of practical areas, including parenting, coaching, therapy, self-help, education, and management.
Terminology
In the behavioral sciences, the terms positive and negative refer, when used in their strict technical sense, to the nature of the action performed by the conditioner rather than to the responding operant's evaluation of that action and its consequence(s). Positive actions are those that add a factor, be it pleasant or unpleasant, to the environment, whereas negative actions are those that remove or withhold from the environment a factor of either type.
In turn, the strict sense of reinforcement refers only to reward-based conditioning; the introduction of unpleasant factors and the removal or withholding of pleasant factors are instead referred to as punishment, which when used in its strict sense thus stands in contradistinction to reinforcement.
Thus, positive reinforcement refers to the addition of a pleasant factor, positive punishment (sometimes called Type I punishment) refers to the addition of an unpleasant factor, negative reinforcement refers to the removal or withholding of an unpleasant factor, and negative punishment (Type II punishment) refers to the removal or withholding of a pleasant factor.
This usage is at odds with some non-technical usages of the four term combinations, especially in the case of the term negative reinforcement, which is often used to denote what technical parlance would describe as positive punishment, in that the non-technical usage interprets reinforcement as subsuming both reward and punishment and negative as referring to the responding operant's perception that the factorwas unpleasant. By contrast, technical parlance would use the term negative reinforcement to describe encouragement of a given behavior by creating a scenario in which an unpleasant factor is or will be present but engaging in the behavior results in either escaping from that factor or preventing its occurrence, as in Martin Seligman's experiment involving dogs learning to avoid electric shocks.
Overview B. F. Skinner was a well-known and influential researcher who articulated many of the theoretical constructs of reinforcement and behaviorism. Skinner defined reinforcers according to the change in response strength (response rate) rather than to more subjective criteria, such as what is pleasurable or valuable to someone. Accordingly, activities, foods or items considered pleasant or enjoyable may not necessarily be reinforcing (because they produce no increase in the response preceding them). Stimuli, settings, and activities only fit the definition of reinforcers if the behavior that immediately precedes the potential reinforcer increases in similar situations in the future; for example, a child who receives a cookie when he or she asks for one. If the frequency of "cookie-requesting behavior" increases, the cookie can be seen as reinforcing "cookie-requesting behavior". If however, "cookie-requesting behavior" does not increase the cookie cannot be considered reinforcing.
The sole criterion that determines if a stimulus is reinforcing is the change in probability of a behavior after administration of that potential reinforcer. Other theories may focus on additional factors such as whether the person expected a behavior to produce a given outcome, but in the behavioral theory, reinforcement is defined by an increased probability of a response.
The study of reinforcement has produced an enormous body of reproducible experimental results. Reinforcement is the central concept and procedure in special education, applied behavior analysis, and the experimental analysis of behavior and is a core concept in some medical and psychopharmacology models, particularly addiction, dependence, and compulsion.
History Laboratory research on reinforcement is usually dated from the work of Edward Thorndike, known for his experiments with cats escaping from puzzle boxes. A number of others continued this research, notably B.F. Skinner, who published his seminal work on the topic in The Behavior of Organisms, in 1938, and elaborated this research in many subsequent publications.Skinner, B. F. "The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis", 1938 New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts Notably Skinner argued that positive reinforcement is superior to punishment in shaping behavior. Though punishment may seem just the opposite of reinforcement, Skinner claimed that they differ immensely, saying that positive reinforcement results in lasting behavioral modification (long-term) whereas punishment changes behavior only temporarily (short-term) and has many detrimental side-effects.
A great many researchers subsequently expanded our understanding of reinforcement and challenged some of Skinner's conclusions. For example, Azrin and Holz defined punishment as a "consequence of behavior that reduces the future probability of that behavior," and some studies have shown that positive reinforcement and punishment are equally effective in modifying behavior. Research on the effects of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment continue today as those concepts are fundamental to learning theory and apply to many practical applications of that theory.
Operant conditioning
The term operant conditioning was introduced by Skinner to indicate that in his experimental paradigm, the organism is free to operate on the environment. In this paradigm, the experimenter cannot trigger the desirable response; the experimenter waits for the response to occur (to be emitted by the organism) and then a potential reinforcer is delivered. In the classical conditioning paradigm, the experimenter triggers (elicits) the desirable response by presenting a reflex eliciting stimulus, the unconditional stimulus (UCS), which they pair (precede) with a neutral stimulus, the conditional stimulus (CS).
Reinforcement is a basic term in operant conditioning. For the punishment aspect of operant conditioning, see punishment (psychology).
Positive reinforcement
Positive reinforcement occurs when a desirable event or stimulus is presented as a consequence of a behavior and the chance that this behavior will manifest in similar environments increases. For example, if reading a book is fun, then experiencing the fun positively reinforces the behavior of reading fun books. The person who receives the positive reinforcement (i.e., who has fun reading the book) will read more books to have more fun.
The high probability instruction (HPI) treatment is a behaviorist treatment based on the idea of positive reinforcement. Negative reinforcement
Negative reinforcement increases the rate of a behavior that avoids or escapes an aversive situation or stimulus. That is, something unpleasant is already happening, and the behavior helps the person avoid or escape the unpleasantness. In contrast to positive reinforcement, which involves adding a pleasant stimulus, in negative reinforcement, the focus is on the removal of an unpleasant situation or stimulus. For example, if someone feels unhappy, then they might engage in a behavior (e.g., reading books) to escape from the aversive situation (e.g., their unhappy feelings). The success of that avoidant or escapist behavior in removing the unpleasant situation or stimulus reinforces the behavior.
Doing something unpleasant to people to prevent or remove a behavior from happening again is punishment, not negative reinforcement. The main difference is that reinforcement always increases the likelihood of a behavior (e.g., channel surfing while bored temporarily alleviated boredom; therefore, there will be more channel surfing while bored), whereas punishment decreases it (e.g., hangovers are an unpleasant stimulus, so people learn to avoid the behavior that led to that unpleasant stimulus).
Extinction Extinction occurs when a given behavior is ignored (i.e. followed up with no consequence). Behaviors disappear over time when they continuously receive no reinforcement. During a deliberate extinction, the targeted behavior spikes first (in an attempt to produce the expected, previously reinforced effects), and then declines over time. Neither reinforcement nor extinction need to be deliberate in order to have an effect on a subject's behavior. For example, if a child reads books because they are fun, then the parents' decision to ignore the book reading will not remove the positive reinforcement (i.e., fun) the child receives from reading books. However, if a child engages in a behavior to get attention from the parents, then the parents' decision to ignore the behavior will cause the behavior to go extinct, and the child will find a different behavior to get their parents' attention. Reinforcement versus punishment Reinforcers serve to increase behaviors whereas punishers serve to decrease behaviors; thus, positive reinforcers are stimuli that the subject will work to attain, and negative reinforcers are stimuli that the subject will work to be rid of or to end. The table below illustrates the adding and subtracting of stimuli (pleasant or aversive) in relation to reinforcement vs. punishment.
+Comparison chart Rewarding (pleasant) stimulus Aversive (unpleasant) stimulus Positive (adding a stimulus) Positive reinforcementExample: Reading a book because it is fun and interesting Positive punishmentExample: Telling someone that their actions are inconsiderate Negative (taking a stimulus away) Negative punishmentExample: Loss of privileges (e.g., screen time or permission to attend a desired event) if a rule is broken Negative reinforcementExample: Reading a book because it allows the reader to escape feelings of boredom or unhappiness
Further ideas and concepts
Distinguishing between positive and negative reinforcement can be difficult and may not always be necessary. Focusing on what is being removed or added and how it affects behavior can be more helpful. An event that punishes behavior for some may reinforce behavior for others. Some reinforcement can include both positive and negative features, such as a drug addict taking drugs for the added euphoria (positive reinforcement) and also to eliminate withdrawal symptoms (negative reinforcement).