Reinforcement

Overview

Reinforcement is the stimuli that help people strengthen a certain behavior. Reinforcement is under the behaviorism theory. Under that theory, all human actions are learnt by interacting with the environment. In education, reinforcement is often used because it is simple and effective in the early stages of developing certain habits. There are two types of reinforcement in behaviorsim. Positive reinforcement is “a stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response". The negative reinforcement is “Any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengths the response”.

Evidence

The Operant conditioning chamber (also called skinner box) shows a good evidence about how reinforcement strength behavior. The skinner box is built on Edward Thorndike’s puzzle box experiment. In Skinner's experiment, he put the mouse (Thorndike used the cat) in the box just like Thorndike did. In the box, a variety of stimulants was added. During mouse exploration, it will find a level which will give food if it pushes it. Although he will not immediately get used to the behavior, but long-term reward given, the mouse will become habitual behavior. This experiment illustrates that positive reinforcement works. Skinner also tested negative reinforcement. The rat will be kept in electric shock until it pushes the lever. Although the rat did not receive any reward for this behavior, the rat still acquired the habit in the long run. So this experiment demonstrates that negative reinforcement also shapes behavior.

Design Implications

In Martinez's article, he uses the example of a father trying to help his daughter develop the habit of folding her quilt. In order to encourage her to fold the quilt, the father would reward her for having performed the act. However, in order to avoid the daughter becoming dependent on the reward and thus not continuing the behavior if the reward is stopped, it is better for the father to reward her at random times. According to this example, if we want to use positive reinforcement to encourage students to study, we can give more verbal encouragement when they do well on a test, or give a reward for good performance on a random test. negative reinforcement is the classic example of a seat belt. Basically all cars now have a setting that will always trigger an alarm if you don't wear your seat belt. If the car owner does not want to hear the annoying noise, he or she must wear the seat belt. Over time, the habit of wearing a seat belt will develop. Between the fact that the alarm is always there, we don't have to worry that removing it will cause the behavior to go away.