Does Reinforcement Work? Republished Podcast Episode 5

Is reinforcement bribery? The answer is no.

A fairly standard definition of bribery includes offering money or something else to a person to persuade that person to perform an illegal or wrongful act. Here’s the definition of reinforcement. Reinforcement is a process that strengthens a behavior; increasing the probability of its occurring in the future by presenting a contingent positive event or removing a negative event.

Most parents and teachers would like to increase certain behaviors and decrease certain other behaviors in children. Most people would agree that there is nothing immoral about doing so, in fact the opposite is true. Parents and teachers are supposed to manage and teach behavior to children, not just allow all behaviors that arise. Is there anything wrongful or illegal in strengthening positive behaviors in others? Of course not. The use of the pejorative term of bribery comes from a misunderstanding of reinforcement or a dislike of it. However, the term is simply inaccurate.

The next question is whether or not reinforcement is effective at what it claims to do. The answer to that one, based on decades of research in behavioral science, is that reinforcement is very effective. There is a great body of research that supports and replicates the use of many kinds of reinforcement approaches in education and parenting for a wide range of behavioral concerns. Reinforcement has been used to help people increase pro-social behaviors, learn basic skills, reduce habitual negative behaviors and improve group relationships.

The third question is about practicality. Is it easy enough to learn and implement these techniques for most parents and teachers? Most teachers and parents can learn to use reinforcement effectively with relatively little support if they are provided with some training and guidance. Some people can read books or find references online that provide guidance. Most teachers have access to supports and training in schools to learn about different behavior management approaches. Most behavior management approaches use some aspects of reinforcement.

Look at how many forms of reinforcement are practiced by parents and teachers even without special instruction and training. Examples include, use of praise and positive attention to increase emerging behaviors in babies such as when they start vocalizing, when they begin to walk, when they attend to books. Praise and attention are among the most powerful forms of reinforcement. Teachers constantly use attention and praise to increase various student behaviors such as raising hands, finishing work and answering questions. These examples make reinforcement seem rather easy and obvious. However, the decades of research have also illuminated guidelines and principles that help improve the effectiveness of reinforcement and reduce the use of reinforcement that is ineffective or that backfires. That’s the catch, you may reinforce unwanted behavior, without realizing it. For example, frequently and dramatically focusing on negative behavior can reinforce negative behavior. Giving in to whining can reinforce whining.

Contingent reinforcement is generally recommended over non-contingent reinforcement. Don’t give reinforcement, such as attention and praise to all responses, but to those you want to increase. So far, that makes good sense. Yet so often, we give more attention to behaviors that bother us.

Reinforcement is effective when correct responses are acknowledged as correct and when as reinforcement is linked to student’s progress toward goals.

Using reinforcement to increase behaviors related to instructional objectives is just as beneficial as combining reinforcement of instructional behavior and other behaviors. In other words, many behavior and social problems can be reduced by improving instructional behavior. I see this a great deal in school psychology. Often the behavioral or social/emotional problems is really a response to inability or poor match of instructional demands and responses. Focusing on making the instructional climate work will reduce behavior problems in school and around homework.

In the next segment about reinforcement, we’ll discuss when our attempts at reinforcement works, when it fizzles and when it backfires. The good, the bad and the ugly. We’ll make sure you can tell the difference between these three states and learn to stay successful.

Kathleen Cotton's article about instructional reinforcement can be found at the following link. Her excellent review of the literature and discussion about how to effectively use reinforcement is both practical and helpful and it was my main source of research findings cited in this podcast.


Reference:

http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/2/cu3.html