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Negative and Positive Reinforcers & Punishments

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Please explain negative and positive reinforcers, as well as negative and positive punishments. Please give an example that identifies and illustrates all four of these elements. Please indicate how confident you are feeling with the terms.

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Explains negative and positive reinforcers, as well as negative and positive punishments. This solution also gives an example that identifies and illustrates all four of these elements. Finally, it discusses personal confidence (or not) with the terms.

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1. I need an explanation of negative and positive reinforcers, as well as negative and positive punishments. Please give an example that identifies and illustrates all four of these elements. please indicate how confident you are feeling with the terms.

Operant Conditioning is the term used by B.F. Skinner to describe the effects of the consequences of a particular behavior on the future occurrence of that behavior. There are four types of Operant Conditioning: Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Punishment, and Extinction.

a. Explanation of negative and positive reinforces

The term reinforce means to strengthen, and is used in psychology to refer to any stimulus which strengthens or increases the probability of a specific response. Both Positive and Negative Reinforcement strengthen behavior while both Punishment and Extinction weaken behavior.

There are two kinds of reinforcers: positive and negative.

A positive reinforcer is something the subject wants, such as food, petting, or praise. It increases the likelihood the behavior will happened again like adding praise will increase the chances of your child cleaning his or her room.. For example, if you want your dog to sit on command, you may give him a treat every time he sits for you. The dog will eventually come to understand that sitting when told to will result in a treat. This treat is reinforcing because he likes it and will result in him sitting when ...

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