Negative Reinforcement In Children

What is “reinforcement”? There are two types of reinforcement: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. With positive reinforcement, you add something desirable in order to increase a certain response. For example, when a child uses manners, the parent rewards the child with praise or a sign of approval. The child will then do more in order to get that response from their parent. With negative reinforcement, you add an uncomfortable situation or take something away to make the situation uncomfortable in order to increase a certain response. For example, when you get in the car and the seatbelt alarm dings. The alarm will keep making the sound until you put your seatbelt on. The uncomfortable situation is the seatbelt dinging. When you get in the car, you will remember to put your seatbelt on as soon as possible because you don’t want to be bothered by the seatbelt alarm. What is “punishment”? Punishment is when you add …show more content…
By punishing the child, he/she won’t learn the correct behavior, but instead, learn what they cannot do. Punishment is usually out of anger. With positive reinforcement, the child will continue the desired behavior to increase their chances of obtaining a reward. This will teach the child what he/she should be doing. The child will not want to do something that will not yield rewards. Negative reinforcement will teach the child both what to do and what not to do by allowing the child to see the consequence of doing the wrong thing and seeing the importance of doing the right thing. The child will then continue to do the “learned” right thing in order to not be put in an uncomfortable situation. When the child is punished, the child will revert to doing the wrong thing, however, in secret. The child will find more ways to hide what he/she is doing so he/she will not be