LTR Final Project Post

PART 1

Positive punishment is something that can be mistaken for negative reinforcement, and is the presentation of an unpleasant stimulus after the response to decrease that response. For example, most of us learned at a young age to NOT swat at a bee, as the likelihood that it will sting you increases. So when one gets stung, they are less likely to swat at the bee again. That, my friends, is positive punishment. Animals also have the ability to benefit from positive punishment. If your cat is scratching your new couch, and you spray him with water, the scratching will decrease. The water is an unpleasant stimulus, therefore decreasing the undesired response.

PART 2

I believe one of the reasons I found Learning: Theory and Research so intriguing is because it took many of the topic I enjoyed from previous psychology classes and went more in depth. For example, I had no idea classical conditioning could be so complicated! Sure, I knew about reinforcement, both positive and negative, stimulus extinction, and typed of punishment, but the depth in which we looked into those aspects of psychology opened the area much wider for me.

I found that the topic of reinforcement to be very useful to me, as I will likely be able to use it in the future. I hope to become an occupational therapist, and knowing in depth various ways to help children with special needs accomplish their goals will be very useful. For example, the Premack principle would be extremely useful, as well as other schedules of reinforcement.

All in all, this class has been very beneficial to me and I will be able to use what I learned in the future