Educational Psychology / Unit 4 EDP 0340 review, 2 to 3 minutes
A Reward Is Not a Reinforcer
The idea
Behaviorism's most practical lesson is a discipline of measurement. A reward is whatever the teacher intends as pleasant; a reinforcer is whatever actually increases the behavior it follows. The two coincide less often than classrooms assume. Stickers, parties and praise are secondary reinforcers whose value depends on what they have come to mean to a particular student, so the same sticker can strengthen one child's behavior and do nothing for another's. Behaviorists therefore begin with a baseline, measuring how often the behavior happens before anything changes; they find out what the student actually prefers; they deliver the consequence immediately and at first continuously; and they check whether the behavior rises. Only then is it reinforcement. Punishment is held to the same test: a consequence is a punisher only if the behavior falls.
In practice
Worked example: a teacher announces a pizza party if the class turns in homework all week. Before deciding whether the plan works, the teacher counts how many assignments came in during the previous two weeks. For a student who dislikes parties, the promise changes nothing; for a student who wants the teacher's attention more than pizza, a quiet note home might work where the party does not. If the count rises and stays up, the party reinforced homework. If it rises for a week and then falls, the plan did not build a habit, and fading to natural reinforcers never began.
Where people slip
Most school reward systems skip the measurement and assume that anything pleasant must reinforce. When the behavior does not change, the conclusion drawn is often that reinforcement does not work, when the consequence was never a reinforcer for that student. The same error runs the other way with scolding, which can reinforce a behavior when attention is what the student wants. Measuring first is what keeps behavioral methods honest.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for Educational Psychology