Positive Reinforcement

Positive Reinforcement
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Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement involves encouraging a person to perform a specific desired behavior by offering them a desirable consequence, such as rewards, treats, praises, recognition, promotions, and bonuses. The favorable outcomes act as stimuli to enhance the likelihood of behaving appropriately. Thus, pleasant consequences motivate a person to change a problem behavior by avoiding it or replacing it with a desirable one. Additionally, the reinforcing stimuli make the person behave in the desired way even in the future to get a favorable outcome. The individual adopts a long-lasting appropriate behavior due to the expected consequence. They portray the desired behaviors to receive the expected rewards. This paper discusses positive reinforcement using two scenarios; a parent and a child with a problem behavior of untidiness and a teacher and a student with unwanted behavior of late assignments' submissions.
Parents and teachers can incorporate positive reinforcement to encourage children and students to perform appropriate or desired behaviors since the latter would get favorable consequences like rewards every time they behave appropriately. The teacher or parent should first do a functional analysis to identify the preceding actions (antecedents) of the problem behavior and the involved consequences, which help in behavior modification (Scott et al., 2018). Consequently, the parent or teacher can determine the specific target or appropriate behavior they desire in the child or student. Additionally, they can adopt some positive reinforcers, a consequence that enhances the chance of the desired behavior to reoccur, such as rewards, praise, and recognition to change the undesirable behavior, reducing the problem behavior (Scott et al., 2018). Positive reinforcers reward the appropriate behavior, increasing the probability of the behavior reoccurring and maintaining it since the individual obtains a positive thing (Chandler & Dahlquist, 2014). Therefore, recognizing the desired behavior once the individual portrays them motivates the person to continue acting appropriately to get the recognition.
For instance, a parent can reward a child with candies once they act in a desired way, like keeping their room tidy. Since the child enjoys the candy, it encourages them to portray the desired behavior for them to receive the reward. The candy is a positive reinforcement because the parent adds it as a consequence to increase the probability of the child cleaning their room (the desired behavior). The child will always prioritize tidying the room (antecedent) to get the candy (favorable consequence) (Chandler & Dahlquist, ...