AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Negative reinforcement increases the target behavior by taking away something aversive. Negative punishment decreases the target behavior by taking away something preferred. In the following example, a student’s “target behavior” is not paying attention to her teacher, or off-task behavior.

Detailed explanation-2: -An example of positive reinforcement is: A child receives money for doing chores. Negative reinforcement is where instead of being rewarded with an item for making positive choices, and item or stimulus is removed after a specific behavior is shown.

Detailed explanation-3: -An example of positive punishment is scolding a student to get the student to stop texting in class. In this case, a stimulus (the reprimand) is added in order to decrease the behavior (texting in class). In negative punishment, you remove a pleasant stimulus to decrease a behavior.

Detailed explanation-4: -At dinner time, a child pouts and refuses to eat her vegetables for dinner. Her parents quickly take the offending veggies away. Since the behavior (pouting) led to the removal of the aversive stimulus (the veggies), this is an example of negative reinforcement.