The first reinforcement is positive reinforcement. Wood an et al. (1995) say that “ Positive reinforcement: and increase in behavior that results from an added consequence.”(Wood, et. al., 2011) Therefore here the authors are saying that once you have a positive reinforcement the behavior will increase because of the increase of a consequence. Like for example Wood,Wood, & Boyd use an example to show what they mean which is, “ Rat learns to press a lever (increased behavior) to obtain a food pellet (added consequence). (Wood, et. al., 2011) By this the rats behavior increases to press the lever because it wants the food which comes out each time it keeps on pressing the lever. So by this another great example would be if a dog learns how to stand up(increased behavior) it will receive dog treats every time it does so (added consequence). By this the example is trying to convey that the dog continuously is standing up to get its treats which they will do because they know they are getting a reward for doing so. Basically in general positive reinforcement is if you increase your behavior in one thing then you will get a reward or a great outcome like the dog and the rat did. By this their is also another type of reinforcement which is negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement (1995) is as stated “ You may already predicted the definition of negative reinforcement because it follows logically from …show more content…
Positive punishment is basically the opposite of reinforcement since you have a decrease of a certain behavior because, but the bad thing is you get a punishment. In the World of Psychology it explains the topic of the matter more briefly (1995) “ Positive punishment, behavior decreases after the addition of a consequence, usually an unpleasant one. For example, a driver avoids taking a particular route (decreased behavior) because it has caused him to become bogged down in traffic jams in the past ( added consequence).” (Wood, et. al., 2011)So by this the quote is saying that the behavior of a certain thing decreases because their is a consequence that follows. Like in the example that is used since the driver has been through horrible traffic in the past he decides to not even enter the location of where the traffic jams would happen. With this another great example would be the mailman is delivering mail to houses, but he just throws some mail to ones persons house without going in and putting it in the mailbox (decreased behavior) the reason why the mailman doesn’t enter through the gate and leaving the mail is that a week earlier a dog chased him and ripped his pants and he was really embarrassed and he didn’t want the same thing to happen again (added consequence). In my example the point was that the mailman decreased his behavior of entering a certain house, because their was a dog that