Conditioning children's behaviour debate Flashcards
Jo Frost
Supernanny Jo Frost used the “naughty step” to correct inappropriate behaviour.
The “Supernanny Team” argue that the naughty step work best when parents make a fuss of what their child does right. For example:
Giving positive reinforcement at appropriate times.
At home - APPROPRIATE (Pocket money)
Parental control over pocket money has long been used to increase positive behaviours.
Gill (1998)
Asked parents to encourage chore completion by the payment of pocket money. (This is an example of positive reinforcement.)
Or the postponement of pocket money.
(This is an example of punishment)
Gill concluded that these strategies were successful because children ended up performing 20% of the household chores.
At home - NOT APPROPRIATE
(Naughty step)
Techniques such as the naughty step are frequently criticised by childcare experts.
Morris (2014)
Claims that the “naughty step” can have long-term emotional effects.
Children don’t have the same ability as adults to reflect on their own behaviour and verbalise the feelings they experience from things like the “naughty step” experience.
Without empathy and help with their feelings, the “naughty step” may ultimately have a negative effect on development.
At home - NOT APPROPRIATE
(Consistency)
A further issue is consistency.
Parents may try to follow parenting gurus (like Jo Frost) and be calm and consistent whilst applying techniques such as the “naughty step”.
However, the stressful life of a full-time parent means that even the most dedicated parent may slip up and demonstrate frustration and inconsistency in their applications of conditioning techniques. Therefore, conditioning techniques are unlikely to be as effective in real-life as experts promise.
In school - APPROPRIATE
Education has been a major user of operant conditioning techniques to control behaviour.
Gold stars, merits and house points are positive reinforcers.
(The aim is to reward good behaviour and performance)
Praise is also reinforcing.
McAllister et al (1969)
Looked at inappropriate talking in high school English classes.
They found that the increased use of “teacher praise” and “teacher disapproval” led to a decrease in “in appropriate talking”.
In the control condition there was no decrease.
LeFrancois (2000)
Suggests that classical conditioning can be used to improve student performance.
For example:
He proposes that teachers should maximise the pleasant stimuli in their classrooms and minimise the unpleasant stimuli.
(Pleasant stimuli – attractive wall displays, nice smells and laughter)(Unpleasant stimuli – shouting and negative comments)
This means students have more positive feelings about the work environment and their behaviour and / or academic performance will improve.
In school - NOT APPROPRIATE
Montessori education believes that the reward and punishments advocated by conditioning techniques are harmful to a child’s development and that they interfere with a child’s internal drives to learn.
Conclusions
Parents, schools, peers and other agencies all have an obligation to ensure that children grow up able to function within the society in which they live.
This process of socialisation inevitably involves conditioning as that’s one of the basic routes to learning and teaching.
However, reward systems may be ineffective.
There are important ethical considerations that are related to the manipulation of behaviour. For example:
In vulnerable groups of children.
Lepper et al (1973)
Conducted research that supports this criticism.
Nursery children were asked to draw some nice pictures.
When children were promised a reward, they spent half as much time drawing as children who weren’t promised a reward.
This suggests that their own motivation had been destroyed the expectation of extrinsic rewards.
Dweck (1975)
A critical issue relates to how rewards may create a form of “learned helplessness.”
Found that children who were praised for doing good work on a maths test did worse on a later, more difficult test than children who had been told they were lazy.
The second group had learned task persistence whereas the “praised” group gave up easily.
This shows that rewards don’t always lead to better performance.
Implications
Vulnerable children may especially benefit from conditioning techniques.
By making their behaviour more “normal” it should make them more likely to be accepted within society.
However, the frequent use of rewards may actually lead to a society whereby some people are only motivated by extrinsic factors.
This means that society may become less cohesive and more selfish.
Levitt et al (2010)
Rewards or incentives are frequently used in education to improve outcomes.
They reviewed a programme in Chicago, USA, where children were offered financial incentives to improve, resulting in modest gains in performance.
This would ultimately benefit our society because school leavers would be better educated.
