What is the significance of alternative reinforcement in psychology?

Reinforcement is the main theory of behaviorist psychology and was proposed by Skinner. He believed that a person or animal will adopt certain behaviors to act on the environment to achieve a certain purpose. When the result of this behavior is favorable to him, this behavior will be repeated later in life. If it feels unfavorable, or if there is danger, the behavior will diminish and disappear.

For most people, food, money, and other aspects can act as reinforcers and caring, praise, and smiling can play a similar role. For example, if your child is studying and you want him to get a high score on the test, you will tell him, "You have to do well on this test, and if you get 100 points, I will buy you a switch console!"

This behavior is a typical example of positive reinforcement.

Of course, in addition to positive reinforcement, there is also the existence of negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement here is not what people think of as punishment, punishment and negative reinforcement are not the same, negative reinforcement is mainly the elimination of unpleasant and then disgusting stimuli to achieve the reinforcing effect.

For example, if you get into a car without wearing a seat belt, the annoying alarm will sound and say in your ear: "Please fasten your seat belt, pay attention to safety! Please fasten your seat belt and be safe!" You will put your seat belt on immediately to stop this sound, and then the alarm will stop sounding.

The process of eliminating the aversive sound and fastening your seatbelt, thus achieving driving safety, is a powerful expression of negative reinforcement.

The timing and frequency of reinforcement determine its effect on behavior. Just like student exams, there are midterms and finals. To prevent students from studying on an ad hoc basis, teachers conduct regular quiz tasks and give grades, and in this way encourage students to study consistently and not to stop studying just because there is no exam halfway through.

With continuous reinforcement, the shaping of behavior will indeed have a positive effect.

However, a phenomenon has occurred in human life, an epiphany. The creation of an epiphany makes people suspicious of reinforcement. For example, if you want to change a light bulb and you are not tall enough, you will immediately think of taking the bench next to you and padding it up to be able to change it later. These phenomena are related to learning, but there is no reinforcement of the learning process, is it possible that humans can adapt to life around them "without reinforcement"?

For this reason, psychologist Tolman experimented, with the maze learning of rats. He let the rats roam freely in the maze, which is arranged in a complex road map, and the presence of food, to see whether the rats can find food. In the process, the rats received no reinforcement and were simply allowed to explore the maze.

In the absence of reinforcement, the rats were still given a learning experience to be rewarded with food. Although the learning was not evident in the rats' behavior at the time, Tolman called this "implicit learning.

Tolman's research was important in that it challenged the previously widespread behaviorist view, and behaviorist psychology made rapid progress. Subsequently, Albert Bandura followed in Tolman's footsteps and introduced the concept of observational learning. The process of reinforcement can work indirectly through observation, where the learner is indirectly reinforced by the fact that he or she can perceive the behavior of the role model being reinforced.

In other words, it is possible to obtain reinforcement even without acting directly on the reinforcer, a phenomenon known as "substitution reinforcement. The process of substitution reinforcement emphasizes the learning role of observation and imitation.

For example, a student in a classroom sees the class president helping other students in the class with homework and guiding them in their studies. After seeing the class president's helpfulness, he will also begin to imitate the class president's practices to help other students and use his time after school to tutor his low-achieving classmates.

Many studies have shown that behaviors that are reinforced by example tend to elicit imitation from learners, and this experiment was done by Bandura, Bobo dolls children's imitation of aggressive behavior. Let the child watch the aggressive behavior of adults on television, and after watching will follow these things, indirectly creating a tendency to aggression.

Compared to the positive and negative reinforcement of reinforcers, alternative reinforcement will have three implications: First, it can be learned through imitation of the correct course of behavior, reducing the resistance to learning. With the behavior of the role model, it is much easier to imitate to do it, and it will not be wrong to do it based on the previous person, which can get more sense of achievement and learning motivation.

Second, alternative reinforcement will have the process of observation, and in the process of observation there will be thinking, which can inspire the establishment of logical thinking and cognitive process of the learner, a more highly adaptive category.

Third, there is an increase in subjective and motivated behavior. The significance of alternative reinforcement is that it can shape the individual to continue the process of good behavior "without reinforcers" than the stimulation of reinforcers.

Take the example of rewarding a child with a switch game console, which allows the child to learn through a state of reinforcement. However, the person who learns becomes satisfied and loses interest in the reinforcer, and multiple successive reinforcements can lead to negative effects on the individual. Rewarding 1 time is okay, rewarding 2 or 3 times or the console, the child will not be interested and the motivation to learn will have diminished.

Instead of this, it would be better to have him follow someone's example and indirectly supervise and guide him to carry out learning and improve his behavior from personal motivation.

Therefore, the process of alternative reinforcement is positive and improves the process of shaping behavior through external assistance. Observational learning, imitation, and other behaviors, can also produce reinforcement of individual behavior, which is a source of progress for people. Learning can also be more complex, looking for useful information from various information processing processes