Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!gollum!rolandi
From: rolandi@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM (rolandi)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: reinforcement
Message-ID: <84@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM>
Date: 5 Apr 88 13:44:13 GMT
Reply-To: rolandi@gollum.UUCP (Walter Rolandi)
Organization: NCR Advanced Systems, Columbia, SC
Lines: 47


In response to Arti Nigel:
>The qualifiers mean what you would expect based on standard English meaning:
>..... but I think you have a problem with my adjectives!

No problem at all.  I just needed to determine whether you were using 
adjectives as opposed to (say) coining some new technical terminology.

>>>Most parents do not follow their toddlers around correcting the grammar ...
>
>>is meant to convey that reinforcement in language acquisition is necessarily 
>>something that comes from one's parents.

>Well, okay, let's say from other people who are capable of responding
>differentially (of providing contingent reinf.) to the child's language
>production.  My nephew is an only child who as an infant was rarely around
>people other than his parents for a significant amount of time, so I made
>that mistake because I was thinking of him as I wrote the above.

OK.  Let's make a distinction between reinforcement (a process or act)
and reinforcers (stimuli that have reinforcing properties for an organism).
Positive reinforcement takes place when a stimulus follows a response
and, as a result, the probability of that response is increased.
Negative reinforcement takes place when a response is emitted and its
emission coincides with the termination of some aversive stimulation.  Like
positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement increases the probability of
the response.  

While reinforcement may be relatively easy to define, reinforcers,
at least outside of a laboratory or other experimental situation, are not 
always easy to identify.  What may act as one person's reinforcer could have 
a punishing effect on someone else's behavior.  Any arbitrary and neutral
stimulus can acquire reinforcing properties as a function of paired
association with an existent reinforcer.  Amazingly enough, even normally
aversive stimuli (like electric shock) can take on the characteristics of a
positive reinforcer under certain situations. The point is that it is 
difficult to identify reinforcing stimuli in terms of their inherent 
properties.  Although frequently assumed to be pleasant rewards, or in your 
case above, a parental correction, a reinforcer need not be appetitive nor 
even instructive.   What makes a stimulus a reinforcer is, rather, its 
function.  


Walter Rolandi
rolandi@gollum.UUCP 
NCR Advanced Systems, Columbia, SC
University of South Carolina Departments of Psychology and Linguistics