Question

Shania wants to immediately stop her five-year-old daughter from pulling the cat’s tail. To do so most effectively, she should: a. ​leave the child alone when she sees her treating the cat well. b. ​start with a very mild reprimand and then gradually increase its severity. c. ​wait for several hours before handing out a punishment. d. ​accompany a punishment with an explanation.

Answer 1

Answer:

d) Accompany a punishment with an explanation

Explanation:

Punishment is a term used in psychology and in operant conditioning to refer to any change that occurs after a behavior that reduces the likelihood that that behavior will occur again in the future. Punishment focuses on reducing or eliminating undesired behaviors.

Researchers have found that there are some characteristics that punishments have to meet in order to be more effective:

1. Punishment is more likely to lead to a reduction in behavior if it immediately follows the behavior.
2. Punishment achieves greater results when it is consistently applied. This means that it has to be administered every time the undesired behavior occurs.  
3. One of the greatest drawback is the fact that punishment does not actually offer any information about more appropriate or desired behaviors. So, in order to avoid this, it will be desirable to administer punishment but also to offer additional information on more appropriate or desired behaviors as well as an explanation.

In the example, Shania wants her 5-year-old daughter from pulling the cat's tail (undesired behavior). To do so, and looking at the drawbacks in punishments we saw before, we can say that the most effective way to do so would be d) to accompany a punishment with an explanation. (look at point 3 of explanations)

Note:

a) Would not work because the kid would not get a reinforcement for treating the cat well.

b)Punishment needs to be constantly applied so starting with a mild reprimand and then increase its severity would not work if she wants to IMMEDIATELY stop the behavior.

c) We know that the punishment needs to immediately follows the behavior so this option wouldn't work.