Psychology Essay: Learning

Parents are always looking for a way to not only teach their children how to do their chores, but also self-discipline to continue doing those chores, such as, making the bed. To teach you six year old son how to make his bed is one thing, to teach him to maintain that bed-making behavior is quite another. Presented with the following methods: operant conditioning, classical conditioning, observational learning, punishment, shaping, negative reinforcement, variable ratio reinforcement, and fixed ratio reinforcement, I will analyze each to conclude whether or not they would be effective in teaching a child to make his/her bed and maintain the behavior.
Operant conditioning, with the use of positive reinforcements (better known as a reward system), are factors that are likely to strengthen the probability that the operant behavior (in this case, bed-making) will occur again. On the other hand, providing a punishment or some sort of penalty when he doesn’t make his/her bed will, i...