Mark and Kathy take their 2-year-old son to the supermarket every Saturday. Each week, the same sequence of events unfolds: Their son screams, demanding that they buy him treats. Although they refuse to give in to his demands, he continues to scream. Finally, either Mark or Kathy gets in their son's face and yells at the top of their lungs "Shut up!" He stops screaming instantly. What operant conditioning concepts are illustrated in this story?
A) The parents are using negative reinforcement to increase their son's screaming.
B) The parents are in a very dysfunctional marriage; their child's screaming is his way of trying to get his parents to remain married.
C) The parents are using punishment to suppress the screaming; their use of punishment is negatively reinforced by the cessation of screaming.
D) Their son probably learned how to scream by observing his parents at home, and now he is reinforced on a variable-interval schedule of reinforcement.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The parents are using punishment in the form of yelling at their son to suppress his screaming behavior. This punishment is then negatively reinforced by the cessation of the screaming, as the behavior is less likely to occur in the future as a result. Option A is incorrect as the parents are not reinforcing their son's screaming behavior. Option B is unsupported by the information given in the story, and Option D is unrelated to the behaviors exhibited in the story.

Mark and Kathy Take Their 2-Year-Old Son to the Supermarket