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 (yelling "shut up") to suppress the screaming, and the cessation of screaming negatively reinforces their use of punishment. This is an example of negative reinforcement, where the removal of aversive stimuli (in this case, the screaming) increases the likelihood of a behavior (in this case, the parents' use of punishment). Option A is incorrect because the parents are not using negative reinforcement to increase their son's screaming, but rather using punishment to decrease it. Option B is an irrelevant and unfounded interpretation of the situation. Option D is incorrect because there is no evidence to suggest that the son is reinforced on a variable-interval schedule of reinforcement.

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