Hi Michael, This sounds more like negative or positive punishment. Either they are "given" (the positive part) bad music to "decrease" the likelihood they will not stop writing again OR they are "taking away" (the negative part) the written words, again to decrease the likelihood the will stop writing again.
I don't get the reinforcement part. Reinforcement increase the likelihood that a behavior will occur again and therefore they would be increasing the likelihood that the person would again stop writing. Doesn't make sense. Nina ----------------------------------------------------------------- A friend of mine is participating in the annual National Novel Writer's Month, in which participants try to write 50,000 words by the end of November. There's a neat little online application called "Write or Die" which uses a little negative reinforcement to keep writer's writing. Basically you choose how many words you're going to write and within how much time you'll write them (say 100 words within 10 minutes) and then after you click "Write!" you get a blank page to start writing. Depending on some other options which you select, the site will start annoying you by playing really bad music if you stop writing. Set it on "evil" and it will start to erase the words you've already written if you don't keep writing! I thought it might be fun to show students the site and see if they can guess what reinforcement principle is at work. Here's the link to Write or Die: http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html Michael -- Michael Britt, Ph.D. Host of The Psych Files http://www.thepsychfiles.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
