Nonverbal Communication

Ever have that "ability" to communicate with a really good friend of yours without actually saying anything? Some people claim that they share a sort of "telepathy" with a specific person and can relay messages without saying a single word to them. How does this happen? We find that this form of communication is stronger with those we have a good relationship with, mainly because those we appreciate more share the same behaviors as we do. That sort eye shrug followed by rolling your eyes can say so many different things without verbally speaking. This is what we call nonverbal communication, and is a learned social behavior.

Nonverbal communication is essentially the language technique used to convey meaning and information to others by way of facial expressions, gestures, eye gaze, nodding your head, appearance, and a large number of things. These forms of communication vary as many of us use them differently. For example, if we are sad and want someone to know about it, we may frown or cry. If we want to get someones attention, we may wave our hands, snap our fingers, or wink at them. Me and my best friend usually have a way of communicating when certain people walk in the room, where one of us will shoot the other a look and we automatically know what were saying. But the beauty of it is we are on the same page almost all the time. To me, this is largely due to our ability to share the same behaviors.

Extinction

We have been learning about ways to strengthening operant behavior through reinforcement. Like we already learned behaviors can be strengthened through reinforcement. But what we did not touch on is that a behavior can be wakened through extinction. Extinction is the non-reinforcement of a former reinforced response; the results of this process is a decrease in the strength of that responses strength. For example, a child learned that every time he whines he will receive candy, he will continue to whine every time he wants candy but, if you switch it up and withhold the candy the frequency of the whining will decline. This is an example of a gradual weakening of a conditioned response that resulted in the behavior decreasing or disappearing. When you stop rewarding the behavior will eventually stop. This is something that is important for everyone to know, it is a useful tool that we will all come across as adults whether we are dealing with a child or an animal.

Extinction in operant condition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_YobQy3wxA

Positive Punishment

 As we have learned previously, reinforcement is a procedure that strengthens a behavior, and punishment is a procedure that weakens behavior. When dealing with positive punishment it can tend to get a little confusing. The work positive means that a behavior is followed by the presentation or addition of something “positive”. In this situation, the word positive when it is paired with punishment, does not refer to good or pleasant, it just means that the response resulted in something being added or presented. Resulting in the delivery of something the person or animal hates, this will result in them being less likely to behave that way in the future. When dealing with word negative, this is referring to the removal of something, this scenario would be the subtraction of something from the situation. In simpler terms, the word negative does not refer to something bad, it is referring to a response resulting in the removal of something. For example, if a child is acting bad their toys will be taken away. To sum this all up, in this situation when dealing with the word positive punishment the word positive only means that the behavior has resulted in something being added, and the word punishment means that the behavior will decrease in strength. If a situations consequence weakens the behavior this would-be punishment.  

Positive Punishment broken down in examples from popular children’s movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeNGYdUZFQI