Child's Bed example essay topic
Shaping is also a good technique. It is accomplished by reinforcing "successive approximations", for example, say one day you just tell him to pull the covers smooth and then follow his correct action with a reward, then the next day you ask him to go a step further and arrange the pillows in order to get a reward. Since this method is best for only teaching complex behaviors, shaping will definitely teach the child how to make his bed, but it won't teach him to do it on a daily basis. The use of classical conditioning, in this particular situation, would generally not be favored by the parent (s).
Classical conditioning is when first an unconditioned stimulus (in this case it would be the parents verbally telling their kid to make his / her bed) is used to get the outcome they want (a made bed), also known as the unconditioned response. Then the unconditioned stimulus is paired up with a neutral stimulus, something that wouldn't normally be associated with the situation (such as a bell). Soon, because of this continuous pairing, the child begins to associate the neutral stimulus with making his bed. The neutral stimulus is then called the conditioned stimulus and the response to this "conditioned stimulus" is called the conditioned response (formally called the unconditioned response, they are exactly the same). Even though this method would probably be successful in teaching the child to make his bed, most parents would find that ringing a bell (or any other sort of NS / CS) every time they wanted their child to make their bed would be an action most suitable for animals, not human beings. Observational learning is also another technique that would probably be successful in teaching the actual task of making the bed, but would not provide the motivating factors needed to encourage continuous bed-making the way positive reinforcements do in operant conditioning.
It is a similar scenario with fixed ratio reinforcement. The child will learn to make his bed but only because he expects a to be rewarded afterwards every time. Soon the parent will get tired of rewarding their child everyday and stop, and rapidly, so will the child's bed-making. With variable ratio reinforcement, though, the child will not expect a reward after every time he / she makes his / her bed. The parent may say that on average every four times he / she will give a reward, the child may make his / her bed five or even six times without being asked to do so because they do not expect a reward every time.
In conclusion, I believe that the absolute best way to teach your son / daughter is to not just use only one of the techniques listed her, but to use a combination of them to teach and achieve a long lasting habit. I believe that shaping combined with variable ratio reinforcement would be the best way to not only to ensure that the task is taught, but also that the child continues to engage in his / her bed-making behavior. Of course every child is uniquely different so some of them will respond better to certain learning techniques than others. So, as parents, pick the one you think is the best for your child and start teaching!