Blog 8, Week 2

Sandra is correct in stating that giving out rewards indiscriminately can "backfire". In my psychology 101 class I learned that a behavior is much more likely to be retained if rewards are given out intermittently. Giving out rewards each time an individual performs a task correctly is not actually reinforcing that desired behavior. This will become evident when the individual is no longer given an external stimuli, in the form of a reward (stickers in this case), for doing something that they will be expected to do without reward in the future. This regression to a undesirable behavior is seen in studies like the Pavlov dog salivation study. The dogs were taught that every time a bell rang they would receive food, thus they salivated. After a period of time, the the bell was rung, however, no food was given. Extinction of the salvation trait happened much more rapidly for the dogs that received rewards every time verses the dogs who received a reward at a set interval. The connection to students is, if an educator wants to build a solid educational foundation within a student, then they must give a reward at the correct time and for the correct reason. As the book illustrates in this section, students need to be rewarded for exerting effort not for just completing a task. An effort reward regiment is much more likely to result in students goals being focused on learning rather than performance (Meece and Daniels).This students will ascribe to the incremental theory of ability rather than the entity theory of ability. Intelligence may be set, however, the sky's the limit when effort is exerted. Constructive encouragement and discriminate rewards are a positive way to point students into the correct educational direction.