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Goal Setting Theory vs Reinforcement

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Submitted By bushrahabib
Words 8155
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The Behavior Analyst

1995, 18, 173-185

No. 1 (Spring)

Encore
"Reinforcement" in Behavior Theory
William N. Schoenfeld Queens College, City University of New York, and Cornell University Medical College
In its Pavlovian context, "reinforcement" was actually a descriptive term for the functional relation between an unconditional and a conditional stimulus. When it was adopted into operant conditioning, "reinforcement" became the central concept and the key operation, but with new qualifications, new referents, and new expectations. Some behavior theorists believed that "reinforcers" comprise a special and limited class of stimuli or events, and they speculated about what the essential "nature of reinforcement" might be. It is now known that any stimulus can serve a reinforcing function, with due recognition of such parameters as subject species characteristics, stimulus intensity, sensory modality, and schedule of application. This paper comments on these developments from the standpoint of reflex behavior theory.

From its modest beginnings in behavior science, the term "reinforcement" has come to play a central role in modern behavior theory. Like so many others in psychology, the verb "to reinforce," and its cognate nouns and adjectives, were an importation from common usage in which they had seen broad service: reinforced concrete; reinforcing a conclusion; reinforcing a fence; and so on. In acquiring their new dignity in science, they have also acquired some status adjectives like "positive" and "negative." "Reinforcement" itself has won the final encomium of designating an entire branch of behavior theory as "reinforcement theory." All this despite the fact that the term and all its kin lack the clear meanings that theory would desire to lean upon. That fact, though true from the beginning, was indifferently (or so it seems in retrospect) put

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