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[chaoticag]

First off, anyone that knows anything about training animals knows what this is about. Positive reinforcement is encouraging good behavior through rewards, and reward associated behavior. Dolphin trainers feed them fish, monkey trainers give bananas and so on.

Non-reinforcement is when the animal does something wrong, no reward or indication of reward is given. Monkey screws up, no banana, simple as that.

So here we go: does anyone think that this is a good idea to treat people this way? What about children? Anyone knows any stories?

I know for a fact that dolphins sometimes give their trainers a non-reinforcement treatment from time to time.

[winner]

I know I tried training my parents that way. It works some of the time

[ToonyMan]

You never know though, a whale killed someone in Orlando Sea World yesterday.

Positive reinforcement has a lot of variables.

[chaoticag]

Any details on that toony? It might help paint the picture.

[Cthulhu]

Kids are already raised like that.

"You want x?  Clean your room"

"You threw a baseball through the window?  No allowance"

It's all reinforcement/punishment.

[Duke 2.0]

 Apparently the whale has killed before, back in 1991 and 1999 with a trainer and trespasser respectively. No mention in the news stories on how the whales were trained, although it is safe to assume it was the "Do a trick and you get a fish" routine.

 I'm thinking positive reinforcement is good at first to form a bond of sorts. Then later on non-enforcement can be used.

[ToonyMan]

Any details on that toony? It might help paint the picture.

This article looks about right, I saw it on the news yesterday.

[chaoticag]

Kids are already raised like that.

"You want x?  Clean your room"

"You threw a baseball through the window?  No allowance"

It's all reinforcement/punishment.

Not really, the idea here is not to punish, but to pay absolutely no attention to the person when he or she does something wrong. Not a carrot and stick method at all.

This article looks about right, I saw it on the news yesterday.

Little off topic, but I think that that whale gave a man a Darwin Award ten years ago. He definately had a record, and wasn't treated all that well given the size of his tank.

[Flaede]

I recall something in a psych text/article about an "experiment" done by students on teachers, where they all looked away, unless the teacher was doing certain things/standing in a certain place, etc. When the "behaviour" being reinforced happened, however, the students would all look up in displays of rapt attention.

It worked. They could get their teachers to teach entirely from one small section of the classroom, make specific gestures a lot...  I can't remember what other "behaviours" they tried to reinforce, I'll have to see if I can find the text.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Apparently the whale has killed before, back in 1991 and 1999 with a trainer and trespasser respectively.

Beautiful. One would think that deserves a Darwin Award: Trespassing on a site containing a killer whale that HAS KILLED.

EDIT: Wow, that's what I get for skipping three posts.

[Jude]

Reinforcement is known to the the most effective way to shape behavior. Anybody working with kids - and a lot of helping professions working with adults - have positive reinforcement as their basis. Basically, you reward kids for doing their homework, for sitting attentively in class, for interacting positively with you or others, and so on. You use punishment (whether that's scolding, yelling, time-outs, whatever) as little as possible, partly because its efficacy is known to be far less than that of "non-reinforcement" as the OP called it.

The "reward" doesn't even have to be a material reward. Just having a positive interaction with a good adult figure can be reinforcement for kids. Also, even paying ANY attention to them can serve as reinforcement, even if you're yelling at them or scolding them - which is one reason a lot of attempts at reducing behavior backfire, since the "punishment" involves paying attention to the kid, and can actually function as reinforcement.

[ToonyMan]

Like kids hurting themselves for attention.