Saturday, December 21, 2013

Learning - Reinforcement

In the last byte, we looked at graphical representation of the Reinforcement and Punishment Strategies. In today's byte, we attempt understanding the reinforcement better.

Reinforcement essentially implies the attempt to develop or strengthen desirable behavior by either bestowing positive consequences or withholding negative consequences. If the manager chooses to apply positive consequences to any desired action of his/her employees, then it results in positive reinforcement. These reinforcement take different forms in different organization - they could be bonus, awards, recognition, promotion etc.

Negative reinforcement is to be understood a bit closely - it results from a manager withholding negative consequence when a desirable behavior occurs. Example: A manager could choose not to exercise the choice of reducing pay for his employee who usually report late if the employee reaches office on time!

In addition to just these consequences, the schedules of reinforcement also play a very influencing role. These could be continuous, fixed, intermittent. Understanding the influence of these schedules for reinforcement would definitely be interesting, we shall make it the subject matter of the next discussion byte.

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