Stupid Textbook Tricks

[lydy]

Allow me to quote from my Psychology textbook, Essentials of Psychology by Stephen L. Franzoi. "How do you know something is a reinforcer? Simple. Observe whether it increases the behavior it follows. While 'friend play' reinforces my daughters' room-cleaning, I have learned that allowing them to watch a football game on television with me is not a reinforcer." What a boneheaded sentence. It's not a matter of not being able to guess at what he means. It's just that his sentence doesn't say that. (No, football watching had not been referenced earlier, nor is it referenced later.)

I hate textbooks. They're full of crap like this. It drives me mad.

Comments

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

A mind is a terrible thing; unless I'm completely wrong about what he meant, I not only didn't guess it, but got it from what he wrote, and inferred that:

1. he's tried letting his daughters watch football on TV with him, and that didn't increase how often or well they cleaned (presumably their) rooms, that

2. 'friend play' (whether that's being allowed/encouraged to play with their friends, or him playing with them like their friends would) does increase how often or well they cleaned the same room or rooms.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

That's what I got as his meaning, too. My quibble is mainly with the phrasing "allowing them to watch a football game on television with me is not a reinforcer," because I'll bet you dollars to donuts it is a reinforcer, just not of room-cleaning.

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

Sure. And he should have had you as his copyeditor, and decided whether or not handling the quibble would detract from the thrust of it.

What I really like about this sort of definition, is that it's utterly objective: a reinforcer is what produces repetition of the behavior it follows. It doesn't have the baggage of "reward," even though the two ideas have a lot of overlap.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I don't think his thrust is very good. It certainly isn't patently obvious that allowing them to watch a football game on TV with him after they clean their rooms would not reinforce their room-cleaning, but to me his phrasing sounds as if he expects the reader to think, "Well, duh "No, of course not." But the only basis I can think of for that response (and this may be a failure of my imagination) is the assumption that girls don't like watching football with their dad as much as they like "friend-play" (whatever the heck that is)--which apparently is true of his daughters, but not necessarily of all daughters.

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

I think your imagination is failing; sounds to me, from the brief report, that he's making fun of himself -- his notion that it'd be some great treat/reward/reinforcer for Daddy to let the kids sit on the couch and watch roidraging millionaires haul around a pigskin.

Would that be a big deal for some daughters? Well, yeah, it probably would. Poor kids.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Can't speak for fathers and their daughters, but it has made for great mother-and-sons bonding in this house. I can't say that it ever got them to increase their room-cleaning, though... (My bad timing, I guess.)