Knock Wood - the Effect of Reinforcement on Adolescents - Essay Example

My question goes beyond what is currently known because there is a lack of substantial data to support the functioning of operant conditioning in human beings. Skinner’s experiments established how reinforcement affected behavioral change in pigs but the data may not apply to humans who have a different interpretation of cues.

Following is my experimental proposal to my question. The experiment will seek to identify the effect of reinforcement on adolescents. Adolescents have many factors affecting behavioral change. Therefore, studying behavioral change in this critical age will provide reliable information. Such information can prove reliable for inference in studies in other age groups. The experiment will analyze the different superstitions in adolescents critically.

If instead, the answer turns out to be that operant conditioning causes a behavioral change in adolescents, then subjects will instead either increase the frequency of certain behavior or extinct it depending on the type of reinforcement. If the answer to my question is that behavior change is not subject to operant conditioning, then I expect subjects will exhibit behavior changes in patterns that do not match with any form of reinforcement.