Operant Conditioning and Parenting Practices between Hispanics and North Americans

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There were two families at the park with their kids. One family was Hispanic and the other family was American. The kids where out on the playground, and they started fighting. The Hispanic mother grabbed her child and spanked him. While the American mother grabbed her child and explains to him why the situation was wrong and took away the toy that he had. These mothers use operant conditioning to discipline their children. Both mother use punishment, but the Hispanic mother used positive punishment because she added something to the situation. During the same time, the American mother used negative punishment because she took away the kids toy. The use of operant conditioning to modify children behavior is different between American and Hispanic parents.
Skinner developed operant conditioning, another style that can explain how people get and manage voluntary behaviors (Hockenbury and Hockenbury, 2014, pg.199). Operant conditioning is the learning development that associates with changing the probability that a response will be done again by shaping the consequences of that response. One likely outcome of a behavior is reinforcement. Reinforcement is a stimulus that increases the behavior to be repeated in the future. There is two types of reinforcement; positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Both are processes that increase a particular behavior. Both of this ways can affect future behavior, but they do it in different ways. In operant conditioning positive means adding something and negative means removing something. people can know if positive reinforcement has occur if a reinforcing stimulus makes them more possible to repeat a behavior in a similar situation in the future. According to Hockenbury and Hockenbu...

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Hockenbury, D. H., & Hockenbury, S. E. (2014). Discovering psychology (6th ed.). New
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Fox, R. A., & Solis-Camara, P. (1997). Parenting of young children by fathers in mexico and the united states. The Journal of Social Psychology, 137(4), 489-495. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/199801650?accountid=39001 Ember, C. R., & Ember, M. (2005). Explaining corporal punishment of children: A cross-cultural study. American Anthropologist, 107(4), 609-619. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/198124225?accountid=39001 Strom, R. D., Strom, P. S., & Beckert, T. E. (2008). Comparing black, Hispanic, and white mothers with a national standard of parenting. Adolescence, 43(171), 525-45. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/195938195?accountid=39001

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