Conditioning Children Debate

Arguments Against Conditioning Children

• Operant Conditioning - Home
• Morris (2014) - 'Naughty Step' can have long term effects on a child. Ad they cannot reflect on their own behaviour. This could have a negative impact on a child'd development
• In addition parents may not enforce the Naughty step calmly like they should and so reduces its effectiveness of conditioning in re life.
• Conditioning techniques such as naughty step cause psychological harm.
• conditioning techniques such as corporal punishment will cause physical harm.

Slide 2

• Operant Conditioning - At school.
• Montessori would reject the use of conditioning techniques believing they're harmful.
• Lepper et al (1973) supports this claim with their research into nursery children's behaviour - The child when motivated by reward will spend less time on the task suggesting the enjoyment of the task its self or the success of completing the task but the reward
• This is also has social implications because if we raise a generation on being motivated by money to get good grades rather than for the satisfaction to better oneself.

In Contrast,

• Operant Conditioning at home
• Gill (1998) - Paying children to do house hold chores resulted in children performing 20% of all house hold chores.
• Despite children performing better with financial rewards, is having a generation motivated by money healthy?
• Super Nanny (Jo Frost) says that rewarding children for good behaviour, using techniques such as reward charts. And for inappropriate behaviour should be punished with the use of a naughty step.
• The naughty step would only be effective when parents stay calm and collected, where as Morris argues they don't reducing its effectiveness

Slide 4

• Operant Conditioning - in schools.
• McAllister (1969) - found that an increase in 'Teacher praise' led to a decrease in 'inappropriate talking' in secondary school..
• Classical Conditioning - in schools
• Le Francois (2000) associating the class room with pleasant stimuli and reducing the association with negative stimuli increases student productivity,
• Vulnerable Children.
• Lovaas (1987) developed applied behaviour analysis (ABA) to increase social interactions with children diagnosed with autism, the child is rewarded for appropriate social interactions.
• Robinson et al (1981) found that token economy can be used to improve the literacy skills of those with hyperactivity issues, with the use of token economy.
• This is beneficial to vulnerable children because they will behave in a more 'normal' manner which will allow for them to be accepted in society, Employment etc....

Vulnerable Children.

• However,,,,,,
• ABA is highly demanding and requires around 40 hours of therapy a week. - costly
• Anderson et al (1987) found that an average of 20 hours per week was enough to see a significant improvement in the social behaviour of autistic children.
• It is also likely that symptoms would reappear when therapy ends.
• Is it ethical to manipulate vulnerables in this way?