Responses that lead organisms to get rid of painful stimuli or avoid and escape from them provide negative reinforcement. For example, one learns to put on woollen clothes, burn firewood or use electric heaters to avoid the unpleasant cold weather. One learns to move away from dangerous stimuli because they provide negative reinforcement.
If an adaptive behaviour occurs rarely, positive reinforcement is given to increase the deficit. For example, if a child does not do homework regularly, positive reinforcement may be used by the child’s mother by preparing the child’s favourite dish whenever s/he does homework at the appointed time. The positive reinforcement of food will increase the behaviour of doing homework at the appointed time.
Systematic desensitisation is a technique introduced by Wolpe for treating phobias or irrational fears.
Modelling is the procedure wherein the client learns to behave in a certain way by observing the behaviour of a role model or the therapist who initially acts as the role model. Vicarious learning, i.e. learning by observing others, is used and through a process of rewarding small changes in the behaviour, the client gradually learns to acquire the behaviour of the model.
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