What is an example of accidental reinforcement?

You might be reinforcing disruptive or maladaptive behaviors without even realizing it. In the example above, yelling at a child actually reinforced disruptive behaviors. If a child is screaming because they want to escape a situation and is told to leave the room, the behavior will most likely increase, meaning that you inadvertently reinforced the screaming behavior. If a child engages in elopement (leaving the room or designated area), to gain attention, and you follow that child out of the room while telling them to come back, you are again reinforcing that behavior. On the other hand, if a child screams and kicks, and you raise your voice to tell the child to stop, and the behavior increases over time, you positively reinforced the screaming and kicking. If a child yells and demands you remove something because of the smell, you do and the behavior increases, you negatively reinforced the yelling and demanding.

Accidental reinforcement is either something that we do or something that the dog encounters in or about the environment, that can contribute to the dog to repeat something in the future. Let’s say that you let your dog scavenge dropped cookies from other dogs before your dog eventually alerts on the hide. Then you give your dog a little piece of cheese and call it a day. What reinforcement happened here? Well, to a small extent your dog earned a piece of cheese which can be fairly important depending on the dog, but along the way the dog rehearsed self employment and gained a lot of enjoyment snarfing up things on the ground. You have now built Snarfing into your dog’s searching and you can expect lots of snarfing in the future. Scavenging is a highly reinforcing pastime for dogs. Accidental reinforcement doesn’t even need to be food related. In this case, let’s say we are referring to handlers working unknown number of hides, very often dogs will start to check in when all the hides have been found within the area that has been actively searched. This is enough to be reinforcing. Fast forward, the dog starts to look at the handler sooner and sooner in the search and POOF the team starts to miss hides. Accidental reinforcement can also occur as a result of training mistakes or lack of clear criteria, pawing at the hide is a common example that comes to mind. In this case the dog reaches the hide and isn’t sure how to communicate, if there is any inconsistency in what they have been reinforced for in the past, you might find that through either enthusiasm or frustration, they throw a paw into their indication. The handler in this case is often at a loss and are so fearful for not feeding an indication at odor that the dog gets paid for a paw.

A dog owner who gives their dog a treat every time the dog becomes aggressive in an attempt to calm the dog down is accidentally rewarding the undesirable behavior. If this reward occurs frequently enough, the dog will associate aggression with rewards may become more aggressive. Teachers who, for example, allow students to skip homework assignments that are too difficult are accidentally rewarding the students and may be encouraging them to avoid trying, to feel incompetent, or to underperform. When a child throws a tantrum because he or she wants to leave a store, a parent might leave the store because they are embarrassed. Thus the child learns not only that throwing a tantrum is an effective strategy, but also that tantrums can get him/her the attention he/she craves. Many parents, in an attempt to avoid momentary embarrassment or frustration, reward their children for undesirable behavior.

For example, if your child whines at you and you respond by giving them a biscuit (or a smartphone) to keep them quiet, the biscuit (or smartphone) is potentially acting as a positive reward for the whining. Your child may be more likely to whine again in the future because their whining was rewarded. Whining probably isn’t a type of communication that you want to encourage, so this is an accidental reward – one we didn’t mean to give. Through our response, we have unintentionally reinforced behaviour (whining) that we didn’t intend to encourage. Attention is to kids like sunshine is to plants – they will grow in its direction. Our toddler has learnt that licking the TV screen will directly result in the positive reward of capturing a parent’s undivided attention. Children can learn that a quick way to get the reward of Mum’s or Dad’s attention is to pick a fight with their younger brother. It might not be positive attention but even negative attention can act as an accidental reward.