Does this actually work? My understanding of conditioning is that it works best if the reward or punishment immediately follows the action, which the taking away of privileges doesn’t really: the consequences aren’t felt until later (which I imagine is why conditioning doesn’t stop people from drinking even if they consistently get terrible hangovers). I seem to recall that when my parents tried this kind of thing on me it just made me like them less.
If the goal is to get the child to think about the consequences of good and bad behavior, then you’re the one tacking on artificial consequences to that behavior, and I think children understand this. The real goal should be to get the child to think about the natural consequences of good and bad behavior if you’re going to use real-world behavior at all (as opposed to game behavior).
It works with my 8-year-old son. We have a learning/screen system set up where he has to do a learning exercise (such as math with daddy, Dual-N back or BrainPop ) to get video game time. Several times a day he will say “let’s do learning/screen” to start the process. He has internalized the need to do work first before getting what he wants.
If the daughter loves video games then give video game time as a reward for good behavior, and take away video game time for bad behavior.
I’m reminded of http://lesswrong.com/lw/2ay/rationality_quotes_june_2010/2385
Does this actually work? My understanding of conditioning is that it works best if the reward or punishment immediately follows the action, which the taking away of privileges doesn’t really: the consequences aren’t felt until later (which I imagine is why conditioning doesn’t stop people from drinking even if they consistently get terrible hangovers). I seem to recall that when my parents tried this kind of thing on me it just made me like them less.
If the goal is to get the child to think about the consequences of good and bad behavior, then you’re the one tacking on artificial consequences to that behavior, and I think children understand this. The real goal should be to get the child to think about the natural consequences of good and bad behavior if you’re going to use real-world behavior at all (as opposed to game behavior).
It works with my 8-year-old son. We have a learning/screen system set up where he has to do a learning exercise (such as math with daddy, Dual-N back or BrainPop ) to get video game time. Several times a day he will say “let’s do learning/screen” to start the process. He has internalized the need to do work first before getting what he wants.