Psychology

Today we were required to read a section from out Inquiry Studies book.  It just so happened to be about a psychology experiement.  Since, I just joined PSY 101 last week and I have gone through the material at warp speed in order to be ready for Thursday's test I decided I would use the Inquiry Studies book as a test of how much I had really learned.  As I went through the section I was highlighting and commenting on examples of definitions I had learned in psychology.  An example would be when he brought up how a reward for reading a book would increase the amount of books read.  This is an example of positive reinforcement.  In psychology, reinforcment can be substituted for strengthen.  Then, the text goes into the example of nursery children being asked to draw pictures.  He stated that the ones that received rewards the first week for drawing were less likely to draw pictures the following week.  This goes against all I had learned in psychology so far.  Of course I panicked.  I stopped reading the book and looked back through my psychology book.  Sure enough, it should have been the other way around.  Because of this I was confused about why the author was so adament about it, so I emailed my SI leader.  She was able to explain it to me.  According to her I had not learned everything about positive reinforcement yet because it won't come up until later in the year.  But positive reinforcement when applied to education can have both a positive and a negative outcome.