Case in point: The Skinner Lizard
Last night we came back from Miami and were getting ready to settle in when my friend screams and sees a little lizard in our room. She is begging me to get rid of it (apparently when you let people know you grew up in Montana on a farm you are the resident "icky thing remover). Little guy was in the closet and I tried a couple things to get him to go toward the door, no dice. Took a hanger started banging it near him hoping he would move away from it, and successively prompted him out the door. The first thing out of my mouth was, "So, Becky, that was technically negative reinforcement on my behavior because it increased the hanger banging and removed the negative stimulus, the lizard." I went on to try to describe what type of operant conditioning principles could be applied to the lizards behavior. NERD ALERT!
That's my real world application story. Someday soon I will be back to normal.
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