[**guest**]

hi i am new on this forum, and i have been catching up and reading archives.
we do not use rewards / punishments, and Punished by Rewards made perfect sense to me. some posters here posted about research countering his views.

several years ago i took a 4th year seminar in psychology called 'motivation' and we discussed research on external and internal motivation in the context of rewards and punishments. in a nutshell -- hundreds of primary research articles supporting what Alfie Kohn is writing about. after 2 kids my memory is not so sharp

BUT i am pretty sure i did not encounter any research to the contrary.

well, research to the contrary will unlikely change my parenting philosophy, but i am very curious what the body of research disproves in the field of development and motivation and what arguments can be made against what Kohn is writing about.

mom to ada (3) and max (5m)

:

:2tandem

 

[maya44]

According to my SIL who is finishing up her PHD in Psychology there is MUCH research on the other side.

She recommended a scholarly work called:

"Rewards and Instrinsic Motivation: Resolving the Contraversy " by Cameron and Pierce

She says this lays it all out!

She believes that while Kohn is not "all" wrong, he makes MANY mistakes in analyzing the reserach and fails to acknowledge under what circumstances rewards and extrinsic motivation work and how the dynamic interaction of parent and child may effect the research.

 

[kayabrink]

I'm just a humle undergrad; but in my psyc courses... they generally agree with Kohn to some extent.
If a child has any intrinsic motivation to comply, then you should not reward compliance. If you do; the child thinks they are only complying because it makes you happy, and they will cease to comply in your absence or if they are angry/tired etc.
However; it is appropriate to use rewards if the child has absolutely no intrinsic motivation to perform the behaviour in question. This being said, rewarding such a behaviour often does not result in long term behavioural change; if you want the behaviour to continue you have to reward evey time. So basically it won't lead to internal motivation, ever.
Finally, punishment (like rewards) can lead to behavioural change, but less harsh punishment is more effective than harsher. For example; if you say "I'm not happy when you do X" you will get much better response than if you yell " It makes me really angry when you do that; I already told you not to do that; why don't you ever listen..."
I have research backing all this up but can't link to it for copywright reasons.

 

[**guest**]

http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/cont_reward.html

though of course the above article isritten by Deci and Ryan themselves!

i don't have much respect for behaviorists

-- they sure revolutionized psychology, and sure, there are valid and curious applications, BUT it is all in the past, and not for my kids, thank you ver much.

 

[gaialice]

:

I looked up and I found this article:

http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=3023

for those of you who are interested.

Anyway, I am trying hard to move away from rewards and punishments of any sort and I can say for sure: these things lead to animosity because they depend on a person (parent/teacher) judgement which can always be contested. They create jealosy. They do not instill any generosity or altruism.
For me, my goal is not to have a kid who outperforms other kids, in school or in sports. Who cares about that? I wish for my kids to be caring, responsible, well balanced and not swayed in their behaviour by the first fool who offers them more candy (of whichever sort ...)

 

[mmaramba]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gaialice : I looked up and I found this article: http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=3023 for those of you who are interested.

See, like many of you, I like to get ALL the facts before I make a decision (well, duh! Here I am researching discipline, and I don't even have kids yet!). I haven't found much to dispute Kohn yet, though. I have read much of Cameron and Pierce, including this article, and I DO think they have at least one point: rewards in school may help students who aren't getting much to internally motivate them at home.

Might not have the BEST long-term effects, but might do some good for kids who are getting nada at home. IOW, a kid from a [email protected] background might be a bit "punished" by school rewards, in that he will not have a very strong internal motivation as an adult-- BUT it's better that he at least achieves SOMETHING in school-- which can lead to at least slightly higher self-esteem overall. Not to mention actually learning some real skills, maybe getting into college where he otherwise would not have, etc.

I still don't think that C&P have really analyzed what MIGHT work EVEN BETTER in school-- some form of GD in the learning environment. They seemed to exclusively focus on whether rewards are good or bad, and concluded that rewards are sometimes good. HOWEVER, they didn't seem to focus on whether there might be something BETTER than rewards to help these kids. And frankly, I don't think that their school-based research is 100% applicable to the home environment, for a variety of reasons.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[kayabrink]

since apparently it wasn't clear; I'm not advocating using either punishment or rewards. I intended to highlight the fact that using either might alter behaviour, but doesn't affect the child's intrinsic motivation. I personally feel both are harmful unless used very sparingly. I doubt anyone on the GD board is a behaviourist, let's be reasonable.

ETA: didn't mean to sound snarky but I can't stand behaviourists for the reasons mentionned in previous posts (don't take into account social, motivational and cognitive factors). you sort of hit a nerve.
Just I would not go my child's whole life NEVER having said I was proud of him. I think it's ok if worded correctly (focusing on how he feels about his acheivement; pointing out what a difficult task it was) and saved for important acheivements.

 

[Piglet68]

When Alfie appeared on the Diane Rehm show (NPR - american public radio) there was another guest, an author of a book called "Rewards for Kids". She said that while Alfie was right about rewards causing kids to put less effort into certain tasks, she said that this only applied to tasks they liked. She said when it came to tasks that the kids had no interest in, rewards worked better. Now I have not read these studies myself, but if you are interested, her book link is here (at amazon).

 

[NoHiddenFees]

I find that he overgeneralizes. For instance, in Unconditional Parenting he talks about the child's perception the parent is withholding love when giving timeouts (the go to your room forced isolation kind) and the like. However, it seems the research this is based on is for very young children. I think a one or two year old is far more likely to be disturbed by a time out than a six year old who has much greater experience and maturity with respect to their parent's feelings, KWIM? So why not say, "timeouts should not be used with young children because..."? I'm not advocating timeouts, just questioning his rational.

I do find this book to be better than Punished by Rewards when it comes to overgeneralizations. He does talk much more about the child's perception being the root issue rather than the adult's behaviour.