A teacher originally wanted to increase class participation, so she positively reinforced the asking of questions with nickels. After a few days, students had stacks of nickels on their desks and were asking far too many questions. To reduce question asking, the teacher could remove a nickel whenever they ask a question, a process known as:

The correct answer is negative punishment; extinction

In the negative punishment, the elimination of a reinforcing stimulus occurs contingent to the emission of the response. In operant extinction, there is no reinforcement programmed for a class of responses, so that when issued, these responses do not produce any consequent stimulus. There is no contingency relationship in this case.

In extinction there is no relationship between the response and the removal of the reinforcement, and such removal (or subsequent introduction of the reinforcement) is not controlled by the class of individual responses subjected to the extinction. That is, the reinforcement was not eliminated due to the class of responses, but this same class will not allow it to be presented again. There is simply no reinforcement programmed for this class of responses. In this case, availability of reinforcement and frequency of response are not related to operant extinction.

In negative punishment, on the other hand, the elimination of reinforcement is conditional on the emission of any response, and such elimination can be interrupted if the frequency of that response decreases. In this case, there is a relationship between frequency of response and availability of reinforcement: the lower the frequency of the punished response, the greater the likelihood of reinforcement being available.

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