Read the example below and determine what behavioral process is illustrated.

A child hits his/her sibling because she is being "annoying". The child's parent puts him on "time out" and sends him to his room. The child is now hitting his sibling more often when she is being annoying.

A. Negative reinforcement

B. Negative Punishment

C. Positive reinforcement

D. Positive Punishment

The correct answer is: C. Positive Reinforcement.

Explanation:

Positive reinforcement is a concept and a technique commonly used in the Behavioral approach of operant conditioning.

In positive reinforcement, a behavior is reinforced by "rewarding" an individual after eliciting a behavior considered positive by the examiner.

However, sometimes, mistakenly, negative conduct may be positively reinforced if the stimulus applied to the individual is deemed as rewarding by him.

This is what happened in this case.

The time-out was rewarding to the child because he enjoys being sent to his room far away from his annoying sibling, so in turn, the behavior of "hitting his sibling" was positively reinforced.