Reward is considered by some to be a more informal version of the term REINFORCEMENT. B.F.Skinner (1904–1990) who invented the term reinforcement, cautioned against using terms which had as a connotation or part of their definition a reference to an unobservable process. EMOTION as a central hedonic state is unobservable, although informally most of us feel we can tell when someone else is happy by their facial emotions and other behaviours observed in context.
Some people also felt that Skinner was opposed to psychobiological research, something that one of the editors of this Dictionary (JS) has observed by direct conversation to be untrue, at least in Skinner’s later years. However, perhaps because of this perceived opposition to psychobiological research into reinforcement processes, some psychobiologists began to use the term reward to separate their interests from those researchers who were following Skinner’s interests. Currently, OPERANT psychology is so well integrated into PSYCHOBIOLOGY that the perceived conflict does not exist, yet the term reward persists. If there is any current differentiation between the terms reward and reinforcement in modern usage it is the slight connotation to emotional processes in the reward term.
JAMES R.STELLAR
This is the complete article, containing 192 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
