How Does Classical Conditioning Affect Children's Behavior

As a parent, I am concerned about my child’s behavior My child has been hitting our pet cat and shows a general disregard for it as if she does not understand it can feel pain. This happens a few times a week and has been going on for about a month. She is more likely to be mean to it when other people are giving it attention or are holding it. I want her to stop treating it roughly and to change her attitude towards our cat, and animals in general.

One method of changing behavior is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is when a conditioned stimulus is combined with an unconditioned stimulus until the conditioned stimulus is enough to induce the response. An example of this would be the sound of a bell going off then presenting

This is learning the association between behavior and consequences. Using this method would increase the likelihood of successfully teaching my child not to be rough with the cat. Currently, the behavior is happening around three times a week. After we intervene, we hope the behavior will stop completely. One way to change her behavior towards the cat with operant conditioning would be to use negative punishment. Negative punishment is taking away something to decrease a behavior. So whenever she is hostile towards the cat, we take away her favorite toy. She will see this behavior does not get a desirable response and will learn to change it. Another way would be with positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement means adding something to increase a behavior. So anytime she is nice to the cat and interacts with it without hurting it, we give her a treat like candy or ice cream. If we use the method of positive reinforcement, we would need to decide a schedule of reinforcement. The schedule of reinforcement refers to how often a behavior gets reinforced. To teach my child to be nice to the cat, the schedule of reinforcement we would use is one of a fixed ratio and a fixed interval. The fixed ratio is how many times she is nice to the cat and the fixed interval is how much time after she is nice to the cat that she receives the reward of a treat. We will want to consider the ratio to be one, as in every time she is