| Course | PSYC 110N Psychology |
|---|---|
| Week | 3 |
| Paper type | Reinforcement analysis |
| Length | About 570 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | BSN general education |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PSYC 110N Week 3
Reinforcement Analysis of Pressing the Snooze Button: The Behavior Defined in a Countable Form, What Was Added and What Was Taken Away, Two Questions Before the Label, Why It Is Negative Reinforcement and Not Punishment and the Extinction Forecast
Student Name
Chamberlain University
PSYC 110N: Psychology
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Reinforcement Analysis of Pressing the Snooze Button: The Behavior Defined in a Countable Form, What Was Added and What Was Taken Away, Two Questions Before the Label, Why It Is Negative Reinforcement and Not Punishment and the Extinction Forecast
The Behavior, Countable
Pressing the snooze button on my phone alarm after it first sounds on a weekday morning. Count: number of presses before getting out of bed. Over two weeks in September I logged an average of 3.4 presses on class days.
What Was Added and What Was Taken Away
When I press snooze, the alarm noise stops. Something unpleasant is taken away. Nothing pleasant is added, except perhaps nine more minutes of warmth, which I will treat separately.
Asking this question before naming the type of reinforcement keeps the label honest. Many analyses start from the label and then look for facts to fit it; the order here makes the facts come first.
Two Questions, Then the Label
First: did the behavior become more likely over time? Yes; in the first week of the semester I pressed once or twice, and by the third week three or four times. Second: was something added or removed right after the behavior? Removed: the noise. A behavior that becomes more likely because it removes something unpleasant is negatively reinforced (Spielman et al., 2020).
Why It Is Not Punishment
Punishment makes a behavior less likely. The noise does not punish pressing snooze; ending the noise rewards it. "Negative" here means something was taken away; it does not mean something bad happened to me. The cost, being late and rushed, comes 30 minutes later and is too delayed to act as a strong consequence for each press.
The Warmth as a Second Consequence
Staying in a warm bed adds something pleasant, which is positive reinforcement. The two together, noise removed and warmth continued, make the behavior strong.
A single behavior can have more than one consequence at once, and the analysis should not pretend there is only one. If I removed the warmth, for example by setting the heat lower in the early morning, the behavior should weaken somewhat even with the alarm unchanged.
The Schedule
Every press stops the alarm, so the reinforcement is continuous: every response is reinforced. Behaviors reinforced on a continuous schedule tend to extinguish faster than those on intermittent schedules once reinforcement stops.
The Extinction Forecast
If I put the phone across the room, pressing snooze no longer stops the noise unless I get up. The reinforcement for pressing from bed ends. Because the schedule was continuous, I forecast that within about a week I will stop reaching for the phone from bed. If the reaching continues past two weeks, something else, perhaps fatigue from late nights, is maintaining the behavior.
Limits
This analysis covers the behavior's consequences. It does not address why I am tired, which a sleep log could show.
It also relies on my own log, which I kept honestly but not perfectly. On two mornings I forgot to record presses and left those days blank rather than guess.
References
Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/details/books/psychology-2e
The Chamberlain PSYC 110N Week 3 instructions
Pick one behavior of your own and define it so it can be counted, then keep a short log. Before naming the type of reinforcement or punishment, ask two questions: did the behavior become more or less likely over time, and was something added or removed right after it? Then name the type and explain why, including why it is not the type students most often confuse it with. Look for more than one consequence. Name the schedule of reinforcement. Forecast what would happen if the consequence stopped, and how quickly. State the limits of your log and what it does not explain, such as fatigue or other causes.
Inside the PSYC 110N Week 3 example
The behavior section defines snooze presses on weekday mornings and reports a two-week average of 3.4. The added-and-removed section identifies the alarm noise as removed and explains why asking this first keeps the label honest. The two-questions section shows presses rising over three weeks and names negative reinforcement, citing Spielman et al. (2020). A section explains why ending the noise rewards the press and why the cost of lateness is too delayed. The warmth section treats staying in bed as positive reinforcement. The schedule section names continuous reinforcement. The forecast predicts the behavior stops within a week with the phone across the room. The limits section notes two missing log days.
Where the points sit in the PSYC 110N Week 3 rubric
Markers look for the two questions asked before the label. A paper that names the reinforcement type first and then fits the facts to it loses the most. Marks go to a countable behavior with a log, the added or removed consequence identified, the label explained and distinguished from punishment, a second consequence noticed, the schedule named and a forecast with a time frame. Admitting gaps in the log earns marks. A single APA citation of the textbook is enough here. Clear, plain explanation of the word negative, meaning removal rather than something bad, is a mark of understanding. A forecast with a time frame, such as within a week, turns the analysis into something the writer can check.
PSYC 110N Week 3 help from the desk
Analyses most often lose points by calling negative reinforcement punishment, which reverses the meaning. Another common gap is a behavior defined too vaguely to count, such as being lazy in the morning. Some papers stop at the label and never forecast. Others ignore a second consequence that keeps the behavior strong. If you choose a behavior that is punished rather than reinforced, the same two questions still apply. A paper that predicts how quickly the behavior will change, and then checks the prediction with the log, turns a definition into evidence. Keep the log for at least a week before writing, and record days you missed rather than filling them in.
Get a PSYC-110N Week 3 example written to your instructions
Send the week's assignment instructions and the rubric your section posted, and a PSYC-110N Week 3 analysis is written to them, the behavior defined in countable form and the labeling shown one question at a time, back in 24-48h with the first one free. Bring your own episode and it is built on that.
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PSYC 110N Week 3 questions, answered
Does the analysis need real numbers?
Not usually, but it needs a behavior that could have been counted. Saying the behavior happened most mornings and then hardly at all is enough to show a direction, which is what the labeling depends on. Invented precise counts are worse than none, because a figure nobody recorded will not survive a follow-up question from an instructor.
Is negative reinforcement just another name for punishment?
No, and the classroom will keep testing this. The two words in each label answer different questions: the first says whether something was added or taken away, the second says whether the behavior became more or less frequent afterward. Negative reinforcement removes something and the behavior increases. Punishment, either kind, ends with the behavior decreasing. Direction decides which family the episode belongs in.
What if the behavior went down rather than up?
Then the analysis is still complete, it just lands in a different pair of labels. A decrease with something added and a decrease with something removed are both usable, and neither is a weaker paper. What would be a problem is an episode where the behavior did not change at all, since there is no direction to explain and the forecast has nothing to work from.
Where can I find a free PSYC 110N Week 3 sample paper?
The complete PSYC 110N Week 3 reinforcement analysis of pressing snooze, from a countable definition to an extinction forecast, appears lower down.
Why is snooze not punishment in the PSYC 110N Week 3 sample?
Because the press becomes more likely over time; stopping the alarm removes something unpleasant, which is negative reinforcement, and the cost of being late comes too much later to punish each press.