Learning to Avoid Reading and Math Help
Continued
The first
process works like this:
As the parent tries to help by becoming more determined and insistent that the child do his
reading and math
“or else,” the experience of doing reading and math becomes more negative to the
child. So any mental escape he manages (and he will escape many times) is even
more negatively reinforcing than it had been previously. That’s because it
affords successful escape from an increasingly noxious situation.
Second, this negative reinforcementteaches faster and stronger attentional avoidance so that, next time, the parent tries to help with reading and math they must be even more demanding to get the same result.
The escalation of the parent trying to control the child and the decreasing functioning of the child is a common pattern during reading and math help sessions. Yet, the cause and effect relationship between these two sets of behaviors is not generally understood.
In summary, the child’s decreasing performance elicits more negative feedback from the parent. The more negative feedback used by the parent to exact (temporary) compliance and improved performance, the more negative reinforcementthe child has for learning more effective attentional avoidanceskills. The child is then in a downward spiral that feeds on itself.
Second, there is also a more general and damaging level of conditioning going on with the child.
With practice, the child learns to detect, earlier and earlier, links in the chain of events that typically lead to the aversive situation, such as a math and reading assignments.
By sensing and reading the cues earlier and earlier — in fact, even before the original problem shows itself — the escape trigger is pulled sooner and an increasing portion of the child’s world is subject to involuntary, conditioned attentional avoidance. He automatically “checks out” in a wider variety of situations as time goes on.
Continuing the above example, the child now learns to avoid not only math but also the math book, math reading and math sheets, the parent who gives him these materials, and the study area.
Bottom line — his avoidance coping mechanism is being triggered by a multitude of stimuli, which makes him mentally absent more often, in fact, most of the time, which, in turn, makes his performance deteriorate further.
Continued with: Why Tutoring Programs Fail
a more general and damaging level of conditioning going on with the child.
With practice, the child learns to detect, earlier and earlier, links in the chain of events that typically lead to the aversive situation, such as a math and reading assignments.
By sensing and reading the cues earlier and earlier — in fact, even before the original problem shows itself — the escape trigger is pulled sooner and an increasing portion of the child’s world is subject to involuntary, conditioned attentional avoidance. He automatically “checks out” in a wider variety of situations as time goes on.
Continuing the above example, the child now learns to avoid not only math but also the math book, math reading and math sheets, the parent who gives him these materials, and the study area.
Bottom line — his avoidance coping mechanism is being triggered by a multitude of stimuli, which makes him mentally absent more often, in fact, most of the time, which, in turn, makes his performance deteriorate further.
A
