The principle of timely feedback is consistent, incidentally, with one of the principles of operant conditioning discussed in Chapter 2: reinforcement works best when it follows a to-be-learned operant behavior closely (Skinner, 1957). In this case think of a teacher’s feedback as a form of reinforcement. The analogy is easiest to understand when the feedback takes the form of praise for something a student did or performed; in operant conditioning terms, the reinforcing praise then functions like a “reward”. But the analogy to operant conditioning still holds when feedback is negative—when a teacher criticizes or reprimands a student. In those cases the criticism or reprimand sometimes functions like what Skinner call an “aversive stimulus” (or mild punishment), shutting down the behavior criticized. At other times, though, a teacher’s criticism functions in a more paradoxical and unexpected way: it acts less like an aversive stimulus than like a negative reinforcement. In these cases the criticism does not shut down a behavior (as true punishment might do), but leads to a less negative state for the student. This happens, for example, if a student misbehaves in order to gain attention from the teacher or classmates and to avoid being ignored. If the teacher in this case criticizes the student for the misbehavior, the student may experience the criticism as a reduction in isolation and as in increase in his importance in the class—in other words, as reinforcement for misbehavior. So the inappropriate behavior continues, and as teachers we might be tempted to say that “he is just misbehaving to get attention”. Exhibit 7.2 diagrams this sequence of events.