In B.F. Skinner's theory of Operant Conditioning the reaction, or reinforcement, after a behavior happens is what encourages or discourages it from happening again. This meme is an example of two kinds of conditioning, or training, that encourage behaviors to continue: negative and positive reinforcement. Without meaning to, both the child and the mother are training each other to keep doing these things.
The child is using negative reinforcement to to train his mother to continue giving him a teddy bear. In negative reinforcement there is something that is ongoing and unpleasant - in this case crying - and it is removed only when the trainee does what she is supposed to do - give a teddy bear. Negative reinforcement encourages a trained behavior to continue in the future, so the little boy is increasing the likeliness of getting his teddy bear in the future.
The mother is using positive reinforcement, or reward, to train her child to cry. In positive reinforcement once the trainee does what he is supposed to do - in this case crying - he gets something pleasant as a reward - the teddy bear. Positive reinforcement also encourages a trained behavior to continue in the future, so the mother is increasing the likeliness of having her son cry in the future.
Skinner, like the other Behaviorists, was not interested in thoughts or feelings because those are not observable actions. Instead he saw this type of training as reflexive: contrary to our meme, the boy and his mother are not planning these behaviors instead they are reacting to the situation. Even so, their reactions increase the likelihood of the situation occurring again.
Operant Conditioning is a very old theory, but it still can be applied to parenting today. For example, Thompson, Bruzek, and Cotnoir-Bichelman (2011) designed a small experiment to examine how infant cries may negatively reinforce caregivers and train them to perform comforting behaviors. The authors were also interested in what happens when that training has occurred but none of the comforting behaviors works to stop inconsolable crying.
Thompson et al. had a very small sample size: eight female and three male undergraduates were observed as they interacted with a baby doll under directions to, "...do what comes naturally" (p. 297). Eight of the participants were asked if they had prior experience with babies and all of them did; the other three were not asked. Even with this curiously missing information, we know that the majority of participants had real life experience "doing what comes naturally" with an infant.
Tested one at a time, all of the participants experienced several Negative Reinforcement conditions: a recording of an infant crying played until the participant engaged in the desired behavior with the doll. These behaviors ranged from rocking, bottle feeding, and offering a toy. All of the participants showed signs of training: they learned to do the desired behavior to stop the recorded crying.
Eventually the participants were each placed into an Extinction condition: this time no matter what comforting behavior they tried, the recorded crying would not stop. The participants all tried the behavior that had previously worked to stop the crying in the earlier conditions. When it did not work nine of these undergraduates showed extinction of that training: they gave up trying to get the crying to stop. Two of the participants did not show an extinction: they persisted with the trained comforting behavior for 30 minutes as the crying recording played the entire time. Perhaps these participants had real-life experience with their own colicky babies and their behavior in the Extinction condition mirrored what they did for their own children: persisted in giving care.
The results support the notion that negative reinforcement teaches parents which comforting behaviors work to stop their babies' crying and thus encourages these behaviors to continue in the future. The results may also demonstrate how some parents could give up and stop any attempt to comfort their babies when inconsolable crying occurs. In the worst case, these parents might engage in neglect or abuse of these infants. The authors did note that these findings and their implications would be stronger with a larger sample and a more realistic test situation.
In addition, I would caution that we should not interpret this to mean that babies consciously manipulate their caregivers. To manipulate another person is a very advanced cognitive ability. It implies that one person is going to fake a behavior to trick another person into doing something that he or she really does not want to do. Young infants do not possess the ability to do this: instead they simply cry when they feel bad. As well, most parents want to care for their babies and are motivated to reduce their babies' distress - they do not need to be tricked into these behaviors. In the ideal situation babies learn that if they cry a parent will help them feel better, and parents learn how to best calm their babies' distress - or even better, how to avoid that distress in the first place.
Further Reading:
A pdf of the Thompson et al. article, published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, can be accessed for free online.
Here are some good ideas for comforting a baby who is crying inconsolably from Ask Dr. Sears. Dr. Harvey Karp has a combination of five comforting behaviors that can help even colicky babies stop crying: here is a video of that technique on WebMD.
In addition to learning their babies' early cues of distress, parents can REDUCE crying by carrying their babies MORE often. An article by Hunziker and Barr (1986), published in Pediatrics, supports this idea.
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