Stimulus and response

What impressed me most was when it seemed like that most people agreed with the claim that we do things because we expect to gain positive reinforcement from them. It sounds very animal but I am not able to set an argument against that, which could be the basic mechanism on which creature exists and survives. This is so prevalent in my living environment throughout my life. For example, if a child follows teacher's instruction and carry the tray back to the desired location after finishing lunch, teacher will praise them with lingual stimulus "You are doing so great", as a positive reinforcement. Oppositely, if a child rushes to other areas and plays with dolls or blocks, leaving the tray on the table, teacher might stop the child and asks him/her to do what teacher wants him/her to do. Being prevented from doing something could be a kind of negative reinforcement, and teacher's instruction and guidance could be shaping of behavior. This is an example given from behavioral perspective, where teacher plays a role in providing stimulus (token) and ends shaping or modification process by the appearance of expected behavior. Indeed, a similar scenario like this is everywhere, the effect we pose on individual's behavior is explicit and apparent.

However, it could be a bit deceptive and flurried when I tried to distinguish the reinforcement by purely behavioral or purely cognitive, or both. Individual's sensory stimulus, central connections and motor responses could be function factors which work on individual's cognitive, but that could emphasize on different part. For instance, you recite the information from the textbook and write the identical words from memory in the standardized exam. As a result, you got the ideal score and recognize that if you repeat the same test skills you can get similar positive reinforcement again. Taking test and writing process could be more behavioral, but learning method, thinking process, attitudes towards tests emphasize more on the cognitive part.

Additionally, when it comes about whether we should distinguish reinforcement by the positive side or the negative could be ambiguous, because different individuals have discrepant subjective feelings towards the similar feedback from the stimuli/teacher/event. Therefore, it might be hard to develop a consistent and objective reference standard on how to differentiate emotion and motivation strictly. If a stimuli such as money, food or praise could cause feeling of pleasure, thus it might be related to positive reinforcement. The revocation of aversive stimulus such as electric shock, criticism could trigger a sense of relief, so it would be related with negative reinforcement. However, when you remove the disgustful negative reinforcement, the process of releasing pain might appear along with the positive emotion, which is too complicated to define subjective experiences.