Stats Help Regression Line The psychologists Daniel Kahneman

Stats Help! (Regression Line)

The psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky described the following situation:
The instructors in a ight school adopted a policy of consistent positive reinforce-ment recommended by psychologists. They verbally reinforced each successful exe-cution of a ight maneuver. After some experience with this training approach, theinstructors claimed that contrary to psychological doctrine, high praise for goodexecution of complex maneuvers typically results in a decrement of performance onthe next try.

Is there a simpler explanation for the decreased performance following praise? What doesthis have to do with Regression Line?

Thank you!

Solution

Regression is necessary for flight maneuver as performance is not perfectly reliable and progress between successive maneuver is slow. Hence pilots who do exceptionally well in one trial are likely to deteriorate in the next,regardless of the instructors reaction on the first success. The experienced flight instructors actually this but attributed it to decreasing effect of positive reinforcement.