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“Importance of Verbal Reward”

Today’s sotry-teller is Seiichi Yoshida. It is from his article regarding sports.

The story is about fans’ applause.

He says, in Europe, football audience applause thunderously when a player performs a brilliant play.

They support any players who play hard. They give supportive applause to a player even when he could not pass the ball after running as fast as he can as well as when he performs a brilliant play.

And the applause from audience becomes the source of player’s good performance.

Surely, J-League club’s audience give applause to the players. However, fervency is far beyond than the European fans.

Now Yoshida mentions about an episode of Hiroshi Yamamoto, a former NHK anchorman.

Yamamo and his wife visited Europe and watched the German World Cup team’s game last year.

As usual, the audience gave a storm of applause each time when a player performed well.

Yamamoto’s wife is unfamiliar with football. But she noticed the fan’s applause and cheering, and then said, “This must be the reason why Japanese team takes a backseat to European teams.

She has an extensive knowledge of dog behavior.

She said, “You should always praise or scold a dog within 3 seconds when he does something. If you wait longer than three seconds, he will forget and will not understand your message.”

Surely humans and dogs are different creatures and act differently, but Yamamoto thought the idea might apply to humans as well.

Therefore, it is important that the audience react and give applause right away when a player performs well. So the player might get inspired and plays well.

However, in Japan, whether the managers or the parents are doing it is the question.

Yoshida is aware of Yamamoto’s important questions.

Yoshida says, “Children start recognizing when they perform well by getting applause and they build self-confidence. Having the experience from an early age may make a difference in ability in the future.”

The NIKKEI 02/03/2010 by Seiichi Yoshida (unknown category)

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