Is it necessary to mistake in order to learn?

While not fully answering the post's question (to which, by the way, I believe the answer to be no), I propose the following thoughts for a possibly original experiment:

The question really is whether one must experience a loss or punishment in order to learn, or if the threat of the loss/punishment is enough to gain experience from. To clarify, the following example: A student is told repeatedly that a project is due in three weeks. Three weeks pass and the student has accomplished nothing. Of several possible reactions, the teacher tells the student that the time to turn in the assignment has lapsed and gives the student a zero; hopefully not out of spite, but out of the want to "teach the student a lesson" - presumably that projects must be completed in a timely fashion and procrastination is bad.

At this point the student, left without recourse, either ingrains the moral, vows never to wait so long again, and accomplishes the feat on most future endeavors (certainly at least the very next one). Or, accepting the stigma of an earned zero, the student accepts failure as somehow definitive. Next project: zero.

The question then is this: What would produce more positive results (i.e., more successful behavior in the future): The instant zero after failure? Or, after failure, the threat of a zero in the future? I.e. the student has two more weeks to hand in the project or else.

Tied in with this question are several factors. First, how should successful behavior be judged? Is the completion of the project itself, regardless of future procrastination, a manifestation of successful behavior? Or is completion irrelevant and the extended time simply encouragement of procrastination?

Second, would the zero punishment be more effective if the student had been guided along the way? (E.g. had been given a project roadmap with various progress checkpoints.) Would punishment be more effective here because the student was guided and can therefore accept more of the blame? Or might the student still take the zero as indicative of inner-worth?

The point to be made, even without having performed this study, is that instant punishment may not be necessary – the threat of future punishment might be just enough to encourage certain positive behaviors and have more beneficial results than the implementation of punishment.

Also, this study says nothing about approaching the problem from the entirely opposite stance: rewards.