Download Unit III: Learning

Unit III Lesson 2
What’s In It For Me?
Operant Conditioning
Operant Conditioning
• Involves voluntary behavior
• Learned through the effects of
pleasant and unpleasant
consequences to responses
• Thorndike’s Law of Effect
– If a response is followed by a
pleasurable consequence, it will be
repeated
– If followed by an unpleasant
consequence, it will tend not to be
repeated
Skinner’s Contribution
• Stressed the study of only
observable, measurable behavior.
• Operant conditioning
– Voluntary behavior used to operate
on the environment
– Focus on the effects
of the consequences
of behavior
Reinforcement
• Reinforcement
– Event or stimulus following a
response that increases the
probability the response will occur
again
– Primary reinforcer
• Reinforcer that meets a basic biological
need
– hunger, thirst, touch
– Secondary reinforcer
• Reinforcer associated with a primary
reinforcer
– praise, tokens, gold stars
Positive and Negative
Reinforcement
• Positive reinforcement
– Pleasurable consequence follows
response
• Negative reinforcement
– Removal of unpleasant stimulus
increases response
– Escape from, or avoidance of an
unpleasant stimulus.
Operant vs. Classical
Conditioning
Schedules of
Reinforcement
• Partial reinforcement effect
– Response is reinforced after some, but not all,
correct responses
• Response tends to be resistant to extinction
• Continuous reinforcement
– Reinforcement of each and every correct response
• Fixed ratio schedule
– Number of responses required for reinforcement is
always the same
• Variable interval schedule
– Interval of time must pass before reinforcement
becomes possible
– Amount of time different for each trial or event.
Schedules of
Reinforcement (2)
• Fixed interval schedule
– Interval of time that
must pass before
reinforcement becomes possible
– Amount of time passing is always the
same
• Variable ratio schedule
– Number of responses required for
reinforcement is different for each
trial or event.
Punishment
• Follows a response,
making it less likely the
response will happen again
• Is the opposite of reinforcement
– Punishment weakens responses,
reinforcement strengthens responses
– Punishment by application
• The addition or experience of an
unpleasant stimulus following a response
– Punishment by removal
• Removal of a pleasurable stimulus
Problems with Punishment
• May cause punished to avoid the
punisher instead of the behavior
being punished
– Wrong response
is learned
• Can encourage
lying to avoid punishment
• May create fear and anxiety
– Emotions not conducive to learning
• Hitting provides model for
aggression
– Behavior is being modeled by the punisher
How to Make Punishment
More Effective
1. Punishment should immediately
follow the behavior it is meant to
punish.
2. Punishment should be consistent.
3. Punishment of the wrong behavior
should be paired, whenever
possible, with reinforcement of
the right behavior.
Stimulus Control
• Discriminative stimulus
– Provides organism a cue for making a
certain response in order to obtain
reinforcement
Operant Conditioning
Concepts
• Shaping
– Small steps toward goal behavior are
reinforced until goal behavior is met
• Successive approximations
– The steps in behavior leading to a particular goal
behavior
• Extinction
– Removal of reinforcement
– Response drops out
• Generalization
– Response occurs with stimuli only
similar to the original stimulus
• Spontaneous recovery
– Reoccurrence of a once extinguished response
– Same as with classical conditioning
Behavior Resistant to
Conditioning
• Instinctive drift
– Tendency for an animal’s
behavior to revert to genetically
controlled patterns after learning
– Animals have genetically determined
instinctive patterns of behavior
– These instincts differ from species to
species.
– Some responses cannot be trained
into an animal regardless of
conditioning.
Applying Operant
Conditioning
• Behavior modification
– Use of conditioning techniques to create changes in
behavior
• Token economy
– Desired behavior is rewarded with tokens that can be
exchanged for desired items or privileges
• Time-out
– Organism is being “removed” from opportunity to
obtain positive reinforcement
• Applied behavior analysis (ABA)
– Uses shaping-skills broken into small steps
– Prompts are removed over time
Biofeedback and
Neurofeedback
• Biofeedback
– Use of feedback about biological
conditions to bring involuntary
responses under voluntary control
• I.E.: blood pressure, heart rate
• Neurofeedback
– Form of biofeedback
– Uses brain-scanning devices to
provide feedback about brain activity