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Overview of the Day
Learning - Part 2
Operant conditioning
Observational learning
Operant Conditioning
 Why is it called "operant" conditioning?
 Operant: an organism learns to operate on the environment
 Associating a behavior with a
consequence
 A response is followed by a consequence
 How does operant conditioning work?
 Law of effect: a behavior is likely to be reproduced when it
has positive consequences and vice versa
Key Terms
 Reinforcer: any event that increases the
frequency of a preceding response
 Primary reinforcer: something that is
innately satisfying (food and sex)
 Secondary reinforcer: something we learn
to like (money)
 Punishment: any event that decreases
the frequency of a preceding response
Positive and Negative
Reinforcement and Punishment
 Positive (reinforcement and
punishment)
 present something
 Negative (reinforcement and
punishment)
 remove something
What works best: Reinforcement
or Punishment?
 Punished behavior is suppressed, not forgotten,
may increase aggressiveness (abusive parents
tend to produce abusive children),anger, and
fear of person doing the punishing
 However, swift and sure punishment can be
effective.
 When should it be used and how?
 When it is so sure and effective that it deters
unwanted behavior.
Shaping
 A procedure in which reinforcers are used
to gradually guide behavior toward a
desired behavior.
 Teach a child to play quietly by presenting her
with an ice cream cone at longer and longer
intervals of quiet play (10, 20, 30 minutes)
Examples of Interval and
Ratio Schedules
 Asking women for dates
 variable ratio
 A house painter being paid by how many
square feet of surface area she paints
 fixed ratio
 Receiving a paycheck every two weeks
 fixed interval
 Pop quizzes
 variable interval
Observational Learning
 Modeling: observing and imitating a
specific behavior
 By observing, we learn to anticipate a
behavior’s consequences (on other and
ourselves)
 We tend imitate people who are successful
admirable, or similar to ourselves
Summary
 Operant conditioning
 reinforcer, punishment
 positive and negative
 Shaping
 Schedules of reinforcement
 continuous and partial (FR, VR, FI, VI)
 Observational learning