Download Learning Unit Assignment Dr Sharon Myer YOU will be choosing

Learning Unit Assignment
Dr Sharon Myer
YOU will be choosing what behaviors you are looking to reinforce or punish. These can be behaviors in
conversation (reinforce a smile for example), what you want someone to do (to leave, to get you
something, etc.). You will have about 25 minutes to design this with your group. Then you will need to
discuss what you did, how you did it, and demonstrate these to the class.
For this assignment, we will be focusing on Operant Conditioning. Operant Conditioning is a type of
learning from the school of psychology called Behaviorism. Operant conditioning is defined as shaping,
or molding, behaviors through the use of reinforcement or punishment. Operant refers to behaviors
shaped that are in conscious control. Respondents are behaviors that are not in conscious control and
happen at the beginning of shaping. Oftentimes the actual person does not know their behavior is being
shaped. The stimulus delivered can be directly delivered such as the use of food or it can be indirect
such as noise on the street which shapes us to do things to avoid the noise, etc. The label of
reinforcement or punishment is given based on the learner’s response to the stimulus. Reinforcement
refers to increasing behaviors and punishment refers to decreasing behaviors. Here is a chart explaining
the types of reinforcements and punishments:
You will be asked to provide a demonstration of shaping a behavior of a classmate using any type of
reinforcement or punishment. You will need to tell the group, and demonstrate, exactly how you did
this, and use as many of the behavioral psychology terms that you have been learning such as discussing
all of the contingencies you set up to have the person acquire new behaviors through shaping. You will
need to discuss how you started with continuous reinforcement of the desired (or close to desired)
behaviors and discuss how you used successive approximations to continually shape behavior that is
close to what you wanted until you got the behavior that you wanted. You will need to discuss how you
extinguished, or removed, any behavior you did not want.
In the basic schedules of reinforcement you have four types. They are either done continuously
(reinforce or punisher given every time) or partially or intermittently (meaning not every time).
Fixed refers to when the amount of time between reinforcement or punishment is fixed, set, and does
not change.
Variable refers to when the amount of time between the reinforcement or punishment will vary or
change.
Interval means the schedule of time between reinforcements or punishments.
Ratio means the schedule is based on the number of responses between reinforcements.
Variable-ratio is the strongest type. The number of responses needed for the reward varies. This is seen
in gambling when an average amount of time may pay the gambler so the gambler knows “about” the
amount of times they need to keep playing, but not exactly.
Here are the schedules of reinforcement: