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Assignment #2
 Topics (Choose ONE):
 Different sports have different techniques for deterring
unwanted behaviour (e.g. penalty box in hockey, yardage
penalties in football). Discuss sports penalties in terms
of the four operant contingencies. You can pick your
favourite sport or compare across several.
 Discuss Gallup’s self recognition task. What are the
procedures, who has been used as subjects and what
does this say about self-awareness?
 Pick an event that often evokes superstitious behaviour
(e.g. gambling, sports, exams). Explain where the
behaviour comes from.
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Operant Applications
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Overview
 Animal Care & Training
 Self-Awareness
 Self-Control
 Verbal Behaviour
 Insight
 Creativity
 Superstition
 Delusions & Hallucinations
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Veterinary Care
 Large animals, carnivores, stress-susceptible
 Shaping
 Change behaviour patterns
 Positive reinforcement rather than punishment
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Observing the World
 Social animals
 Understanding another’s behaviour beneficial
 Reinforcement through watching others
 Observation of self; own behaviour
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Gallup’s Mirror Self-Recognition
Task
 Allow chimp time to learn about mirror
 Stages
 Tranquilize chimp and paint dot on head
 See if chimp notices changed appearance
 Mental self-image
 Used with children
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Epstein’s pigeons
 Trained to peck a blue dot
 Experience with mirror
 Blue dot on pigeon under bib
 Peck at bib
 Other animals
 Elephants, dolphins, children
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Shaping of Self-Observation?
 Skinner
 Kinds of questions we ask children reinforces self-
observation
 e.g., “are you hungry?” “what are you doing?”
 Accurate response likely results in some form of
desired outcome (i.e., reinforcement of behaviour)
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Self-Control
 Choice
 Forgoing a small, immediate reinforcer for large,
delayed reinforcer
 Humans, non-humans
 Circular explanation (will power)
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Techniques
 Physical restraint
 Distancing
 Distraction
 Deprivation & Satiation
 Assistance
 Behaviour monitoring
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Physical Restraint
 Physically prevent behaviour from occurring
 e.g., lock liquor cabinet
 e.g., cut up credit cards
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Distancing
 Behaviour more likely to occur in specific environment
 Avoid environment to assist self-control
 e.g., smokers who want to quit should avoid places
where smokers frequent
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Distraction
 Engage in behaviour incompatible with undesired
behaviour
 e.g., want a snack, go for a walk
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Deprivation and Satiation
 To avoid excesses
 e.g., to avoid overeating at party, eat small meal earlier
 Partial satiation
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Assistance
 Inform others of your goals
 Get help
 Changes the environment
 e.g., friends may be “enablers”
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Behavioural Monitoring
 Keep track of your own behaviour
 Notebook, graphs, etc.
 Visible indicators
 Dieters in room with candy bowl; those who had to leave
wrappers on table ate fewer pieces than those who could
put wrappers in garbage
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Skinner (1957)
 Verbal Behavior
 Suggests ideas not encoded into words by speaker
and decoded by listener
 Words are behaviours
 Functional relationship between a word and an
outcome (i.e., reinforcement or punishment)
 Social consequences provide shaping and
maintenance of language
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Early Shaping of Words
 Babies babble
 Parents reinforce certain sounds with attention, etc.
 Increases frequency of these sounds
 Gradually, reinforcement for more complex
vocalizations only
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Shaping Language?
 Greenspoon (1955)
 Reinforced or punished plural nouns in subjects’ lists of
words
 problem
 Verplanck (1955)
 Reinforced or didn’t reinforce subjects’ use of opinion
statements
 Quay (1959)
 Reinforced statements about family members
 Psycho-therapy?
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Complex
 Life-long reinforcement (and punishment) history
 Much vocal reinforcement without conscious
knowledge
 Reinforcing lies
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Problem Solving
 Trial and error, accidental success
 Insight = Sudden solution
 “think things through”
 Skip intermediate steps
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Suspended fruit task
 Kohler  Sultan
 Pushed box under banana
 Epstein (1984)  pigeons
 Suggested insight could be due to reinforcement history
Can’t
reach!
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Can Creativity be Shaped?
 Novelty, original behaviour
 Provide reinforcement only for novel behaviour
 creativity
 Pryor’s (1969) work with porpoises and pigeons
 Various studies with children
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Rewards and Creativity
 Some studies suggest rewards reduce creativity
 Reward for task or no reward for task
 Find more creative responses in non-rewarded
group
 But, typically it is not creativity that is rewarded,
but task completion
 Society and status quo
 Peer pressure; what is “normal”?
 Failure
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Accidental Conditioning
 B.F. Skinner (1948)
 Pigeons
 Grain every 15 seconds
 Development of behaviours
 Accidental strengthening
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Humans
 Bruner & Revusky (1961)
 Teenagers and 4 buttons; only button 3 gave
reinforcement on FI schedule
 Wagner & Morris (1987)
 Children and clown doll giving marbles
 Ono (1987)
 University students and levers; told to gain as many
points as possible, but points just given periodically
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Timing?
 Staddon & Simmelhag (1971)
 Interim and terminal behaviours
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Attention Seeking
 Not always a biological root
 Patients
 Delusions provide attention from staff
 Social reinforcement
 “Weird” behaviours might be shaped
 Stop reinforcement to reduce behaviour
 Maintenance of behaviour (“catch on”)
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Self-Injuries
 Punishment often effective for suppression
 Lovaas & Simmons (1969)
 Boy making 30 hits per minute
 Four behaviour-contingent electric shocks to leg
 Self-injurious behaviour stopped
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Escape
 Wolf (1967)
 Injurious behaviour increased when teacher asked boy
questions
 Injurious behaviour dropped when teacher stopped
asking questions
 Negative reinforcement
 Lack of demands
 Use of DRI to reduce SI behaviour
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