Skinner’s analysis of operant conditioning
- There is a Skinner box, we put a mouse in it. It walks around, and presses lever and then get food. We record its behavior in a cumulative recorder, we found that it does that more and more frequently.
- Reinforcement: increase the frequency,the response strengthened
- Punishment: decrease the frequency, …weaken
Operant Conditioning
Is a type of learning in which behavior is influenced by its consequences.
Reinforcement (positive and negative)
• positive reinforcement
- response is strengthened by presentation of a stimuli (the positive reinforcer) that follows it
- i.e. cat presses a lever, food appear, lever-pressing increases
• negative reinforcement
- response strengthened by removal (or avoidance) of an aversive stimulus (negative reinforcer)
- i.e. person takes Aspirin, headache pain goes away, increased tendency to take Aspirin
- i.e. use sunscreen to avoid sunburn, therefore increase behavior of using it
Primary and secondary reinforcers
- Primary reinforcers are stimuli that are reinforcing because they satisfy biological needs (e.g. food, drink)
- Secondary acquire reinforcing properties via association with primary reinforcers (e.g. money, praise)
Classical and operant conditioning
• Classical
- Behavior changes due to association of two stimuli (CS-UCS) presented prior to the response (CR)
• Operant
- Behavior changes as a result of consequences that follow it
Shaping and chaining
• Shaping
- i.e. a boy can not speak out and loudly in public, we solve this problem by ask him to speak one word, little louder to more words and much louder, and finally he overcome this problem
• Chaining
- i.e. the rat learn to ring the bell to turn one the light, so rat correctly presses on the lever, so it gets good
Generalization and discrimination
• Operant Generalization
- i.e. a dog taught to “sit” by its owner will likely start sitting when other people give the command
• Operant Generalization
- i.e. we learn to board buses and trains marked by specific symbols
- stimulus control: bus markings – are called discriminative stimuli, when discriminative stimuli influence a behavior, that behavior is said to be under stimulus control
