Operant Conditioning - 12

Question 1

What is Thorndike’s puzzle box?

Answer 1

Wooden box with door that could be opened by a peddle inside the box. When first placed cat in the box showed high amount of anxious behaviour. After a while hit the peddle by chance and ran out. The cat took less time to get out the more trials it did. Shows a change of behaviour as a consequence of experience.

Question 2

What are Thorndike’s 3 main laws of learning?

Answer 2

1. Law of Effect - behaviour that leads to a positive outcome is more likely to occur in the future.
2. Law of Exercise - connections between responses and outcomes are strengthened by repetition.
3. Law of Readiness - learning is motivated by an internal state (if dislike a behaviour will learn more about how to avoid it).

Question 3

What is instrumental/operant conditioning?

Answer 3

• Learning of adaptive behaviour (through experience of success, failure)
• Organism operates on the environment (behaviour changes the environment)
• Behaviour is instrumental (obtains desires effect)
• Associations between response and outcome.

Question 4

What is Skinner’s Operant Behaviourism?

Answer 4

1. Reinforcer (positive and negative)
2. Punishment
3. Omission (elimination of positive reinforcer decreases the likelihood of preceding behaviour).

Question 5

What are schedules of reinforcement?

Answer 5

1. Continuous reinforcement = each behaviour response is reinforced
2. Partial Reinforcement = behaviour is reinforced only part of the time.
3. Ratio schedules = reinforcement given after every nth response (fixed - response requirement constant, variable - response requirement varies around average).
4. Interval schedules = reinforcement given after certain amount of time (fixed - reward intervals constant, variable - reward interval varies around mean time).

Question 6

What is the dual-process approach?

Answer 6

Rat placed in a chamber with 2 compartments. Speaker delivers auditory stimulus. Grid floor delivers mild footshock. Barrier for escape or avoidance. Classical conditioning = tone leads to shock. Operant conditioning = escape/avoidance leads to safety.

Question 7

What are the principles of associative learning?

Answer 7

1. Learning through reinforcement
2. Association by contiguity (co-occurence in space and time)
3. Arbitrariness (any stimulus, any response)
4. Empty organism (organism is black box - collection of associations)
5. Passive organism (learning happens to the organism).