Chapter 4 - Section 2 Operant Conditioning Flashcards
What are operant/instrumental responses?
Actions operating on the world to produce some effect.
They function like instruments, or tools, to bring about some change in the environment. (P. 115)
What is operant/instrumental conditioning?
The process by which people or other animals learn to make operant responses.
A learning process by which the effect, or consequence, of a response influences the future rate of production of that response. (P. 115)
17: How did Thorndike train cats to escape from a puzzle box? How did this research contribute to Thorndike’s formulation of the law of effect?
Thorndike (1898) designed the puzzle box so that a cat placed inside could open the door by stepping on the tab that pulls down on the string hanging from the ceiling. This in turn would pull up the bolt and allow the door to fall forward.
Thorndike came to view learning as a trial-and-error process, through which and individual gradually becomes more likely to make responses that produce beneficial effects.
According to Thorndike, the stimulus situation (being inside the puzzle box) initially elicits many responses, some more strongly than others, but the satisfying consequence of the successful response (pressing the lever) causes that response to be more strongly elicited on successive trials. (P. 116)
What is the law of effect (Thorndike, 1898)?
Responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation. (P. 116)
18: How did Skinner’s method for studying learning differ from Thorndike’s, and why did he prefer the term ‘reinforcement’ to Thorndike’s ‘satisfaction’?
The advantage of Skinner’s (1938) apparatus is that the animal, after completing a response and experiencing its effect, is still in the box and free to respond again. With Thorndike’s puzzle boxes and similar apparatuses such as mazes, the animal has to be put back into the starting place at the end of each trial.
Skinner (like Watson a behaviorist)proposed the term ‘reinforcer’ as a replacement for such words as ‘satisfaction’ and ‘reward’, to refer to a stimulus change that follows a response and increases the subsequent frequency of that response. Skinner preferred this term because it makes no assumptions about anything happening in the mind; it merely refers to the effect that the presentation of the stimulus has on the animal’s subsequent behavior. (P. 117)
What does ‘operant response’ mean?
Skinner coined the term to refer to any behavioral act that has some effect on the environment. (P. 117)
What does ‘operant conditioning’ mean?
Skinner coined the term to refer to the process by which the effect of an operant response changes the likelihood of the response’s recurrence.
Thus, in a typical experiment with a Skinner box, pressing the lever is an operant response, and the increased rate of lever pressing that occurs when the response is followed by a pellet of food exemplifies operant conditioning. (P. 117)
What was the difference between Skinner’s and Wason’s believes?
Unlike Watson, Skinner did not consider the stimulus-response reflex to be the fundamental unit of all behavior.
Thorndike’s work provided Skinner with a model of how nonreflexive behaviors could be altered through learning. (P. 116)
19: What is some evidence that people can be conditioned to make an operant response without awareness of the conditioning process?How is this relevant for understanding how people acquire motor skills?
An illustration is found in an experiment in which adults listened to music over which static was occasionally superimposed. Unbeknownst to the subjects, they could turn off the static by making an imperceptibly small twitch of the left thumb.
(…)
We constantly learn finely tuned muscle movements as we develop skill at riding a bicycle, hammering nails, making a jump shot, or any other activity. The probable reinforcers are, respectively, the steadier movement on the bicycle, the straight downward movement of the nail, and the “swoosh” when the ball goes through the hoop; but often we do not know just what we are doing differently to produce these good effects. (P. 118)
What is the fundamental difference between Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning and Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning?
In operant conditioning the individual emits, or generates, a behavior that has some effect on the environment, whereas in classical conditioning a stimulus elicits a response from the organism. (P. 118)
From which perspective is Skinner’s theory of learning a selectionist theory, like Darwin’s theory of evolution?
Animals (including humans) emit behaviors, some of which get reinforced (selected) by the environment.
Those that get reinforced increase in frequency in those environments, and those that do not get reinforced decrease in frequency in those environments.
Skinner’s adoption of selectionist thinking is a clear demonstration of the application of Darwin’s ideas to changes, not over evolutionary time, but over the lifetime of an individual. (P. 118)
20: How can we use operant conditioning to get an animal to do something that it currently doesn’t do?
By a technique called (operant) shaping: successively closer approximations to the desired response are reinforced until the desired response finally occurs and can be reinforced.
Animal trainers often use the process of rewarding gradual approximations to the desired behavior. (p. 119)
21: In what ways is extinction in operant conditioning similar to extinction in classical conditioning?
An operantly conditioned response declines in rate and eventually disappears if it no longer results in a reinforcer.
Rats stop pressing levers if no food pallets appear.
The absence of reinforcement of the response and the consequent decline in response rate are both referred to as ‘extinction’.
Just as in classical conditioning, extinction in operant conditioning is not true “unlearning” of the response. Passage of time following extinction can lead to spontaneous recovery of responding, and a single reinforced response following extinction can lead the individual to respond again at a rapid rate. (p. 119)
What is partial reinforcement?
A particular response produces only sometimes a reinforcer. (p. 119)
What is continuous reinforcement?
A response is always reinforced. (p. 119)