Glossary A Flashcards
A coincidence between a performance and a reinforcer, where there is an increase in the frequency of the performance despite a lack of intentional connection between the performance and the reinforcer.
Accidental Reinforcement
Tending to discourage, retard, or make more difficult; moving or working in an opposite or contrary direction.
Adverse
A form of integration involving the maintenance of proximity to other individuals; to connect or associate oneself with.
Affiliation
A situation in which an organism wants something but is afraid of obtaining it.
Approach-Avoidance Conflict
A single step in the refinement process of shaping; one of many progressive steps.
Approximation
The process of conditioning an animal’s frame of mind in eliciting behavioral responses.
Attitude Shaping
A situation in which an organism is forced to choose one of two undesirable goals.
Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict
A response to a cue that is instrumental in avoiding a painful experience.
Avoidance Conditioning
The frequency that behavior is performed prior to initiating a behavior modification program.
Baseline
A change or stray from the norm in standard of response.
Behavioral Drift
Stimuli and methods used as tools to increase interest in the environment and decrease the frequency of stereotypical or injurious behavior.
Behavioral Enrichment
A stimulus that pinpoints in time the precise moment of a desired response and bridges the gap in time between that point and when the animal is rewarded.
Bridge
The process of learning a sequence of behaviors that proceeds semi-automatically in a determinate order.
Chaining
A form of conditioning in which stimuli associated with naturally meaningful stimuli tend to become substitutes for the stimuli themselves and elicit similar responses; the pairing of a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus that results in a conditioned response.
Classical Conditioning
An event which is initially neutral may acquire aversive properties by virtue of being paired with other aversive events or a signal that no reinforcement will be forthcoming.
Conditioned Aversive Stimulus
A reinforcer that derives its value as a result of its association with primary, innate, or unconditioned reinforcers.
Conditioned Reinforcer
A reflex response elicited by a conditioned stimulus alone in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus after a sufficient number of pairings of the conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus.
Conditioned Response (CR)
A stimulus which produces a previously unconditioned response through pairing or association.
Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
A change in the frequency or form of a behavior as a result of the influence of the environment, either through pairing with an unconditioned stimulus or through interaction with the environment.
Conditioning
A schedule of reinforcement in which each performance is followed by the reinforcer.
Continuous Reinforcement
A signal which will elicit a specific behavior or reflex as a result of a learned association.
Cue
A representation of the particular occasion on which a performance will not be reinforced; indicates an incorrect behavior or response.
Delta
Reducing the availability of, or access to, a reinforcer.
Deprevation
Reinforcement of one form magnitude of a response when other rather similar form magnitudes are not reinforced.
Differential (Selective) Reinforcement
Delivery of a reinforcer after a response that is incompatible or competes with a an undesirable target response.
Differential Reinforcement of Incompatible Behavior (DRI)
Reinforcement of any performance except a particular one, resulting in a decrease in frequency of that particular behavior.
Differential Reinforcement of Other Behavior (DRO)
Learning to differentiate between different stimuli and react accordingly.
Discrimination
A conditioned stimulus that produces a specific behavior; essentially, a stimulus that has a specific meaning (a cue).
Discriminative Stimulus (SD)
A behavior that is forcibly produced by the environment; to automatically bring about a response or reflex.
Elicit
A behavior that produces a change in the environment; produced through willingness or purposefulness.
Emit
A procedure where the reinforcement of a previously reinforced behavior is discontinued; a behavior which has decreased in frequency, often to the point where it is not performed at all.
Extinction
An increase in the frequency and intensity of responding at the beginning of extinction.
Extinction Burst
A procedure to change one stimulus controlling a certain behavior to another stimulus.
Fading
When a stimulus acquires control of a response due to reinforcement in the presence of a similar, but different, stimulus; the process of comparing events, consequences, or objects which have some trait in common and recognizing that trait to extrapolate into new situations, guiding the animal’s response, without the animal being specifically taught about that new situation.
Generalization
A recurrent pattern of behavior acquired through experience and made or or less permanent by various reinforcing events; routinely emitted without a cue.
Habit
The act of reinforcing, exactly following the behavior which is intended to increase in frequency.
Immediacy of Reinforcement