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
The process of a very rapid development of a response or learning pattern to a stimulus, often forming lasting attachment or preference to it; often seen in young animals during a critical period of development.
Imprinting
A behavior that is impossible to occur with another at the same time.
Incompatible Behavior
An inborn predisposition to behave in a specific way when appropriately stimulated; a natural, unconditioned behavior shared by all members of a species.
Instinct
The process by which the response is determined by the environmental consequences of a behavior; responses are a result of learning and emitted by an animal, as opposed to passively reacted to as in classical conditioning.
Operant (Instrumental) Conditioning
A schedule of reinforcement in which a response is not reinforced every time it is performed.
Intermittent Reinforcement (Partial Reinforcement Maintenance)
The duration of time between a stimulus being presented and a response being elicited.
Latency
The process in which relatively permanent changes in behavior are produced through experience.
Learning
A period in which early progress appears to have stopped and improvement is at a standstill, followed by a period of new progress.
Learning Plateau
Learning that takes place in a series of steps, whereby successive approximations of the desired behavior are reinforced.
Method of Approximation
The underlying force regulating a behavior, which partly determines the direction and strength of the response to a given situation.
Motivation
To remove from the environment or direct away from the source of a stimulus.
Negative
The stimulus to which responses are not reinforced or negatively reinforced.
Negative Discriminative Stimulus
The frequency of the behavior is increased by the subtraction of something the animal does not like, as an immediate result of the behavior.
Negative Reinforcer
Any stimulus that has no effect on behavior before conditioning.
Neutral Stimulus or Cue
Emitted behavior that is controlled by its consequences and acts on and produces a change in the environment.
Operant Behavior
A response to a stimulus in which the organism turns toward the source of the stimulus.
Orienting Response
Measures of observed behavior.
Performance
To add to the environment or direct towards the source of the stimulus.
Positive
The addition of an aversive stimulus to the animal’s environment following a response, thereby decreasing the frequency of that response.
Positive Punishment
Presentation of a reinforcer following a behavior, thereby increasing the behavior’s frequency
Positive Reinforcement
A process in which learning is made easier by something learned previously.
Positive Transfer
A stimulus which has been conditioned through generalization as a predecessor to an aversive stimulus.
Pre-Aversive Stimulus
A quality that an animal responds to innately in a certain way, without any conditioning from a human.
Primary
Reinforcement provided by a stimulus that the organism finds inherently rewarding, usually one that satisfies a biological need.
Primary (Unconditioned) Reinforcement
The process where retention of new learning is interfered with by a previous learning experience.
Proactive Inhibition
An antecedent event that helps initiate a response; instructions, gestures, physical guidance, or cues.
Prompt
The process of sending or retrieving an animal from one point of station to another (or to bring back to station) through the use of a conditioned sound stimulus.
Recall
An automatic and unthinking reaction to a stimulus by an organism; an innate response that is not learned and is inherent to the characteristics of the nervous system.
Reflex
A lack of response.
Refusal
Reversion to an earlier mental or behavioral level, or earlier stage of learning, as a result of frustration.
Regression
The event which increases the frequency of the behavior it follows.
Reinforcement
The relationship between the reinforcement and the exact properties of the performance which hit follows.
Reinforcement Contingency
Anything that increases the frequency of the behavior it immediately follows; may also elicit a reflex response.
Reinforcer
The failure of an operant behavior caused by previous aversive consequences.
Repression
Behavior that is elicited or automatically controlled by antecedent stimuli; a performance that automatically follows certain stimuli; a reflex.
Respondent Behavior
Any kind of behavior produced by a stimulus.
Response
A stimulus that when presented upon the successful performance of a task elicits within an animal the feeling of satisfaction.
Reward
A loss of effectiveness that occurs after a large amount of a reinforce has been delivered, and therefore loses its reinforcing value.
Satiation
A quality that an animal responds to because it’s perception has been conditioned or learned.
Secondary
A stimulus that acquires reinforcing properties through association with a primary reinforcement.
Secondary Reinforcer
A method of modifying behavior through selectively reinforcing responses that approximate the desired response to an increasingly greater degree.
Shaping
An assigned position for an animal, designated by a trainer.
Station
Any physical event or condition, including the organism’s own behavior; any environmental condition which impinges on the animal’s sensory perception.
Stimulus
A differential form or frequency of a performance in the presence of one stimulus which is not evident in the presence of another stimulus.
Stimulus Control
A representation of the particular occasion on which a performance will not be reinforced; a signal that indicates an incorrect behavior or response.
Stimulus Delta
A term used to describe the decreased frequency of a performance that occurs when the performance is reinforced on a large fixed ratio schedule; occurs between long periods of no performance and periods when there are bursts of performance at high rates.
Strain
The process of refining an animal’s behavior from a spontaneous initial behavior to a behavior planned by the trainer; used to condition performance not currently in the organism’s repertoire.
Successive Approximation
Behavior which results from misunderstanding, where there is no intended relation between response and reinforcement; frequently related to fear of the unknown or aversive situations.
Superstitious Behavior
Any reinforcer discernible by touch.
Tactile Reinforcement
A prop which pinpoints a critical location for an animal in training.
Target (noun)
The smallest unit of behavior, consists of an animal’s action to touch a designated spot.
Target (verb)
The final pattern of behavior that organism’s are expected to demonstrate after the completion of shaping procedures.
Terminal Response
The cessation of stimulus or response from the trainer for some interval of time; removing the situation in which the animal can get reinforcement, used to suppress incorrect responses.
Time-Out
A response that is emitted on exposure to a stimulus without previous conditioning.
Unconditioned Reflex
A response that is elicited by an unconditioned stimulus without prior training or learning; instinct or reflex.
Unconditioned Response
Any stimulus possessing the capacity to elicit a reaction in the absence of prior conditioning.
Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
