instrumental conditioning

Question 1

types of instrumental conditioning

Answer 1

presenting or removing a positive reinforcer, presenting or removing a negative reinforcer

Question 2

reward training

Answer 2

involves the presentation of a positive reinforcer following a response which increases the frequency of the behvaiour

Question 3

punishment

Answer 3

presentation of a negative reinforcer

Question 4

omission training

Answer 4

removing a positive reinforcer leading to a decrease in the behaviour being reinforced, removing a positive reinforcer is a situation a person would want to avoid

Question 5

escape training

Answer 5

when a response is followed by the removal of a negative reinforcer (e.g. if a rat is being shocked from one side of the cage, move to the other side)

Question 6

contingencies

Answer 6

the process of acquisition leads to learning the contingency between a response and its consequences

Question 7

graphing responses

Answer 7

the flat horizontal line on the graph indicates when the subject is not responding, each upward slope indicates when a response has been made

Question 8

auto shaping

Answer 8

behaviours can be learned without careful guidance by the researcher, subject will learn the contingency on their own (e.g. pigeon pecking at a keyhole and it giving him food every time, self taught

Question 9

shaping

Answer 9

• organized into smaller steps
• each step can be reinforced through reward training
• over time get the final response wanted

Question 10

discriminative stimulus (SD)/ (S+)

Answer 10

signals when a contingency is “on” e.g. to a child, their grandparents house becomes SD for vegetable eating behaviour leading to reward of dessert if veggies eaten

Question 11

S-delta/ S-

Answer 11

indicates when the contingent relationship is not valid e.g. parent’s house= no reward for eating veggies

Question 12

ratio

Answer 12

based on the number of responses made by a subject, which determines when reinforcement is given

Question 13

interval

Answer 13

based on the time since that last response was reinforced

Question 14

4 schedules of reinforcement

Answer 14

• fixed ratio
• variable ratio
• fixed interval
• variable interval

Question 15

fixed ratio (FR)

Answer 15

-certain behaviour must take place certain amount of times to achieve wanted response

Question 16

variable ratio (VR)

Answer 16

reinforcement is delivered after random number of responses around a characteristic mean

Question 17

fixed interval (FI)

Answer 17

• reinforcement is delivered following the first response after a set interval of time
• have a scallop pattern
• e.g. study leading up to psych quiz, after quiz pause in study behaviour and then starts back up again

Question 18

variable interval (VI)

Answer 18

recieve reinforcement at any time, though you do have an idea of how often it is likely to come up

Question 19

extinction & schedule

Answer 19

• CFR (Continuous reinforcement schedule) schedule= once reinforcement stops occurring, the learner will immediately be aware and decrease responding
• PFR schedule= once reinforcement stops occurring, not immediately obvious
• partial reinforcement schedule best to train behaviours if wanting behaviour maintained over long period of time