Lecture 2 - Skinner and Pavlov

Question 1

Skinner?

Answer 1

• famous for behaviourism
• created the Skinner box
• worked with rats and pigeons

Question 2

Operant conditioning (instrumental conditioning)?

Answer 2

• When an animal does an appropriate thing you reward it
• Used response shaping to train his animals to perform a particular behaviour to gain a reward
• If rats pressed the lever in the skinner box = rewarded

Question 3

Colwill and Rescorla?

Answer 3

• trained rats on different occasions to either press a lever and get food or pull a chain and get sucrose
• different types of reinforcers for different types of responses
• food -> illness, sucrose -> nothing
• they were then put into a test box with just a lever and chain
• the chain was preferred which goes against instrumental conditioning

Question 4

Schedules of reinforcement?

Answer 4

• keep animals performing a trained response without always receiving a reward
• interval schedules = involve presenting a reinforcer after a certain amount of time
• ratio schedules = involve presenting a reinforcer after a certain no. of responses
• these responses can be fixed e.g. the first response after a fixed amount of time (interval)
• can also be variable e.g. the time and no. of responses varies

Question 5

What is an e.g. of a fixed interval schedule?

Answer 5

studying for exams

Question 6

What is an e.g. of a variable interval schedule?

Answer 6

regularly checking social media

Question 7

What is an e.g. of a fixed ratio schedule?

Answer 7

workers on deliveroo will work for an hour, get rewarded by being paid and then take a break

Question 8

What is an e.g. of a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement?

Answer 8

gambling - no guarantee you’ll be rewarded, more responses you produce the quicker you’ll get rewarded

Question 9

Pavlov - classical conditioning?

Answer 9

• a NS e.g. a bell initially has no learned effect on an animal
• when an unconditioned stimulus (US) such as food is presented, the animal makes an appropriate unconditioned response (UR) such as salivation
• during conditioning the bell (a conditioned stimulus, CS) is repeatedly paired with the US, which in turn leads to the UR
• after a number of CS-US pairings the presentation of the CS alone is enough to produce salivation, which is now called a conditioned response (CR) because it is produced in response to the CS, not the US

Question 10

What is spontaneous recovery?

Answer 10

not a result of forgetting but instead due to a new association

Question 11

What is generalisation decrement?

Answer 11

when conditioned responding is lower due to a slight difference between the trained CR and the presented CR