Lecture 23 Flashcards
What are some side effects of extinction and typical problems?
Side effects of extinction include: Extinction “bursts” of responses, a burst of behaviour as the reward is removed, extinction induced aggression and an increase in response topography. These are all before the extinction finishes.
Typical problems using extinction are that inability to control all sources of reinforcement for the behaviour, failure to provide alternative behaviours leading to the same reinforcer, and spontaneous recovery.
What is time out and what are key things to keep in mind?
Time out is negative punishment (by removing positive reinforcers), it is brief, safe, but not without potential problems. This needs to be implementable, time out should remove reinforcers, is time in(time out) reinforcing, there is also a potential for abuse because time out may be reinforcing for parents or teachers when they remove the adverse stimulus.
What is Premack’s principle? What does this mean for behaviour modification?
A high probability behaviour will act as a reinforcer for lower probability behaviours while a low probability behaviour will punish and higher probability behaviour. This means we should be able to predict what behaviour will reinforce other behaviours in a situation. For behaviour modification this increases the scope of what can be an effective reinforcer, procedures for identifying reinforcers and punishers are clear yet relatively unobtrusive. Reinforcers can be tailored for specific situations. Through deprivation we can change the probabilities of a certain behaviour in a situation.
What is an antecedent?
To be effective in the environement, instrumental responses must occur at appropriate occasions (I.e not singing in lectures). These cues are called antecedent stimuli and leads to the ABCs (Antecedent-Behaviour-Consequences).
What is stimulus generalisation and discrimination?
Stimulus generalisation allows us to reuse behaviours in similar contexts, stimulus discrimination prevents us from reusing behaviours in the wrong contexts.
