Lecture 4

Question 1

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 1

Operant conditioning (also known as instrumental conditioning) relies on the consequences of past actions influencing future behaviour, resulting in increase or decrease of voluntary behaviours

Question 2

What are the ways to classify consequences?

Answer 2

Positive and negative
Reinforcement and punishment

Question 3

What are schedules of reinforcement?

Answer 3

Continuous and intermittent (partial)

Question 4

What is positive reinforcement?

Answer 4

Adds something to increase a behaviour
(Finish your homework and you can have an ice-cream)

Question 5

Positive punishment

Answer 5

Adds something to decrease a behavior
(Anti-barking collar)

Question 6

What is negative reinforcement?

Answer 6

When you take something away to increase a behavior
(Give a student a night off from homework after good marks)

Question 7

What is negative punishment?

Answer 7

When you remove something to decrease a behaviour
(Being put in time out)

Question 8

What is continuous reinforcement?

Answer 8

It is when someone is reinforced after each response

Question 9

What are the 4 partial schedules of reinforcement?

Answer 9

Fixed ratio (instances)
Variable ratio (instances)
Fixed interval (time of behavior)
Variable interval (time of behavior)

Question 10

What is fixed ratio reinforcement?

Answer 10

It is a reinforcement that occurs every time something happens. (Newspaper being delivered)

Question 11

What is variable ratio reinforcement?

Answer 11

It is reinforcement that happens on average. (Gambling you win certain amounts of time although it is very small)

Question 12

What is fixed interval?

Answer 12

It looks at someone’s first behavior after something happens. (What do you do when you first get onto the bus)

Question 13

What is variable interval?

Answer 13

It is on average the first behavior after doing something after a certain amount of seconds. (For example checking your emails)

Question 14

How can punishment be done effectively?

Answer 14

1. No escape
2. It is intense (within limits)
3. Continuous schedule
4. No delay
5. Over a short period of time
6. No subsequent reinforcement
7. Reinforce incompatible

Question 15

What are the 3 different reward variables?

Answer 15

Drive
Size
Delay

Question 16

What is drive?

Answer 16

Someone will be more likely to do something if the person really wants to reinforcement

Question 17

What is size?

Answer 17

Someone who gets offered more food will want to do a task more

Question 18

What happens with delay?

Answer 18

Someone will want the reinforcement more if there is no gap between the task and the reward

Question 19

What is shaping?

Answer 19

Selective reinforcement of behavior resembling the desired target behavior. (Bird half turning to get food, and eventually does a full spin because it realises the experimenter was giving it food when the bird turned.

Question 20

What is bating?

Answer 20

Baiting is getting the animal to do something and giving it food after

Question 21

What is mimics?

Answer 21

Animals learn from how we react and they will copy us to get us to respond

Question 22

What is sculpting?

Answer 22

It is when you use a bit of physical pressure to make an animal do something until it does the action on its own

Question 23

What is backward chaining?

Answer 23

It is when you learn an action backwards, to slowly learn behaviour then to start from the beginning being clueless.

Question 24

Can chaining be done backwards and forwards?

Answer 24

Yes

Question 25

Which chaining is more effective?

Answer 25

Backwards