Operant Conditioning (Skinner, 1938) Flashcards
Operant Conditioning assumes that
behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences
Thorndike (1911) conducted an experiment where he put a cat in a cage with a latch on the door and put food outside the cage, what did the cat do after accidentally hitting the latch?
got food and once the experiment was repeated the at realised he would get food if he hit the latch, food was reinforcement
How much time did it take the cat to get out of the cage on the first trial and after 10 trials?
5 minutes - 5 seconds
What was the skinner box?
A box to put pigeons or rats in to learn specific behaviours by being punished through electric shocks or rewarded through food
Reinforcement was proved in the skinner box as
food could only be recieved by pulling a lever and this behaviour increased in frequency after the rats or pigeons realised they could get food
Positive Reinforcement is when
something good is given because of the behaviour, so the behaviour is repeated
Negative reinforcement is when
something bad is taken away because of the behaviour, so the behaviour is repeated
Positive punishment is when
something bad is given and the behaviour is stopped
Negative punishment is when
something good is taken away and the behaviour is stopped
Primary reinforcement is when
the reward is a basic need like foor or warmth
Secondary reinforcement is when
the reward is something that can buy or get a basic need, like money or tokens
contingency means what is going to affect
the organism - reinforcer/punishment, has to relate to the behaviour so there is a clear link between them
contiguity means there must not be a
time lapse between the reward or punishment and the behaviour, if there is too long between, learning might not occur
Shaping is
reinforcing small behaviours over time that when brought together form a big behaviour
OC cannot account for
behaviours that develop as a result of observing others - not a complete explanation
OC is useful as the principals can be used in
therapy in order to encourahe desriable behaviour and reduce undesirable behaviour through punishment e.g tokens in prison
Unlike CC it helps explain the development of new behaviours and
offers ways to deliberately alter the behaviour through shaping, making it useful
Tolman and Homzik (1930) studied rats who were taught to run in a maze to find food, if the route that they had learnt to get the food was then blocked, they would
go another route which they did not have to learn, it seems as if they had built a cognitive map of the maze - Latent Learning - suggests cognitive element
OC could be reductionist as it isolates specific aspects of behaviour and consequences which means reducing behaviour to such a small part of normal activity, so
the results may not be true to real life as other social factord or individual differences may have an impact, lacks validty
Objective measures and careful controls are used when researching OC meaning that it is
studied scienfically, giving it more credibility, e.g Skinner isolated animals in a cage to control all variables meaning that cause and effect conclusion could be drawn
Pickens and Thompson (1968) did 3 experiments to copare the effects of food and cocaine as sources of p reinforcement by varying the size of the reinforcer and the schedule, they found that
cocaine was an effective reinforcer which resulted in level ressing and transferred learning from one lever to another, cocaine was similar to food
May be some issues in generalising the supporting animal studies to humans aas there are too many differences e.g
animals have much smaller cortex in the brain, meaning humans may respond differently to animals when deciding whether to repeat or stop the behaviour
Skinner’s study with the box supports the theory as he used both positive and negative reinforcement which was found to
make the rats more likely to press the lever, adds to credibilty
Continuous reinforcement schedule is
rewarding a person for every time they display the target behaviour, results in slow, steady progress
Fixed ratio reinforcement schedule is
giving reinforcement after a specific number of the target behaviour has been displayed, produces a high and steady display of the behaviour
Variable ratio schedule is when people are only
reinforced after the behaviour in question has been displayed several imes, the no. is on average, for e.g every 10th then 17th time -highest display and stays constant
Fixed interval schedule is when you
provide reinforcemnet at regular times like every weeked, results in uneven display of behvaiour - only do the behaviour right before the reward
Variable interval schedule provides
reinforcement at timed intervals but the gap betwen each reward varies around an average, high and frequent displays of behaviour
