PSYC*2330 Chapter 5: Instumental Conditioning Foundations Flashcards
What is instrumental behaviour?
Behaviour that occurs because it was previously effective in producing certain consequences/ reinforcers
T or F: In both classical and instrumental conditioning, responding is necessary to produce a desired outcome.
False. Only instrumental conditioning requires specific responding for the consequence/outcome to occur.
How did Thorndike propose cats were able to escape from his puzzle boxes?
Through trial and error, cats accidentally escaped the box, then remembered how to do so
T or F: Thorndike believed that cats understood the mechanisms involved in escaping his puzzle boxes.
False
What does the law of effect state?
Behaviours leading to desirable outcomes are repeated and behaviours leading to undesirable outcomes are not repeated
According to the law of effect, associations are made between what two events?
- The preceding stimulus
- The response
T or F: The law of effect doesn’t consider the outcome of a behaviour
True
What type of association is considered a key mechanism of habitual behaviours and compulsions?
S-R associations
In what type of instrumental conditioning procedure are participants only able to perform the instrumental responses during specified periods?
Discrete-trial procedures
How do discrete-trial procedures begin and end?
- Begin by placing the animal in the apparatus (usually a maze)
- End by removing the animal from the apparatus after the instrumental response has been performed
What type of maze contains a start box (separated by a removable barrier) at one end and a goal box at the other
A runway/ straight-alley maze
What are two ways behaviour in discrete-trial procedures can be quantified?
- Measuring running speed
- Measuring latency
In discrete-trial procedures, what does running speed measure?
How fast the animal gets from the start box to the goal box
With training in discrete-trial procedures, does running speed typically increase or decrease?
Increase
In discrete-trial procedures, what does latency measure?
The time it takes the animal to leave the start box and begin running down the alley
With training in discrete-trial procedures, does latency typically increase or decrease?
Decrease
What is the instrumental response in a straight-alley maze?
Leaving the start box and running down the alley
What type of maze is used in discrete-trial procedures to study choice?
The T maze
What type of instrumental conditioning procedure permits repeated performance of the instrumental response without intervention by the experimenter?
Free-operant procedures
Who invented free-operant procedures?
B.F Skinner
In free-operant procedures, what are the two primary measures of interest?
- Number of responses
- Response rate
How are operant responses defined?
By the effect they produce on the environment
T or F: Different behaviours that have the same environmental outcome are considered to be instances of the same operant response.
True
What is the relation between operant responses and instrumental responses?
The individual actions involved in producing an operant response are instrumental responses
What is the preliminary stage of instrumental conditioning that involves repeatedly pairing a stimulus with a reinforcer to teach the participant to go get the reinforcer when it’s presented?
Magazine training
What is a food magazine, and what happens when it is repeatedly used?
A food delivery device that elicits a sound with the release of a food pellet and eventually elicits an approach response when just the sound is made
Does response shaping occur before or after magazine training?
After
How does response shaping lead to a desired instrumental response?
By reinforcing successive approximations to the desired instrumental response
What are the three components of successful response shaping?
- Clearly define the desired final response
- Clearly assess the starting level of the performance (regardless of how far it is from the desired response)
- Divide the progression from the starting point to the desired final response
What are the two complementary tactics involved in executing a response shaping training plan?
- Reinforcement of successive approximations
- Withholding reinforcement for earlier response forms
What is latent learning?
A form of learning not overtly expressed immediately, but becomes apparent when motivation is present
Who proposed/ demonstrated the concept of latent learning?
Edward Toleman
How did the learning of rats who were rewarded every time they made it to the end of the maze compare to rats who did not receive a reward at the end until day 11 of the procedure?
Rats who were only rewarded after day 11 showed no improvement until they were offered a reward, then they performed the same as the regularly rewarded rats
What are the two types of stimuli that can be used in instrumental conditioning procedures?
- Appetitive stimuli
- Aversive stimuli
What is an appetitive stimulus?
A pleasant or satisfying stimulus
What is an aversive stimulus?
An unpleasant or annoying stimulus
What does a positive response-outcome contingency imply?
The response produces a stimulus (either appetitive or aversive)
What does a negative response-outcome contingency imply?
The response eliminates or prevents the occurrence of a stimulus (either appetitive or aversive)
What is the result of reinforcement (either positive or negative)?
An increase in response rate
What is the result of punishment (either positive or negative)?
A decrease in response rate
What type of instrumental conditioning procedure produces an appetitive stimulus to increase response rate?
Positive reinforcement
What type of instrumental conditioning procedure produces an aversive stimulus to decrease response rate?
Positive punishment
What type of instrumental conditioning procedure eliminates or prevents the occurrence of an aversive stimulus to increase response rate?
Negative reinforcement
What type of instrumental conditioning procedure eliminates or prevents the occurrence of appetitive stimulus to decrease response rate?
Negative punishment
Omission training and differential reinforcement of other behaviour (DRO) are alternative ways of describing which instrumental conditioning procedure?
Negative punishment
What are the three elements fundamentally involved in instrumental conditioning and operant behaviour?
- Instrumental response
- The outcome of the response (reinforcer)
- The relation/contingency between response and outcome
Does reinforcement of a particular response typically lead to an increase or decrease in uniformity of response pattern?
Increase
How can response variability be increased using instrumental reinforcement procedures?
By explicitly reinforcing response variability
What is belongingness
The idea that an organism’s evolutionary history makes certain responses “fit” or “belong” with certain reinforcers
What happened when Thorndike tried to train cats to scratch themselves or yawn to be let out of a puzzle box?
The cats learned these responses initially, but their form changed as training proceeded, and they resembled the desired response less and less
What is instinctive drift?
A gradual change in instrumental behaviour away from the responses required for reinforcement and towards instinctive responses related to the reinforcer
What does the behaviour systems theory state?
Systems of behaviour have evolved to enable critical tasks like procuring food, defending territory, and avoiding predators
T or F: Behaviour systems include behaviours associated with instinctive drift, but not reinforced behaviours.
False. Behaviour systems include both the behaviours associated with instinctive drift and reinforced behaviours.
What are primary reinforcers?
Stimuli needed for survival (ex. food, water, sex)
Are stimuli that mimic the effects of primary reinforcers in the brain (i.e. drugs) considered primary or secondary reinforcers?
Primary reinforcers
What are secondary/conditioned reinforcers?
Previously neutral stimuli that have been paired with a primary reinforcer and acquired the capacity to strengthen stimulus-response associations
What are social reinforcers?
Stimuli whose reinforcing properties derive from the behaviour of other conspecifics
Praise, affection, and attention are examples of what type of reinforcer?
Social reinforcers
T or F: Social reinforcers are usually a blend of primary and secondary reinforcers.
True
Are longer or shorter reinforcements typically more effective in maintaining instrumental behaviour?
Longer
T or F: The effectiveness of a reinforcer depends only on its own properties, not how its properties compare to others.
False. The effectiveness of a reinforcer depends on both its own properties and how it compares to other reinforcers the individual has received in the past.
What term describes a change in the value of a reinforcer produced by prior experience with another reinforcer of higher or lower value?
Behavioural contrast
What is a positive behavioural contrast?
When prior experience with a lower valued reinforcer increases the current reinforcer’s value
What is negative behavioural contrast?
When prior experience with a higher valued reinforcer decreases the current reinforcer’s value
What are the two types of relationships between a response and a reinforcer?
- Temporal relation
- Response-reinforcer contingency/ causal relation
T or F: Temporal and causal factors in the response-reinforcer relationship are independent of one another.
True
In the response-reinforcer relation, what is the temporal relation?
The time interval between an instrumental response and the reinforcer
What is temporal contingency?
When the reinforcer is delivered immediately after a response
In the response-reinforcer relation, what is response-reinforcer contingency?
The extent to which an instrumental response is necessary and sufficient to produce a reinforcer
With delayed reinforcement, it is difficult to determine which response deserves the credit for causing the reinforcer to be delivered. This is known as what?
The credit-assignment problem
What are two ways to overcome the credit-assignment problem?
- Providing a secondary/conditioned reinforcer immediately after the instrumental response
- A marking procedure
What occurs during the marking procedure?
A procedure in which the instrumental response is immediately followed by a distinctive event
What effect does the marking procedure have on an instrumental response?
It makes the instrumental response more memorable
According to Skinner, what type of behaviour increases in frequency because of accidental/ adventitious reinforcement?
Superstitious behaviour
What is accidental/adventitious reinforcement?
An instance in which the delivery of a reinforcer happens to coincide with a particular response, even though the response wasn’t responsible for the reinforcer presentation
T or F: Skinner’s claim that contiguity is more important than contingency is supported by empirical evidence.
False
What were the two responses observed by Staddon and Simelhag that challenge Skinner’s interpretation of the superstitious pigeon experiment?
- Terminal responses
- Interim responses
What are terminal responses?
Responses that occur most often at the end of the interval between successive reinforcements
What are interim responses?
Responses that occur most often in the middle of the interval between successive reinforcements
What type of behaviours may be responsible for the non-contingent reinforcement observations made by Skinner in the superstitious pigeon experiment?
Non-operant behaviours
What did Staddon and Simelhag conclude when they repeated Skinner’s superstitious pigeon experiment that contradicted Skinner’s original findings?
Both contiguity and contingency influence the acquisition of instrumental behaviour
What effect refers to the interference of learning new instrumental responses as a result of exposure to inescapable and unavoidable aversive stimulation?
The learned-helplessness effect
T or F: Leaned-helplessness of a certain task only impacts learning of related tasks.
False. Learned-helplessness impacts learning even when tasks are unrelated.
Learned-helplessness tasks usually follow what type of design?
A triadic design
What are the two phases of a triadic design?
- Exposure phase
- Conditioning phase
What are the three conditions typical of a triadic design?
- Escape (Group E): exposed to periodic shocks that can be terminated by performing an escape response
- Yolked (Group Y): yolked to group E
- Restricted (Group R): receives no shocks
What does it mean for one group to be “yolked” to the other in a triadic design?
The rats in the yolked group are partnered with rats in the escape group, and they receive the same duration and distribution of shocks as their E group partner, but have no way of preventing the shocks
What does the learned-helplessness hypothesis propose?
That exposure to inescapable and unavoidable aversive stimulation disrupts subsequent learning because participants learn that their behaviour has no control over outcomes
What is the difference between the learned-helplessness effect and the learned-helplessness hypothesis?
- Effect: Describes a pattern of results
- Hypothesis: Attempts to explain why the effect occurs
According to the leaned-helplessness hypothesis, what are the two reasons for the learning deficit caused by learned-helplessness?
- The expectation of lack of control reduces motivation to perform response
- The expectation of lack of control makes it more difficult to lean that behaviour is now effective in producing outcomes
What are the two alternative theories proposed to explain the learned-helplessness effect?
- The activity deficit hypothesis
- The attention deficit hypothesis
What does the activity deficit hypothesis propose?
That animals in Group Y show a learning deficit following exposure to inescapable shock because it encourages them to become inactive or freeze
What does the attention deficit hypothesis propose?
That animals in Group Y show a learning deficit following exposure to inescapable shocks because the shocks reduce the extent to which one pays attention to their own behaviour
Has the activity deficit hypothesis or attention deficit hypothesis been more successful as an alternative to the learned-helplessness hypothesis?
The attention deficit hypothesis
