Punishment Flashcards
Effects of Consequences:
- increase behavior – reinforced
- decreased behavior – punished
Two Ways of Punishing
- Add a stimulus – positive punishment
- Removed a stimulus – negative punishment
Two Key Points
- punishers are things we will escape or avoid given the opportunity
- punishers are defined by their effect on behavior
- if it doesn’t decrease the behavior, it’s not a punisher
-Contingency
-the degree of correlation between a behavior and its consequence
-Contiguity
- nearness of events in time (temporal contiguity) or space (spatial contiguity)
- the longer the interval, the slower the learning
- note: lower suppression ratio scores indicate more effective punishment
-Intensity
“all studies of the intensity of punishment have found that the greater the intensity of the punishing stimulus the greater the reduction of the punished responses.” (Azrin and Holz (1966) p. 396)
-Introductory Intensity of Punishment
-using an effective level of punishment from the beginning is very important
-Ethical considerations
- if punishment is to be used, it must be intense enough to suppress the behavior dramatically
- Risks if not doing this:
- Behavior does not get suppressed
- more instances of punishment are required
- greater (perhaps inhumane) intensities end up being required
- What is an acceptable level of intensity
- rule of thumb for self-modification: an effective punisher would be one you are not willing to inflict upon yourself (i.e., you would need a 3rd party to do it)
SBIS (self-injurious behavior inhibiting system)
if you self-injure, it will shock you every time that occurred. Now banned
-reinforcement of punished behavior
-effectiveness of the punisher is determined by effectiveness of the reinforcers maintain the behavior
-Alternative sources of reinforcement
- providing other means of obtaining the reinforcement that maintains the punished behavior will suppress the behavior more effectively
- behavior decreases more rapidly
- punishment may not be necessary
Problems with Punishment
- the use of punishment is often reinforcing to the person doing the punishment
- example: Classroom teacher who uses punishment successfully
- teacher might be praised for “running a tight ship”
- Negative reinforcement
- undesirable classroom behaviors such as talking disruptively, may stop with little effort (negatively reinforcing for the teacher)
-Escape and Avoidance
- punishment can induce escape and avoidance behaviors such as:
- struggling free
- hiding
- stealing
- cheating
- lying
-Aggression
- often a form of escape
- especially likely to occur when other means of escape is impossible
- negatively reinforced
- not always directed at the punishing source
- often is directed at inanimate objects
- opportunity to attack can be used as a reinforcer (vis-à-vis the Premack Principle)
-Apathy
- if no alternative behaviors are reinforced the organism may just “do nothing” at all and exhibit a malaise or apathy
- Doesn’t teach Acceptable Behaviors
- punishment only decreases behavior
- acceptable behaviors still need to be reinforced
-Abuse
- punishment often “gets out of hand” or is used in damaging and harmful ways
- e.g., corporal punishment that progresses in intensity
- negative punishment is generally preferred to positive punishment
- e.g., removing internet privileges to a misbehaving child
-Imitation of the Punisher
-children are prone to learn from adults and may use these techniques on others and into the future
Premack Principle
-for reinforcement:
high-probability behavior reinforced low-probability reinforcer
-piano (low prob.) -> Coffee
PP for punishment:
low probability behavior punished high probability behavior
-Coffee (high prob.) -> Piano
Respondent Conditioning
-Pavlov’s dogs
-Unconditional Stimulus (US) -> Unconditional response (UR)
- Conditional Stimulus (CS) -> Conditional Response (CR)
- Step 1 – make administration of the US contingent on presentation of the novel stimulus
- Neutral -> US -> (elicits) UR
- Step 2 – present the CS (formerly the novel stimulus) on its own
- Conditional Stimulus -> CR
Conditioned Concupiscence in Rats
- exposed make rats to a neutral odor (CS) and then a sexually receptive female rate (US)
- training
-Respondent conditioning
-the process of establishing a conditional probability between a CS and a US
-Respondent
- the response elicited by the CS
- respondent + conditional response
-a respondent is
a class of behavior that changes as a result of preceding stimuli (i.e., antecedents)
- the bell (antecedent)makes the dog salivate (behavior)
- the controlling event is a stimulus that precedes the response
-An operant is
class of behavior that changes as a result that follow it (i.e., consequences)
- the rat presses the lever (behavior) for food (consequence)
- the controlling event is a stimulus that follows the response
Phylogenetic Behavior
- behavior based on genetic endowment
- reflexes
- fixed/modal action patterns
- reaction chains
- habituation/sensitization
- unconditional reflex
Primary Laws of the Reflex
-Law of threshold
-there is a point (called the threshold) below which no response is elicited and above a response always occurs
-Law of Intensity-Magnitude
-increases in stimulus intensity (or magnitude) also increase the intensity of the response
-Law of Latency
-the more intense a stimulus is, the faster the response is elicited
pavlov made a mistake
unconditional reflexes follow the laws of reflex
conditional reflexes do not follow the laws of reflex
Respondent Discrimination
-when values of the CS, other than what was originally trained, elicit little to no conditioned response
Respondent Generalization
-when an organism shows a conditioned response to values of the CS that were not trained during acquisition
Associations
“The dog salivated because it associated the sound of the bell with the food”
-Psychological Interpretation
-an observable and vaguely defined mental cause/representation
-Neurological Interpretation
- a “place-holder” for complex neurological processes
e. g., Long-Term Potentiation
-Behavioral Interpretation
-short-hand for the actual history of events the organism experienced
Measuring the Respondent
-Latency of the CR
- the interval of time between the CS presentation and the CR
- requires the CR to occur before the US is presented
higher order conditioning (second-order)
pairing another neutral stimulus with the CS(1)
-Test-Probe Trials
-present the CS alone (i.e., with no US)
-Intensity of the CR
-CRs tend to get stronger as conditioning proceeds
Respondent Extinction
- representation of the CS without the US (after acquisition)
- creates a gradual decline in responding
-Shocks (US) cause rats
to “freeze” in place (UR)
-tone is contingency paired with shock to make rats freeze and thus, suppress lever pressing for food
- during extinction, tone (CS) gradually loses its ability to suppress lever pressing
- i.e., loses its ability to generate CR
- 0.5 = no CR, 0.1 = Strong CR
Other notes on extinction
-re-acquisition of an extinguished CR occurs quicker than during initial trial
Delayed conditioning
- the CS beings and US overlap
- The CS begins first
- generally, the most effective method when the CS-US interval is short (o.4 – 1 sec)
- CS-US interval = time between CS onset and US onset
- common in the real world
-Trace Conditioning
- the CS begins and ends before the US
- Temporal contiguity matters:
- Generally, longer intervals between the CS and US produce weaker responding
- Depends on the response being learned
- Common in the real world
-Simultaneous Conditioning
- the CS and US begin and end at the same time
- Less common in the real world
- Less effective than Delayed and Trace conditioning
-Backwards Conditioning
- the CS follows the US
- Very ineffective but can be produced in a laboratory
- The CS-US Contingency
- E.g. Rescorla (1968) (Respondent Extinction)
- CS = Tone
- US = Shock
- CR = Suppression of lever pressing for food
- Lower ratio = more freezing (less pressing)
- when the US was likely to occur in the presence of the CS as its absence conditioning was not effective. All rats had the same amount of tone shock pairings, but the shocks occurring alone were varied
- Using delayed condition both groups’ “pair” the CS and US equivalently
- only the Contingent group produces an effective CR
-Stimulus Features
-physical characteristics affect the pace of conditioning
-overshadowing
when a compound stimulus Is used as a CS, but only a particular element of that compound can elicit a CR
-Overshadowing is influenced by:
- Stimulus Intensity
- more intense stimuli will overshadow less intense stimuli
- Nature of the US to the species
- Continuum of Preparedness:
- the idea that organisms are genetically disposed to learn some things and not others
-Latent Inhibition
-pre-exposure of a stimulus in the absence of a US interferes with the ability of that stimulus to become a CS
-Blocking
-failure of a stimulus to become a CS when it is part of a compound stimulus because the compound stimulus already includes an effective CS
-Sensory Preconditioning
- two neutral stimuli, A and B occur together
- one of those stimuli, B, is conditioned to become a CS
- When A is presented alone, it too will elicit the same CR as B
-Amount of exposure to the Contingencies
- in general, more exposure to the contingencies = greater conditioning response
- early exposure produces more learning than later exposure
- i.e., non-linear
- Conditional Responding is asymptomatic
- Conditioning can occur at different rates
- Interval-Interval
- interval between one CS-US exposure (a trial) and another CS-US exposure (a different trial)
- can vary from seconds to years
- typically, longer intervals are better than short intervals
-Age
- degenerative/health effects of aging
- learning history
Conditional Emotional Responses
- an emotional response to a stimulus that is acquired through respondent conditioning
- “Little Albert”
-Prejudice
-emotionally charging people, like Sept. 11 and the word Muslim
-Advertising
-the application of conditioned responses to advertising is easy to see. McDonald’s being the major Olympics sponsor as an example. Hiring beautiful people and celebrities to use in ads
-Paraphilia
-deviant sexual desires. Men typically develop them more than women.
-conditioned responses of heroin
counteracts/compensates the effects of the drug
- as conditioned responding is acquired, increased drug amounts are required to achieve desired drug (i.e., tolerance develops)
- administration of drug without CSs that generate the compensatory CR can prove fatal
-Conditioned Immunosuppression
-a drug that suppresses immune system function can be sued as a US to create a CS that also suppresses immune system function
-Allergic Reactions
-US which elicit reactions can be used to create CSs that produce similarly strong allergic reactions
-Placebo Effects
-may be explainable by this effect. A patient has lots of experience with medications and they typically work, so when doctor gives a placebo, and your body uses those cues to assist the body
