Skinner Flashcards
What is the most important aspect of psychology?
The explanation of behavior
Psychology should be _____, less “____”
reductionist, complex
reductionist - breaking down concepts into smaller parts
What are the 5 “rules” of behaviorism
- The explanation of observable behavior is the most important aspect of psychology
- Psychology should be reductionistic, less “complex”
- The most basic explanation of behavior is through the environment
- Learning is the most important process to people
- Learn via experimentation
What is the most important process to people?
Learning
How was personality psychology different from behaviorism
Personality psychology:
Personality is general, enduring, largely functional
Behaviorism:
Personality is specific, temporary, and largely functional
How do we learn?
Classical conditioning
What is classical conditioning?
An unconscious process where an automatic, conditioned response becomes associated with a specific stimulus.
US – > UR
CS, US –> UR
CS –> CR (final step where you associate a stimuli with a response)
Why is classical conditioning important in behaviorism?
Often used to explain emotional reaction
Ex: Having fear of dark alleys because you once got mugged in a dark alley
What is extinction in classical conditioning?
The gradual weakening of a conditioned response that results in the behavior decreasing or disappearing
How do we learn?
Instrumental conditioning (aka operant conditioning)
What’s instrumental conditioning
Learning method that uses rewards and punishment to modify behavior
What are the types of reinforcement?
Positive: Increases frequency of behavior (ex: giving treat to dog associated with doing specific trick)
Negative: Increases frequency of behavior by taking away negative stimulus (ex: teacher removing hw to praise kids for doing a good job)
What are the types of reinforcers (aka rewards)?
Primary: innate reinforcers (ex: food, pain)
Secondary: rewards that are learned to be valued (ex: money)
Difference between classical conditioning and instrumental learning
Classical conditioning: environment elicits a response
Instrumental learning: person acts and the environmental reaction follows
If behaviors must precede reinforcement, how do we learn/teach new things? (Hint: 4 of them)
- Shaping
- Generalization
- Discrimination
- Superstitious Behavior
What’s Shaping?
Use of successive approximations (teach a dog to roll over)
What’s Generalization?
Take learning from one environment and bring it to other similar environments (bringing a pen to class)
What’s Discrimination?
Doing a behavior in certain circumstances
What’s Superstitious Behavior?
Learning from random reinforcement may impact personality
What are the 2 schedules of reinforcement?
Continuous: Fastest learning, quickest extinction
Partial: slower learning but more resistant to extinction
- fixed ratio
- variable ratio is most resistent to extinction
- Fixed interval
- Variable interval
What is prepared learning?
Some things are easier to learn than others perhaps due to phylogenetic reasons
ex: taste aversion, fear of spiders/snakes
What is the name of the approach that systemically applies learning principles to change behavior?
Behavior Modification (often used in therapy)
What are the 4 basic main steps to behavior modification in therapy?
- Functional Analysis: the stimuli and reinforcers which influence behavior are ID’d
- Intervention: Control situation; use reinforcement for desirable behavior
- Token Economies: method of positive reinforcement
- Learning modules
