Skinner Flashcards
Skinner, general
“Theory, like fog, obscures facts”
Behavior is a function of its consequences and related antecedent stimuli
Rate of response is the only d.v. for free operants
If you don’t have an apparatus that lets you measure the rate of response then it is useless
A theory of learning was not necessary
‘We don’t know enough to write a proper theory, so let’s do research and see what happens’
No sense of writing hypotheses either, since there is no theory
“I don’t care what you thought was going to happen—instead, what happened?”
Skinner didn’t believe in inferential stats
Skinner and Hull
No one was harder on Hull than Skinner
Hull’s terms cannot be measured
Skinner won’t even use the term “drive”
E.g. Instead of saying the rat is ‘hungry’, the only scientifically observable statement you can off is that the rat is making this response because it’s at 80% of its ad lib body weight
6 things that can happen when an organism makes a response
Organisms resposnd for 2 reasons:
They get something out of it, or it gets them out of something
Positive Reinforcement
No Reinforcement
Negative Reinforcement: Escape
Negative Reinforcement: Avoidance
Positive Punishment
Negative Punishment
Positive Reinforcement
R-Sr+
Positive Reinforcement
e.g., press button, receive soda
No Reinforcement
R | Sr+
no reinforcement—{no soda}
During extinction you get emotional behavior
Extinction-produced aggression
During extinction if there is another rat present they get into a fight
Positive Punishment
R-Sr-
press button for soda, you get a shock
Positive and Negative vs + and - notation
Positve and Negative refer to presence of reinforcer [added or removed]
+ and – symbol denote type of reinforcer [appetetive or negative type of reinforcer]
Negative Reinforcement: Escape
R - [Sr-]
Escape response
You came into contact with it then you try to do something to get rid of it
Something is reinforcing when it’s subtracted
Negative Reinforcement: Avoidance
R [-] Sr-
Avoidance → avoiding contact with aversive stimulus
Avoidance response to avoid pain
E.g. going to dentist to avoid toothaches
It’s very difficult to get rid of avoidance behavior
Negative Punishment
R-[Sr+]
Taking away an appetitive reinforcer
Much of negative punishment includes types of positive punishment as well
•E.g. prisons
Hullians call it secondary reinforcer
Skinnerians call it conditioned reinforcer
Secondary reinforcer is a reinforcer because of its connection with SΔ
- Secondary reinforcers only work if the primary reinforcer is not satiated
- Whereas primary reinforcer is inborn
Contiguity: Antecedents
A = antecedents
SD - R - Sr+
SD—discriminative antecedent stimulus
E.g. green traffic light
Sets the occasion for making the response
Cue that says a reinforcer is available
SΔ - R | Sr+
SΔ: Set the occasion for not making the response
Cue that says that reinforcer is Not available
SP - R - Sr-
or
SP - R | Sr+
A cue to the presence of a punisher
or
Loss of a reinforcer
SP: Sets the occasion for either negative or positive punishment
E.g. red light is both:
accident (positive punishment)
ticket [omission: loss of money]
The cumulative recorder
Y-axis = number of responses
X-axis = time
Simply a pencil and a piece of paper on a spool
With each action of the organism, the pencil jumps up
The drawn line is cumulative so the line keeps going up, even when they stop the behavior
Only goes down when the pen reaches the top of the page – a reset
Cumulative Records
If you are a clinican then you need to work with individual organism
The “average animal” doesn’t tell you about the individual case
Repeated measure of a case design
Skinner used the lever press apparatus to study maintenance of behavior
The animal lives in it and can respond to it all day long, instead of a puzzle box that needs to be reset after each response
This makes it similar to the natural environment
You don’t have to watch the Skinner box, you can automate it and attach an accumulator to it
Cumulative records “Schedules of Reinforcment” book Firster and Skinner
Predictive of shapes of records based on different schedules
*Skinner box is ineffective at avoidance conditioning
CRF
continuous reinforcement, most basic schedule
1 R -1 pellet food
*Intermittent schedules compared to CRF take much longer to extinguish
Both VI and VR are hard to extinguish
FR
e.g. 5 R- 1 pellet food
Results in “fixed-ratio steps” due to post-reinforcement pauses
