AP Psych Module 27- Operant Conditioning

B. F. Skinner mnemonic device

"SKIN"ner your SKIN is exposed to outside influences, and skinner theorized that external factors influence your behavior.

Continuous reinforcement example

Rewarding a rat by giving it cheese every time it presses a bar.

Positive punishment definition

A behavior results in the adding of an undesirable stimulus.

Negative punishment example

A driver who is speeding gets his/her license taken away.

Positive reinforcement example

A kid who keeps nagging his parents to take him to the mall and actually gets to go to the mall will nag more often.

Partial (intermittent) reinforcement example

A mouse keeps pressing a bar, but only gets cheese some of the time after pressing it.

B.F. Skinner definition

A psychologist who claimed that external influences are the ones that shape behavior, and that a person can use operant principles to influence others' behavior.

Fixed-interval schedule example

A rat keeps pressing a bar, but only gets one piece of cheese for every ten minutes of bar-pressing.

Conditioned/secondary reinforcers example

A rat learns that turning on a light will give him food, so the rat wants to turn on the light- the light is the conditioned reinforcer because it's associated with food.

Variable-ratio schedule example

A rat presses a bar but only gets cheese after an unpredictable amount of bar presses each time.

Variable-ratio schedule definition

A reinforcement schedule in which a response is reinforced after an unpredictable amount of responses.

Variable-interval schedule definition

A reinforcement schedule in which a response is reinforced at unpredictable intervals of time.

Fixed-ratio schedule definition

A reinforcement schedule in which a response is reinforced for every specified number of responses.

Fixed-interval schedule definition

A schedule in which a response is only reinforced after a specific amount of time has passed.

Reinforcement schedules mnemonic device

A schedule, like your school schedule, tells you how often you go to math class in a week, and when. A reinforcement schedule describes how often an organism is rewarded for an action/when.

Operant conditioning definition

A type of conditioning where organisms learn behaviors based on how they're rewarded/punished for them.

Operant chamber definition

AKA a Skinner box. A box in which there's a bar/key an organism can press to get food/water and recording devices to track how often the bar/key is pressed.

Negative reinforcement example

After you take aspirin, your headache is eliminated, which makes you want to take aspirin every time you have a headache.

Shaping example

An experimenter who wants to teach a rat to press a bar will give a rat cheese as it gets closer to the bar, then eventually only give cheese after the rat presses the bar.

Shaping definition

An operant conditioning procedures- experimenters get an organism to have a certain behavior by gradually guiding them closer and closer towards that behavior.

Primary reinforcers definition

An unlearned stimulus that reinforces certain behaviors.

Positive reinforcement definition

Any additional action/consequence that happens after a behavior, which encourages the organism to perform the behavior more often.

Edward Thorndike's law of effect mnemonic device

Edward ThornDIKE rhymes with LIKE-- if the organisms LIKES the reaction to its behavior (if it's positive) then it will repeat the behavior more often.

Operant conditioning mnemonic device

OpeRANT- RANTS are a way of negatively enforcing an action, which would decrease a certain behavior in an organism via operant conditioning.

Reinforcement schedules definition

Patterns that describe how often a conditioned response will be reinforced.

Primary reinforcers example

Primary reinforcers can satisfy biological needs, like getting food when you're hungry. Getting the food reinforces the behaviors it took for you to get the food, because the food satisfied a biological need.

Operant chamber example

Skinner used them-- a mouse presses a bar to get cheese, and it's recorded how often the mouse presses it.

Positive punishment example

Speeding is punished positively by the fact that the driver gets a speeding ticket.

Conditioned/secondary reinforcers definition

Stimuli that become reinforcers after being associated with primary reinforcers.

Edward Thorndike's law of effect definition

The theory that behaviors that cause positive reactions are more likely to be repeated than those that result in negative consequences.

Negative punishment definition

When a bad behavior is punished by the withdrawal of a positive stimulus.

Fixed-ratio schedule example

When a customer gets 1 free drink fro every 10 he/she buys.

Continuous reinforcement definition

When a response is reinforced every time it is present.

Negative reinforcement definition

When a stimulus is removed/eliminated after a response, which makes an organism more likely to respond in that manner in the future.

Partial (intermittent) reinforcement definition

When responses are only reinforced some of the time.

Variable-interval schedule example

You check your email multiple times, awaiting a response, but you have no idea when the response will come, and you checking your email more often does not make the response more likely.