Chapter 16 - Skinner

Natural selection

-A species is shaped by the contingencies of survival -This plays an important part in human personality -Individual behavior that is reinforcing tends to be repeated; that which is not tends to drop out -Not every remnant continues to have survival value

3 reasons people remain a member of a group

-People may remain in a group that abuses them because some group members are reinforcing them -Some people, especially children, may not possess the means to leave the group -Reinforcement may occur on an intermittent schedule so that the abuse suffered by an individual is intermingled with occasional reward

Two types of punishment

-Requires the presentation of an aversive stimulus -Involves the removal of a positive reinforcer

Cultural evolution

-Selection is responsible for those cultural practices that have survived -Humans do not make a cooperative decision to do what is best for the society, but those societies whose members behaved cooperatively tended to survive -Remnants of culture are not all adaptive

Generalized reinforcer

A conditioned reinforcer that has been associated with several primary reinforcers. An example is money because it is associated with food, shelther, and other primary reinforcers.

Classical conditioning

A neutral (conditioned) stimulus is paired with-that is, immediately proceeds-an unconditioned stimulus a number of times until it is capable of bringing about a previously unconditioned response, now called the conditioned response. -Skinner also called this respondent conditioning -A response is drawn out of the organism by a specific, identifiable stimulus

Shaping

A procedure in which the experimenter or the environment first rewards gross approximations of the behavior, then closer approximations, and finally the desired behavior itself.

Fixed-ratio schedule

A reinforcement schedule in which the organism is reinforced intermittently according to a specified number of responses it makes. -Ex: FR 5 means they're reinforced every fifth response

Stimulus generalization

A response to a similar environment in the absence of previous reinforcement. The transfer of effects of one learning situation to another.

Behaviorism

A school of psychology that limits its subject matter to observable behavior, emerged from lab studies on animals and humans (Watson was the founder, but Skinner most notable)

Operant conditioning

A type of learning in which reinforcement, which is contingent upon the occurrence of a particular response, increases the probability that the same response will occur again. -Also called Skinnerian conditioning -A behavior is made more likely to recure when it is immediately reinforced

What was Skinner's dark year?

After college, Skinner he tried writing for a year but failed. This was his first period of identity confusion, a time for trying to discover who he was, where he was going, and how he was going to get there.

How did Skinner become known as America's best-known living psychologist?

After he retired, he wrote several important books on human behavior.

What did Skinner believe about internal states?

Although he believed they were outside the domain of science, he did not deny their existence, such conditions as hunger, emotion, values, self-confidence, aggressive needs, religious beliefs exist but they don't explain behavior.

What was Skinner's Project Pigeon?

An attempt to condition pigeons to make appropriate pecks on keys that would maneuver an explosive missile into an enemy target.

Control of human behavior

An individual's behavior is controlled by environmental contingencies (erected by society, by another individual, or by oneself). The environment, not free will, is responsible for behavior.

Variable-interval schedule

An intermittent reinforcement schedule in which the organism is reinforced after a lapse of random and varied periods of time -Ex: VI 10 means an animal is reinforced for its first response following random-length intervals that average 10 minutes

Variable-ratio schedule

An intermittent reinforcement schedule in which the organism is reinforced for every nth response on the average. -Ex: VR 50 means an animal is reinforced on the average of one time for every 50 responses

Fixed-interval schedule

An intermittent reinforcement schedule whereby the organism is reinforced for its first response following a designated period of time. -Ex: FI 10 means an animal is reinforced for its initial responses after 10 minutes have elapsed since its previous reinforcement

What does scientific behaviorism allow for?

An interpretation of behavior but not an explanation of its causes. Interpretation permits a scientist to generalize from a simple learning condition to a more complex one.

In all instances of operant conditioning what three conditions are present?

Antecedent, the behavior, and the consequence.

Positive reinforcement

Any stimulus that, when added to a situation, increases the probability that a given behavior will occur.

Conditioning of a negative feeling

Associating a strong aversive stimulus with the behavior being punished.

Skinner recognized five important generalized reinforcers that sustain much of human behavior:

Attention, approval, affection, submission of others, and tokens (money).

What profession did Skinner originally want to do?

Be a writer

Why does the subject emit new responses that have never been reinforced but that gradually move it toward the target behavior?

Behavior is not discrete but continuous; that is, the organism usually moves slightly beyond the previously reinforced response. If behavior were discrete, shaping could not occur because the organism would become locked into simply emitting previously reinforced responses.

Unconscious behavior

Behaviors that one has no ability to consciously control. Skinner couldn't accept the notion of a storehouse of unconscious ideas or emotions. He did accept the idea of unconscious behavior. Nearly all our behavior is unconsciously motivated.

Behavior therapists

Developed a variety of techniques mostly based on operant conditioning and some on CC. They play a role in the treatment process, point out the positive consequences of certain behavior and the aversive effects of others and suggesting behavior that will result in positive reinforcement.

Conditioned reinforcer

Environmental event that is not by nature satisfying but becomes so because it is associated with unlearned or unconditioned reinforcers such as food, sex, and the like.

Deprivation and satiation with reinforcers (that society uses to exercise control):

Even though they're internal states, the control originates with the enviornment -Ex: people deprived of food are more likely to eat; those satiated are less likely to eat

Physical restraints (that society uses to exercise control):

Ex: hold children back from a deep ravine or putting lawbreakers in prison, these act to counter the effects of conditioning, and it results in behavior contrary to that which would have been emitted had the person bot been restrained

Examples of inappropriate behavior

Excessively vigorous behavior, excessively restrained behavior, blocking out reality, defective self-knowledge, and self-punishment

3 Main Characteristics of Science

First science is cumulative, second it is an attitude that values empirical observation, third science is a search for order and lawful relationships.

Inappropriate behaviors

Follow from self-defeating techniques of counteracting social control or from unsuccessful attempts at self-control, especially when either is followed by strong emotions. They are learned and shaped by reinforcement and punishment.

Drives

From the viewpoint of radical behaviorism they are not the cause of behavior, but merely explanatory fictions. To Skinner, they simply refer to the effects of deprivation and satiation and the corresponding probability that the organism will respond. For the present, however, explanations based on fictionalized constructs such as drives or needs are merely untestable hypothesis.

Social behavior

Groups don't behave; only individuals do. Individuals establish groups because they have been rewarded for doing so. Memebership in a social group is not always reinforcing.

How did Skinner agree with Thorndike?

He agreed that the law of effect was crucial to the control of behavior and the effects of rewards are more predictable than the effects of punishments in shaping behavior.

What was Skinner's upbringing like?

He grew up in a comfortable, happy, upper-middle class home. His parents valued honesty and hard work. Skinner himself was not religious, and he felt his parents loved his brother more but didn't feel unloved.

How did Watson take radical behaviorism, determinism, and environmentalism forces beyond Skinner's conception?

He ignored genetic factors completely and promised he could shape personality by controlling the environment.

Why was Skinner refereed to as a determinist?

He rejected the notion of volition or free will. Human behavior doesn't stem from an act of will, but like any observable phenomenon, it is lawfully determined and can be studied scientifically.

Why was Skinner referred to as a radical behaviorist?

His strict adherence to observable behavior.

What tragic event happened in Skinner's life?

His younger brother Eddie died

Complex behavior

Human behavior can be exceedingly complex, yet Skinner believed that even the most abstract and complex behavior is shaped by natural selection, cultural evolution, or the individual's history of reinforcement.

Self-awareness

Humans not only have consciousness but are also aware of their consciousness; they are not only aware of their environment but also themselves as part of their environment.

What is one distinction between operant and classical conditioning?

In CC behavior is elicited from the organism, whereas in OC behavior is emitted from the organism. An elicited response is drawn from the organism whereas an emitted response is on that simply appears.

Social control

Individuals act to form social groups because such behaviors tends to be reinforcing. Groups exercise control over their members by formulating written or unwritten laws, rules, and customs that have physical existence beyond the lives of individuals. These serve as powerful controlling variables in the lives of individual members.

Creativity

It is simply the result of random and accidental behaviors that happen to be rewarded. The fact that some people are more this than others is due both to differences in genetic endowment and to experiences that have shaped their creative behavior.

Like Thorndike and Watson what did Skinner insist about human behavior?

It should be studied scientifically and can be studied without reference to needs, instincts, and motives.

What was the baby tender?

It was essentially an enclosed crib with a large window and a continual supply of fresh warm air.

What is an example of classical conditioning?

Little Albert B., the key to this experiment was the pairing of a conditioned stimulus (the white rat) with an unconditioned stimulus (fear of a loud sudden sound) until the presence of the conditioned stimulus (the white rat) was sufficient to elicit the unconditioned stimulus (rat).

Passive resistance

More subtle than rebelling and more irritating to the controllers than those who rely on escape. More likely to occur when escape and revolt fail.

What did Skinner believe shaped human behavior and human personality?

Natural selection, cultural practices, and the individual's history of reinforcement

Suppress behavior

Only temporarily stops an undesired behavior or in certain environments.

Revolt

People behave more actively, counteracting the controlling agent. -Ex: vandalizing, tormenting authority figures, verballing abusing others, pilfering equipment from employers, provoking the police, or overthrowing established organizations such as religion or government

Escape

People withdraw from the controlling agent either physically or psychologically, they find it difficult to become involved in intimate personal relationships, tend to be mistrustful of people, and prefer to live lonely lives of non-involvement.

Successive approximations

Procedure used to shape an organism's actions by rewarding behaviors as they become closer and closer to the target behavior.

Antecedent

Refers to the environment or setting in which the behavior takes place.

How did Watson influence Skinner?

Skinner agreed with Watson that human behavior can be studied objectively.

Purpose and intention

Skinner also recognized these concepts, but again, he cautioned against attributing behavior to them. They exists within the skin, but aren't subject to direct outside scrutiny.

Psychotherapy

Skinner believed this blocks psychology's attempt to become scientific. A therapist molds desirable behavior by reinforcing slightly improved changes in behavior.

Why was Skinner refereed to as a envionrmentalist?

Skinner held that psychology must not explain behavior on the basis of the physiological or constitutional components of that organism but rather on the basis of environmental stimuli. He recognized genetic factors are important but since they are fixed they don't control behavior. History of the individual is.

Emotions

Skinner recognized their subjective existence, of courses, but he insisted that behavior must not be attributed to them. On the individual level, behaviors followed by delight, joy, pleasure, and other pleasant emotions tend to be reinforced, thereby increasing the probability that these behaviors would recur in the life of the individual.

Internal states

Skinner rejected explanations of behavior founded on non-observable hypothetical constructs but didn't deny their existence (fear, love, anxiety). It can be studied but their observation is limited.

Dreams

Skinner saw them as covert and symbolic forms of behavior that are subject to the same contingencies of reinforcement as other behaviors are. It's reinforcing when repressed sexual or aggressive stimuli are allowed expression.

Self-control

Skinner would say that just as people can alter the variables they can manipulate the variables within their environment and thus exercise some measure of this. However, they don't reside within the individual and can't be freely chose. -Ex: when people control their own behavior, they do so by manipulating the same variables that they would use in conditioning someone else's behavior, and ultimately these variables lie outside themselves

Behavioral analysis

Skinner's approach to studying behavior that assumes that human conduct is shaped primarily by the individual's personal history of reinforcement and secondarily by natural selection and cultural practices.

Operant discrimination

Skinner's observation that an organism, as a consequence of its reinforcement history, learns to respond to some elements in the environment but not to others. It does not exist within the organism but is a function of environmental variables and the organism's previous history of reinforcement.

Radical behaviorism

Skinner's view that psychology as a science can advance only when psychologists stop attributing behavior to hypothetical constructs (ego, traits, drives, needs, hunger, and so forth) and begin writing and talking strictly in terms of observable behavior.

Do the principles of behavior gleaned from rats and pigeons apply to human organisms?

Skinner's view was that an understanding of the behavior of lab animals can generalize to human behavior.

Reinforcement

Strengthens the behavior and it rewards the person.

Spread of its effects

Subject may develop a defense mechanism. May fantasize or project feelings onto others, rationalize aggressive behaviors, or displace them toward other people or animals.

Effects of punishment

Suppress behavior, conditioning of a negative feeling, spread of its effects

What led to his second identity crisis?

The failure of the Project Pigeon and the baby tender.

Operant extinction

The loss of an operantly conditioned response due to the systematic withholding of reinforcement.

Punishment

The presentation of a aversive stimulus or the removal of a positive one. It sometimes but not always weakens a response.

Cosmology

The realm of philosophy dealing with the nature of causation.

Continuous schedule

The reinforcement of an organism for every correct trail.

Intermittent schedule

The reinforcement of an organism on only certain selected occurrences of a response. -Skinner preffered this type of schedule.

Negative reinforcement

The removal of an aversive stimulus from a situation also increases the probability that the proceeding behavior will occur.

Behavior

The response must be within their repertoire and must not be interfered with by competing or antagonistic behaviors, such as distractions.

Consequence

The reward received after performing the desired behavior.

Extinction

The tendency of a previously acquired responses to become progressively weakened upon non-reinforcement.

Emitted

These responses do not previously exist inside the organism; they simple appear because of the organism's individual history of reinforcement or the species' evolutionary history.

Who was the first psychologist to study the consequences of human behavior?

Thorndike

Law of effect

Thorndike's principle that responses to stimuli followed immediately by a satisfier tend to strengthen the connection between those responses and stimuli; that is, they tend to be learned.

Unhealthy personality

Unfortunately, the techniques of social control and self-control sometimes produce detrimental effects, which result in inappropriate behavior and this development.

What was Skinner's first book?

Walden Two

Who influenced Skinner?

Watson, Pavlov, and Thorndike

Higher mental processes

When a women has misplaced her keys, she searches for them because similar searching behavior has been previously reinforced.

Counteracting strategies

escape, revolt, passive resistance

Contingencies of reinforcement (that society uses to exercise control):

language, usually verbal to inform people of the consequences of their not-yet-emitted behavior, advertising

Social forces and techniques that control us

operant conditioning, describing contingencies, deprivation and satiation, and physical restraint

Operant conditioning (that society uses to exercise control):

positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and 2 techniques of punishment (adding an aversive stimulus and removing a positive one)