Operant conditioning (ch.6)

token economy

A form of behavioral modification designed to increase desirable behavior and decrease undesirable behavior with the use of "tokens." Individuals receive tokens immediately after displaying desirable behavior. (i.e. for eating disorders)

Discriminative stimulus

A stimulus that indicated which response is appropriate or inappropriate is called the discriminative stimulus

How do classical and operant conditioning differ?

In operant conditioning, the subjects behavior produces an outcome that affects future behavior. In classical conditioning, the subjects behavior has no effect on the outcome (the presentation of either the CS or the UCS).

learned helplessness

a condition in which a person suffers from a conditioned of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed. (I.e dogs learn to associate tone with shock)

shaping

a powerful technique for establishing a new response by reinforcing successive approximations to it

continuous reinforcement

a schedule of reinforcement in which occurrence of the instrumental response (desired response) is followed by the reinforcer. (i.e each time a rat presses a bar it gets a bar of food).

law of effect

behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated and behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is likely to be stopped (Thorndyke)

conditioned reinforcers

examples of primary reinforcers include food, sleep, and water. In order for the conditioned reinforcer to occur, there must be a learned association between a stimuli and the secondary reinforcer. For example, red tokens do not positively reinforce student behavior.

Bobo doll study

findings supported the theory that children learn social behavior such as aggression through the process of observation learning

negative punishment

happens when a certain undesired stimulus/ item is removed after a particular undesired behavior is exhibited, resulting in the behavior happening less often in the future.

stimulus discrimination

if reinforcement occurs for responding to one stimulus and not another, the result is discrimination between them, yielding a response to one stimulus and not another.

extinction

in operant conditioning, this occurs if responses stop reducing reinforcements

self-reinforcement and self-punishment

once people have decided to try to imitate a certain behavior, they set goals for themselves and may even provide their own reinforcements.

Operant conditioning

operant conditioning is the process of changing behavior by providing reinforcement after a response

applications

people have applied operant conditioning to fields such as persuasion and applied behavior analysis

primary reinforcers

psychologists distinguish between primary and secondary reinforcers. primary reinforcers are reinforcing because of their own properties and secondary reinforcers became reinforcing by association with something else

intermittent reinforcer

reinforcement for some responses and not other is known as intermittent reinforcement or partial reinforcement

stimulus generalization

the more similar a new stimulus is to the original reinforcer stimulus, the more likely the same response

persuasion

the process by which a persons behavior are, without duress, influenced by communications from other people. In the modern era, persuasion is most visible in advertising.

applied behavior analysis

the process of systematically applying interventions principles of learning to theory to improve socially significant behaviors and to demonstrate that the interventions employed are responsible for the improvement of behavior.

negative reinforcement

this occurs when a certain stimulus is removed after a particular behavior is exhibited. the likelihood of this particular behavior occurring again in the future is increased because of removing/avoiding the negative consequence (i.e avoiding something such as pain)

social learning

we learn about many behavior by observing the behaviors of others.

imitation

we learn much by observing other peoples actions and their consequences (i.e being the younger sibling)

video game aggression

we learn social behaviors such as aggression by observing others and imitating them (copy cat effect)

vicarious reinforcements and punishment

we tend to imitate behaviors that lead to reinforcements for other people. We are less consistent in learning behaviors that are unsuccessful for others.

self-efficacy in learning

whether we imitate a behavior depends on whether we believe we are capable of duplicating it.

positive reinforcement

works by presenting a motivating/ reinforcing stimulus to the person after the desired behavior is exhibited, making the behavior more likely to happen in the future (i.e something presented such as food

positive punishment

works by presenting a negative consequence after an undesired behavior is exhibited, making the behavior less likely to happen in the future