Psych of learning test 3

On a variable ratio schedule

, an average number of responses produces reinforcement, but the actual number of responses required to produce reinforcement varies over the course of training. -Like the FR schedules, VR schedules produce a consistent response rate. Furthermore, the greater the average number of responses necessary to produce reinforcement, the higher the response rate. In contrast to the pause after reinforcement on a fixed ratio schedule, postreinforcement pauses occur only occasionally on variable ratio schedules

On an FI schedule "fixed interval"

, the occurrence of reinforcement depends upon both the passage of time and the exhibition of the appropriate behavior. Reinforcement is available only after a specified period of time, and the first response emitted after the interval has elapsed is reinforced. -scallop effect

On a VI schedule

, there is an average interval of time between available reinforcements; however, the interval of time varies from one reinforcement to the next. -VI schedules are characterized by a steady rate of responding. Furthermore, the rate of responding is affected by VI length; the longer the average interval between reinforcements, the lower the response rate.

In fixed ratio schedules,

-a fixed number of responses are necessary to produce reinforcement. The greater the rate of ratio, the higher the rate of responding. -distintive characteristic *Following reinforcement, responding will temporarily stop. The pause after reinforcement is called a postreinforcement pause. After the pause, responding resumes at the rate present before reinforcement.*

Avoidance response

: a behavioral response that prevents an aversive event.

Passive avoidance response

: a contingency in which the absence of responding leads to the prevention of an aversive event. Passive avoidance involves avoiding an aversive stimulus by not making a response For example, animals will not enter an environment in which they had be shocked the day before

Omission training

:a schedule of reinforcement in which the absence of response leads to reinforcement. -kid gets speeding ticket (undesirable behavior) their parents take away driving privileges. Not wanting to lose driving privileges again the student will drive slowly to avoid getting another ticket.

Response cost:

A negative punishment technique in which an undesired response results in either the withdrawal of or failure to obtain reinforcement. Response cost is a form of negative punishment. It refers to a penalty or fine contingent upon the occurrence of an undesired behavior. Response cost has been used to successfully treat a wide range of behaviors including: Self mutilation. Smoking. Overeating. Tardiness. Aggressiveness.

scallop effect.

After receiving reinforcement on a fixed interval schedule, an animal or a person stops responding, then slowly increases responding as the time approaches when reinforcement will once more become available. This characteristic pattern of responding produced by an FI schedule is referred to as the scallop effect.

Appetitive Conditioning

An animal or a person learns to emit the appropriate behavior in order to obtain reinforcement.

Two way active avoidance behavior.

Conflict occurs between running away from the feared stimulus and running into the environment where the aversive stimulus occurred. The more severe the aversive event, the more reluctant the animal to return to the feared environment.

The removal of negative reinforcement.

An escape response is eliminated when the aversive event continues despite the escape response. An animal will continue to respond for some time. The aversive event continues to motivate the escape response until an animal or person learns that the escape response no longer terminates the aversive event.

Two variables influence avoidance learning

Delay between CS and UCS. Severity of the aversive event.

The absence of aversive events.

Elimination of a escape response occurs when the aversive event is no longer experienced. Yet, the animal exhibits a number of escape responses even when the aversive event no longer occurs. This is because the responses continue until the anticipatory pain response is extinguished.

The use of punishment is widespread in our society.

Examples include: Spankings. Jail time. Military court-martials. Termination of employment for employee infractions.

Severity of the aversive event.

In general, the more severe the aversive event, the easier it is to acquire the avoidance response. However, there is an exception to that rule with two way avoidance behavior.

One-way active avoidance behavior.

Increasing the severity leads to faster acquisition and higher level of responding.

The severity of punishment.

Mild punishment does little, if anything, to suppress behavior. Moreover, if suppression does occur, it will be short-lived. Severe punishment is more likely to suppress behavior than mild or moderate punishment. Severe punishment also produces longer lasting effects.

The magnitude of reward also affects the instrumental conditioning.

Performance of the instrumental response is greater with a large reward than with a small reward. This performance difference between large and small rewards is due to the greater motivational impact of a large reward.

Despite the possible negative consequences, punishment is an effective means of controlling behavior. Punishment is used for a number of reasons.

Punishment is modeled as a means of behavior control. There are situations where punishment is easier to implement than other forms of behavior control.

The consistency of punishment.

Punishment must be consistently delivered to suppress behavior. There appears to be a relationship between delinquency and consistency of parental punishment. Parents that punished inconsistently were more likely to have delinquent children.

two categories of negative punishment.

Response cost: Time out from reinforcement:

Delay of punishment.

The longer the delay between the inappropriate response and the punishment, the less effective the punishment will be in suppressing the punished behavior. If the delay is long, there may be no suppression of responding at all.

Punishment will be more effective if it is

Severe. Immediate. Consistent.

The contingency between punishment and the undesired behavior may not be recognized.

The aversive events may be perceived as being unrelated to the behavior. Experiencing noncontingent behaviors can lead to helplessness.

. In a compound schedule

The contingency between behavior and reinforcement sometimes involves more than one schedule. In a compound schedule, two or more schedules are combined.

The intensity of the aversive events...

The greater the intensity of the aversive event, the more motivated the animal is to escape the situation.

Passive avoidance behavior.

The higher the shock intensity, the faster the acquisition and the higher the final performance

Contiguity between the appropriate response and reward influences conditioning:

The instrumental response will be acquired rapidly if reward immediately follows instrumental response.

The absence of negative reinforcement.

The intensity of escape behavior depends on the amount of negative reinforcement or the degree of decrease in the severity of an aversive event. The greater the negative reinforcement, the higher the asymptotic level of escape performance.

Delay between CS and UCS.

The longer the CS-UCS interval, the slower the acquisition of the avoidance response.

The aversive quality of a punisher.

The person providing the punishment will become a conditioned stimulus capable of eliciting fear. This, in turn, motivates the individual to escape from the punisher.

Three factors influence the effectiveness of punishment.

The severity of punishment. The consistency of punishment. Delay of punishment.

The suppressive effects of punishment may generalize to similar behaviors

The suppression of these responses may be undesirable

Positive punishment:

The use of a physically or psychologically painful event as the punishe.r

The Ethical Use of Punishment

There is tremendous societal concern about appropriate use of punishment. The doctrine of "the least restrictive alternative" dictates that less severe methods of punishment must be tried before more severe treatments are used. In institutional settings, a review board or a human rights committee must evaluate whether the use of punishment is justified.

Time out from reinforcement:

a period of time during which reinforcement is unavailable. -child will not receive any positive reinforcement, loss of potential to watch tv or play video games

Escape response:

a behavioral response to an aversive event that is reinforced by the termination of the aversive event.

Punishment:

a means of eliminating undesired behavior by using an aversive event that is contingent upon the occurrence of the inappropriate behavior.

Response cost:

a negative punishment technique in which an undesired response results in either the withdrawal of or failure to obtain reinforcement. -educing a childs aggressive verbal behavior we might deduct a point or token, or a promise of future reward (the response cost), if they swear (the target behavior) in an attempt to reduce the frequency of that behavior. -the childs response "costs" then child it's reward

A shift from large to small reward magnitude leads to...

a rapid decrease in responding, whereas a shift from small to large reward magnitude causes a significant increase in responding.

Vicious circle behavior:

an escape response that continues despite punishment, due to a failure to recognize that the absence of the escape behavior will not be punished. -may occur because the animal or person does not recognize that punishment will not occur if they do not respond. -Thus the behavior is affected by the perception of behavior-outcome contingencies.

A positive reinforcer is

an event like food or money whose occurrence has reinforcing properties; in contrast, a negative reinforcer is the termination of an aversive event.

Active avoidance response:

an overt response to a feared stimulus that prevents an aversive event. Active avoidance demonstrated by Mowrer's classic research Most active avoidance responses are easily acquired

Pain-induced aggression:

anger and aggressive behavior elicited by punishment. -The aggressive reaction is not motivated by the expectation of avoiding punishment. --It reflects an impulsive act energized by the emotional arousal characteristic of anger, which is highly reinforcing. -Punishment does not always elicit aggressive responding. --The likelihood of aggression diminishes if --The individual has been punished for aggressive responding and/or reinforced for nonaggressive responding.

There are three phases of contingency management:

assessment, contracting, and implementation.

Association of environmental cues with nonreward motivates....

avoidance of nonreward and thereby leads to a decrease in the strength of the instrumental response.

Contingent reinforcement has

been used in many real world situations to increase appropriate behaviors and decrease inappropriate responses. The application of the operant conditioning process to alter human behavior is called contingency management.

The precise relationship between the operant response and reinforcement is

decided during the contracting phase.

A large reward magnitude produces

greater resistance to extinction than does a small reward magnitude when the amount of acquisition training is low, but the opposite is true with extended acquisition training.

Contingency management

has been used to modify many different behaviors, including inadequate living skills, phobias, depression, poor study habits, and antisocial responses.

Nonreward sometimes ....

increases the intensity of instrumental behavior. Capaldi argued that this intensification occurs when the memory of nonreward has been conditioned to elicit the appetitive response.

The avoidance behavior induced by nonreward

initially is an escape response from the frustration.

Shaping

involves reinforcing a high operant rate response, then changing the contingency so that closer and closer approximations to the final behavior are necessary to produce reinforcement.

The positive contrast (or elation) effect

is a higher level of performance when the reward magnitude is shifted from low to high than when the reward magnitude always is high.

The negative contrast (or depression) effect

is a lower level of performance when the reward magnitude is shifted from high to low than when the reward magnitude always is low.

A contingency

is a specified relationship between behavior and reinforcement. -The contingency also specifies the manner in which the behavior must occur.

A reinforcer

is an event whose occurrence increases the frequency of behavior that produces it.

Resistance to extinction

is higher when reward delay is varied rather than constant. Furthermore, partial rather than continuous reward leads to a slower extinction of the instrumental behavior.

Negative punishment:

loss or unavailability of reinforcement because of inappropriate behavior.

An escape response can be eliminated by

not longer presenting the aversive event or by no longer terminating the aversive event following the escape response.

Amsel proposed that

persistence in the anticipation of frustration is responsible for the partial reinforcement effect.

Primary reinforcers

possess innate reinforcing properties, whereas secondary reinforcers develop the capacity to reinforce operant or instrumental behavior.

Instrumental conditioning

refers to situations in which there are constraints on the opportunity to gain reward; operant conditioning involves no constraints and the animal or person can freely respond to obtain reinforcement.

Implementation of the contingency contract involves providing

reinforcement contingent upon the appropriate response or absence of the inappropriate behavior, or both.

time out from reinforcement

removal of all pleasant stimuli for a period of time (no tv, computer) ??? refers to a program in which the occurrence of an inappropriate behavior results in a loss of access to reinforcement for a specified period of time. In time-out, the individual can either be removed from a reinforcing environment or from the reinforcement itself. If a time-out area is employed, it must not be reinforcing. A wide variety of behaviors have been suppressed using time-out from reinforcement including disruptive behaviors, including physical aggression, verbal abuse, and disregard of rules.

A differential reinforcement schedule

requires a specified number of responses within a specified amount of time. The response requirement is high with a differential reinforcement of high responding (DRH) schedule and low with a differential reinforcement of low responding (DHL). While quite aversive, a DRH schedule produces a consistently high rate of responding and a DRL schedule a low rate of responding. A DRO schedule requires an absence of responding during the specified time period. This schedule effectively suppresses undesired responding

Aversive Events

some aversive events can be avoided -these are prevented before they occur others must be escaped -these are terminated after they occur

Skinner believed.......

that punishment could only temporarily suppress behavior. However, research has shown that under some conditions, punishment does permanently suppress inappropriate behavior.

Capaldi's research indicates

that the conditioning of the memory of nonreward in the partial reward condition, but not in the continuous reward condition, is responsible for the greater resistance to extinction with partial than with continuous reward.

Modeling:

the acquisition of behavior as a result of observing the experiences of others. -We can learn to perform a particular behavior simply by watching others perform it. -Two lines of evidence suggest that individuals who are punished learn to perform aggressive behavior. --Children punished in a certain way used the same method of punishment to attempt to control the behavior of others. --Correlational studies show a strong relationship between parental use of punishment and the level of aggressive behavior in their children.

The reinforcing property of a secondary reinforcer is determined by.....

the amount of primary reinforcement associated with the secondary reinforcer, the number of pairings of primary and secondary reinforcers, and the delay between primary and secondary reinforcement.

In the assessment phase,

the level of appropriate and inappropriate behavior is determined, along with the situations in which these behaviors occur and the potential reinforcers of the appropriate operant response.

Positive punishment:

the use of a physically or psychologically painful event as the punisher.

The operant response

will not increase in frequency despite a contingency between reinforcement and the operant response when the baseline response rate is zero. Furthermore, learning is slow if the rate of responding is low. The shaping procedure can be used to ensure rapid conditioning.