Section 4: Principles of Operant Conditioning Psychology Chapter 9 Section 4: Principles of Operant Conditioning

Wade and Tavris © 2005 Prentice Hall The “Skinner Box” When a rat in a Skinner box presses a bar, a food pellet or drop of water is automatically released. Similar boxes exist for pigeons & many other species. Figure 8.05 from Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Wade and Tavris © 2005 Prentice Hall

Extinction- procedure that causes a previously learned response to stop Occurs when the reinforcer that maintained the response is removed or is no longer available gradual

Stimulus Generalization & Discrimination Generalization occurs when responses generalize to the stimulus that were not present during the original learning situation but resemble that original stimulus Sometimes a human or animal learns to respond to a stimulus only when a discriminative stimulus is present

The discriminative stimulus signals whether a response, if made, will pay off Traffic lights, doorbells, ringing phone, etc

Learning on Schedule Continuous Reinforcement: A reinforcement schedule in which a particular response is always reinforced. Intermittent (Partial) Schedule of Reinforcement: A reinforcement schedule in which a particular response is sometimes but not always reinforced. Explains why people get attached to “lucky” hats, etc

Patterns of reinforcement affect the rate, form, & timing of behavior If you want a response to persist after it has been learned, you should reinforce it intermittently, not continuously If you are going to extinguish an undesirable behavior by ignoring it, you must be consistent in with holding reinforcement

Shaping For a response to be reinforced, it must first occur You start by reinforcing a tendency in the right direction & then you gradually require responses that are more similar to the final, desired response Successive approximations Animal training- seeing eye dogs

Biological Limits on Learning Operant conditioning always works best when they capitalize on inborn tendencies Beware of instinctive drift Humans can be affected by biology, genetics, & the evolutionary history of our species

Skinner: The Man and the Myth Burrhus Frederick Skinner, 1904-1990 Better known as B.F. Skinner Much misinformation is circulated about his life & work e.g., his daughters grew up normal, despite rumors that they were institutionalized Figure 8.05 from Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.