The Evolution of Learning
When organisms were faced with unpredictable and changing environments, natural selection favored those individuals whose behavior could be conditioned. Organisms who condition are more flexible, in the sense that they can learn the new requirements of the environment. Such behavioral flexibility must reflect an underlying structural change of the organism. Genes code for the anatomical and physiological characteristics of the individual. Such physical changes allow for different degrees of...
Continuous Reinforcement
Continuous reinforcement, or CRF, is probably the simplest schedule of reinforcement. On this schedule, every operant required by the contingency is reinforced. For example, every time a hungry pigeon pecks a key, food is presented. When every operant is followed by a reinforcer, responses are emitted relatively quickly depending upon the consumatory time for the reinforcer. The organism continues to respond until it is satiated. Simply put, when the bird is hungry food deprived , it rapidly...
Ratio Schedules
A fixed-ratio, or FR, schedule is programmed to deliver reinforcement after a fixed number of responses is made. Continuous reinforcement is FR 1 that is, the ratio is one reinforcer for one response. Figure 5.4 presents a fixed-ratio schedule diagrammed in Mechner notation. The notation is read, In the presence of a discriminative stimulus SD , a fixed number N of responses R produces an unconditioned reinforcer SR . In a simple animal experiment, the SD is sensory stimulation arising from the...
Assessment of Behavior Change
Single-subject experiments require a preintervention baseline period of measurement. This baseline serves as a comparison or reference for any subsequent change in behavior produced by the independent variable. This baseline is essential in order to know if your independent variable has any effect. To construct an appropriate baseline, it is necessary to define the response class objectively and clearly. In the animal laboratory, the response class of pressing a lever is most often defined by...
Sequences of Behavior
Fixed action patterns or FAPs are sequences of behavior a series of of connected movements that are phylogenetic in origin. All members of a particular species often all males or all females engage in the FAP when the appropriate releasing stimuli are presented. Fixed action patterns have been observed and documented in a wide range of animals and over a large number of behaviors related to survival and reproduction. To illustrate, Tinbergen 1951 noted that the male stickleback fish responds...
Reflexive Behavior and Respondent Conditioning
In this chapter 53 Phylogenetic behavior 53 Ontogenetic behavior 58 Temporal relations and conditioning 65 Second-order respondent conditioning 67 Complex conditioning and compound stimuli 68 The Rescorla-Wagner model of conditioning 69 Advanced issue Conditioning effects and the Rescorla-Wagner equation 71 On the applied side Drug use, abuse, and complexities of respondent conditioning 76 Key words 79 On the web 79 Study questions 80 Brief quiz 81
On The Applied Side Schedules Of Reinforcement Of Abstinence From Cigarette
The use of drugs is operant behavior maintained in part by the reinforcing effects of the drug. One implication of this analysis is that reinforcement of an incompatible response i.e., abstinence can reduce the probability of taking drugs. The effectiveness of an abstinence contingency depends on both the magnitude and the schedule of reinforcement for nondrug use e.g., Higgins, Bickel, amp Hughes, 1994 . In an investigation of cigarette smoking, Roll, Higgins, and Badger 1996 assessed the...
Focus On Teaching A System Of Notation
We have found that using a notation system greatly improves the understanding of contingencies among antecedents, behavior, and consequences. This notation system is based on Mechner's 1959 description of reinforcement contingencies. We have simplified the notation and relabeled some of the symbols. The system of notation only describes independent variables and is similar to a flow chart sometimes used in computer programming. That is, Mechner notation describes what the experimenter...
Relativity of Punishment and the Premack Principle
In chapter 4, we discussed the principle of reinforcement and the Premack 1959, 1962 principle. The principle states that the opportunity to engage in a higher frequency behavior will reinforce a lower frequency response. That is, reinforcement is relative, not absolute. Premack 1971 extended this principle to punishment. Consider a rat that can run in an activity wheel and drink water from a tube. The wheel apparatus is modified so that a break can be activated, locking the wheel and...
Resistance to Extinction
As extinction proceeds, emotional behavior subsides and rate of response declines. When extinction has been in effect long enough, behavior may return to operant level. In practice, however, a return to operant level is rarely accomplished. This is because many extinction sessions are usually required before operant level is attained. Extinction is typically measured as the number of responses emitted in some amount of time. For example, a bird may be reinforced on CRF for 10 consecutive daily...
Focus On Issues Reinforcement And The Premack Principle
As you have seen, there are four basic contingencies of reinforcement. In each case, a stimulus is presented or removed contingent on operant behavior. The contingency is defined as punishment or reinforcement either positive or negative by its effects on behavior. One hundred dollars will probably strengthen operants that produce it e.g., betting 25 cents and pulling the handle on a slot machine . Once a stimulus or event has been shown to increase the rate of operant behavior it may be called...
Chapter 8 Stimulus Control
Differential reinforcement and discrimination 209 Stimulus control and multiple schedules 210 Focus on teaching Discrimination and the bird-brained pigeon 212 Focus on research Searching for the determinants of contrast 216 Errorless discrimination and fading 221 Focus on research Concept formation by pigeons 227 On the applied side The pigeon as a quality control inspector 229 Experimental analysis of choice and preference 235 The matching law 241 Advanced issue Quantification of behavioral...
Heroin Overdose and Context
To consider drug tolerance as a conditioned response helps to explain instances of drug overdose. Heroin addicts are known to survive a drug dose that would kill a person who did not regularly use the drug. In spite of this high level of tolerance, approximately 1 of heroin addicts die from drug overdose each year. These victims typically die from drug-induced respiratory depression. Surprisingly, many of these addicts die from a dose that is similar to the amount of heroin they usually took...
Focus On B F Skinner
B. F. Skinner 1904-1990 was the intellectual force behind behavior analysis. He was born Burrhus Frederic Skinner on March 20,1904, in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. When he was a boy, Skinner spent much ofhis time exploring the countryside with his younger brother. He had a passion for English literature and mechanical inventions. His hobbies included writing stories and designing perpetual-motion machines. He wanted to be a novelist and went to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he...
Magazine Training
After deprivation for food is established, magazine training starts. For example, a rat is placed in an operant chamber, and a microcomputer periodically turns on the feeder. When the feeder is turned on, it makes a click, and a small 45-mg food pellet falls into the food magazine. Because the click and the appearance of food are associated in time, you would, after training, observe a typical rat staying close to the food magazine also, the animal would move quickly toward the magazine when...
Operant Conditioning 1
Operant conditioning refers to either an increase or a decrease in operant behavior as a function of a contingency of reinforcement. In a simple demonstration of operant conditioning, an experimenter may alter the consequences that follow operant behavior. The effects of environmental consequences on behavior were first described in 1911 by the American psychologist E. L. Thorndike, who reported results from a series of animal experiments that eventually formed the basis of operant...
Generalization
Pavlov conducted a large number of conditioning experiments and discovered many principles that remain useful today. One of his important findings concerned the principle of respondent generalization. Respondent generalization occurs when an organism shows a conditioned response to values of the CS that were not trained during acquisition. For example, respondent acquisition will occur when a specific stimulus, such as a 60-dB tone at a known frequency e.g., 375 Hz , is associated with a US...
Edward Lee Thorndike 18741949
Watson's behaviorism emphasized the conditioned reflex. This analysis focuses on the events that precede action and is usually called a stimulus-response approach. Edward Lee Thorndike, another American psychologist Fig. 1.7 , was more concerned with how success and failure affect the behavior of organisms. His research emphasized the events and consequences that follow behavior. In other words, Thorndike was the first scientist to systematically study operant behavior, although he called the...
Conditioned Inhibition
The Rescorla-Wagner model can be applied to the phenomenon known as conditioned inhibition. When a CS is repeatedly presented without the US extinction , the conditioned stimulus is said to acquire increasing amounts of inhibition, in the sense that its presentation suppresses the response. Equation 1 may be expressed as Equation 2 and in this alternate form V is included with the VSUM term. Equation 2 predicts that when a CS acquires near maximum associative strength and extinction begins, the...
Carl D Cheney
KU LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS 2004 Mahwah, New Jersey London Textbook Production Manager Paul Smolenski Full-Service Compositor TechBooks Text and Cover Printer Hamilton Printing Company This book was typeset in 10.25 12pt. Goudy. The heads were typeset in Optima and Goudy. Copyright 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microfilm, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written...
Delayed Conditioning
There are several ways of arranging the temporal relationship between the presentation of a CS and the unconditioned stimulus US . So far we have described a procedure in which the CS is presented a few seconds before the US occurs. This procedure is called delayed conditioning the presentation of the US is slightly delayed relative to the CS and is shown in Fig. 3.6A. Delayed conditioning is the most effective way to condition simple autonomic reflexes like salivation. In the diagram, the CS...
Conditioned Immunosuppression
Conditioned immunosuppression is another example of environmental influences altering what is generally considered to be internal and autonomously controlled processes. In this procedure, a CS is paired with a US drug that suppresses immune system function such Same Room Different Room Control as the production of antibodies. Note that drugs, like cyclophosphamide, are commonly administered to suppress rejection of a transplanted organ. After several pairings the CS is presented alone and the...
Instrument Decay
A third threat to internal validity is called instrument decay. In behavioral research, instrument decay refers to observers becoming better or worse at measuring the dependent variable. Such an effect can occur in reversal designs where repeated observations are made. For example, observers may be very interested and attentive when they first record the psychotic verbalizations of a mental patient. After many days of this task, the same observers may become bored and consequently miss many...
Shaping The Method of Successive Approximation
In the preceding example, we took advantage of a rat's behavioral repertoire. The animal's repertoire refers to the behavior it is capable of naturally emitting on the basis of species and environmental history. Suppose you want to train some response that the animal does not emit. For example, you may want the rat to activate the switch by an upward thrust of its nose. A baseline period of observation shows that the animal fails to emit this response. In other words, the operant level is zero....
Negative Reinforcement
When an operant results in the removal of an event, and this procedure increases the rate of response, the contingency is called negative reinforcement. This contingency is shown in cell 3 of the matrix in Fig. 4.2. Negative reinforcement is commonly misunderstood as punishment. However, the matrix makes it clear that negative reinforcement involves procedures and effects completely different from those of positive or negative punishment. Negative reinforcement plays a major role in the...
Schedules and Patterns of Response
Patterns of response develop as a result of the organism interacting with a schedule of reinforcement Ferster amp Skinner, 1957 . These patterns come about after an animal has experience with the contingency of reinforcement SD R Sr arrangement defined by a particular schedule. Subjects are exposed to a schedule of reinforcement, and, following an acquisition period, behavior typically settles into a consistent or steady-state performance Sidman, 1960 . It may take many experimental sessions...
The Operant Chamber
To study operant conditioning in a laboratory, a device called an operant chamber is used see Ator, 1991 . Of course, operant conditioning is also investigated outside laboratories. Nonetheless, investigating the behavior of animals in operant chambers has resulted in the discovery of many principles of behavior. Figure 4.5 shows a student setup of an operant chamber designed to accommodate a laboratory rat. Note that a research setup would involve much more experimental control, such as a...
Discriminative Stimuli
Operant behavior is said to be emitted in the sense that it often occurs without an observable stimulus preceding it. This is in contrast to reflexive responses, which are elicited by a preceding stimulus. Reflexes are tied to the physiology of an organism and, under appropriate conditions, always occur when the eliciting stimulus is presented. For example, Pavlov showed that dogs automatically salivated when food was placed in their mouths. Dogs do not learn the relationship between food and...
Schedules and Natural Contingencies
In the everyday environment, behavior is often reinforced on an intermittent basis. That is, operants are reinforced occasionally rather than each time they are emitted. Every time a child cries, he or she is not reinforced with attention. Each time a predator hunts, it is not successful. When you dial the number for airport information, you get through sometimes, but often the exchange is busy. Buses do not immediately arrive when you go to a bus stop. It is clear that persistence is often...
The RescorlaWagner Model of Conditioning
The occurrence of overshadowing, blocking, and sensory preconditioning has led many researchers to the conclusion that cognitive processes underlie conditioning. This is because these effects and others seem to imply that an animal learns to expect certain events on the basis of predictive cues. That is, the sight of a predator becomes a predictive cue because the animal expects an attack. The CS is said to provide information about the occurrence of the US, and redundant information, as in...
Rewards and Creativity
The generalization that rewards lessen creativity has also been commonly accepted as a fact. The most widely studied form of creativity is divergent thinking, involving varied novel responses to a problem or a question that has multiple possible solutions. Many researchers have reported that offering an individual a reward results in reduced divergent thinking e.g., Amabile, 1990 Condry, 1977 Deci amp Ryan, 1985 . Robert Eisenberger has suggested that failures to find increased creativity,...
Positive Punishment
Cell 2 of the matrix in Fig. 4.2 depicts a situation in which an operant produces an event and rate of operant behavior decreases. This contingency is called positive punishment. For example, spanking a child for running onto a busy road is positive punishment if the child now stops or turns before reaching the road. In everyday life, people often talk about punishment and reinforcement without reference to behavior. For example, a mother scolds her child for playing with matches. The child...
Laws of the Reflex
Aristotle about 350 b.c. developed principles of association that were re-discovered by psychologists, and in the 1900s by Pavlov a physiologist Hothersall, 1990, p. 22 . Sherrington 1906 studied many different types of reflexes and formulated the laws of reflex action. Because reflexive behavior occurs across most or all animal species from protozoa Wawrzyncyck, 1937 to humans Watson amp Rayner, 1920 and because associative or respondent conditioning builds on reflexive behavior, it is...
Focus On Issues Internal And External Validity In Experiments
A common reaction to laboratory experimental findings goes something like, What in the world does that research have to do with anything important Galileo may have been asked a similar question in the 17th century by church officials, when he was rolling balls down inclined planes and discovering the basic principles of physics. Consider an experiment in which rats are placed in a small, sound-proof chamber and are given a 45-mg food pellet after pressing a lever 50 times. The rat rapidly makes...
On The Applied Side Extinction As A Modification Procedure For Temper Tantrums
Williams 1959 has shown how extinction effects play an important role in the modification of human behavior. In this study, a 20-month-old child was making life miserable for his parents by having temper tantrums when put to bed. If the parents stayed up with the child, he did not scream and cry and eventually went to sleep. A well-known source of reinforcement for children is parental attention, and Williams reasoned that this was probably maintaining the bedtime behavior. That is, when the...
Brief Quiz 1
1. In terms of finding an object that is missing or hidden a a structural account points to stages of development and object permanence b a behavioral account points to a particular history of reinforcement c the form or structure of behavior is used by behavior analysts to infer mental stages 2. The term_refers to behavior that is elicited, and the term_refers to 3. Any stimulus or event that follows a response and increases its frequency is said to have c a conditioned-stimulus function 4....
Feelings as Byproducts
Because feelings occur at the same time that we act, they are often taken as causes of behavior. Although feelings and behavior are necessarily correlated, it is the environment that determines how we act and, at the same time, how we feel. Feelings are real, but they are by-products of the environmental events that regulate behavior. For this reason, a behavioral approach requires that the researcher trace feelings back to the interaction between behavior and environment. Pretend that you are...
Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning involves the regulation of behavior by its consequences. B. F. Skinner called this kind of behavior regulation operant conditioning because, in a given situation or setting SD , behavior R operates on the environment to produce effects or consequences Sr . Any behavior that operates on the environment to produce an effect is called an operant. During operant conditioning, an organism emits behavior that produces an effect that increases or decreases the frequency of the...
The Operant Class
Staying close to the food cup and moving toward it are operants that have been selected by their reinforcing consequences. In other words, these responses have been reliably followed by food presentation, and as a result they increase in frequency. However, hovering around a food cup and moving toward it are operants that are difficult to measure objectively. In contrast, a lever press may be easily defined as a switch closure that makes an electrical connection. Any behavior emitted by the rat...
The Free Operant Method
In the free operant method, an animal may repeatedly respond over an extensive period of time see Perone, 1991 . The organism is free to emit many responses or none at all. That is, responses can be made without interference from the experimenter. For example, a laboratory rat may press a lever for food pellets. Lever pressing is under the control of the animal, which may press the bar rapidly, slowly, or quit pressing. Importantly, this method allows the researcher to observe changes in rate...
Study Questions Xuc
1. Give several examples of phylogenetic behavior and include at least one human illustration. 53 2. Distinguish between a fixed action pattern FAP and a reaction chain. 54-55 3. Outline the three primary laws of the reflex. 56-57 4. Define habituation, give an example of it, and describe its general characteristics. 57-58 5. Describe respondent conditioning, using the example of the word lemon. 59-60 6. Be able to define and use the terms unconditioned stimulus US , unconditionedresponse R ,...
B F Skinner and the Rise of Behavior Analysis
The works of Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike, and many others have influenced contemporary behavior analysis. Although the ideas of many scientists and philosophers have had an impact, Burrhus Fredrick Skinner 1904-1990 is largely responsible for the development of modern behavior analysis. In the Focus on B. F. Skinner section, some details of his life and some of his accomplishments are described, and in the following, his contribution to contemporary behavior analysis is outlined. Skinner was...
The Biological Context of Behavior
Although behavior analysts recognize the importance of biology and evolution, they focus on the interplay of behavior and environment. To maintain this focus, the evolutionary history and biological status of an organism are examined as part of the context of behavior see Morris, 1988, 1992 . This contextualist view is seen in B. F. Skinner's analysis of imprinting in a duckling Operant conditioning and natural selection are combined in the so-called imprinting of a newly hatched duckling. In...
Study Questions
The best way to use these study questions is to choose or assign speaker-listener pairs. Each student in the dyad reads and studies the material this is followed by a discussion session scheduled at the convenience of the two students . At the discussion session perhaps having a coffee , the students take turns as speaker and listener. The speaker's job is to talk about the textbook chapter based on the study questions the listener's role is to pay attention to and provide corrective feedback...
Sensory Preconditioning
Sensory preconditioning is another example of stimulus control by compound events. In this case, two stimuli such as light and tone are repeatedly presented together, preconditioning, that is, without the occurrence of a known US. Later, one of these stimuli is paired with an unconditioned stimulus for several trials, and then the other stimulus is tested for conditioning. Even though the second stimulus was never directly associated with the US, it comes to elicit a conditioned response...
Brief Quiz Khr
1. Behavior relations based on the genetic endowment of the organism are called 2. Complex sequences of released behaviors are called d second-order conditioned reflexes 3. Reflexive behavior is said to be_and_. 4. Primary laws of the reflex do not include 5. A diminution in the UR due to repeated presentation of the US is called 6. Respondent conditioning might also be called 7. To do away with an unwanted CR one should a present the CS without the CR b present the CR without the US c present...
Overshadowing
Pavlov 1927 first described overshadowing. A compound stimulus consisting of two or more simple stimuli are presented at the same time. For example, a faint light and a loud tone compound CS may be turned on at the same time and paired with an unconditioned stimulus such as food. Pavlov found that the most salient property of the compound stimulus came to regulate exclusively the conditioned response. In this case the loud tone and not the faint light will become a CS and elicit salivation. The...
Trace Conditioning
The procedure for trace conditioning is shown in Fig. 3.6C. The CS is presented for a brief period, on and off, and after some time the US occurs. For example, a light is flashed for 2 s, and 20 s later food is placed in a dog's mouth. The term trace conditioning comes from the idea of a memory trace and refers to the fact that the organism must remember the presentation of the CS. Generally, as the time between the CS and the US increases, the conditioned response becomes weaker Ellison, 1964...
Brief Quiz
1. _is the alteration or maintenance of an organism's behavior due to_. 2. The experimental analysis of behavior is a a natural-science approach to understanding behavior regulation b concerned with controlling and changing factors that affect behavior c concerned with the principle of reinforcement 3. A_is behavior that is elicited by a biologically relevant stimulus, whereas _is behavior controlled by its consequences. 4. Selection by consequences occurs at three levels. What are these a...