Conditioning Theories
Unconditioned Stimulus:Unconditioned Response
(US) (UR)
Neutral Stimulus
(NS)
No Response
Neutral Stimulus + Unconditioned Stimulus
Conditioned Stimulus:Conditioned Response
Higher-order conditioning (second-order conditioning)
- another neutral stimulus, presented just before the conditioned stimulus, elicits
the conditioned response
E.g.,
- a square shape projected on the overhead always precedes the showing of the
balloon
- the shape begins to elicit the conditioned response
Discrimination
- respond only to round yellow balloons
Generalization
- respond to all balloons, regardless of shape and color
Extinction
- when the balloons are never popped, the CR will gradually fade
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Emotional Conditioning
- basis of many attitudes and social behaviors
- widespread
- often resistant to change
- basis of stereotypes and prejudice
Bargh, Chen & Burrows (1996)
- three groups
- subliminally primed with rude, or polite, or with neutral concept
- had to wait while experimenter and a confederate talked
- majority of the rude primed participants interrupted within 10 min.
- few of the polite primed did
"Social behavior is…capable of occurring in the absence of any conscious
involvement or intervention." (Bargh et al., 1996, p. 242)
Olson & Fazio (2001)
Study 1:
- 45 participants
- identify a target image
- 2 Pokemon characters paired with negative and positive words
- inserted 20 times each amongst 430 presentations
- did not notice pairings
- preferred the Pokemon paired with positive words
Study 2: extended study 1
- used an implicit measure
- significant differences in responses to conditioned items
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Skinner – Operant Conditioning
"…behavior could be studied as a self-sufficient subject matter, rather than
as a reflection of inner mental events." (Holland, 1992, p. 665)
- a theorist who objected to theory
- gathered behavioral laws
- laboratory based
- identified highly regular relations between particular patterns of reinforcement
and specified response measures
- studied individuals rather than groups
- lawful control can be seen in individual behavior
- focused on emitted responses rather than reflexes (elicited responses)
- focused on simple behavioral events
- generalizable to all organisms in all situations
- has been applied to a broad range of applied settings, e.g., educational
technology, autistic children, treatment of psychotics, token economies, quality of life,
etc.
- mechanistic view of human "personalitity"
- behavior is a product of forces acting on the individual, not of personal choice
- purpose was to develop a "technology" to control behavior for the betterment of
all
- did not deny the existence of inner states
- they are "collateral products of our genetic and environmental histories. They
have no explanatory force." (Skinner, 1975, p. 43)
- inner states are useful only as predictors
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Is food wolfed down food because of the inner state of "hunger"?
- how do we know he is hungry:
- the behaviors?
- the number of hours since eating?
- hunger as an inner event?
- hunger as a physiological event?
- blood sugar, stomach contractions, etc.
- behavior might be predicted by tracing the effects of an environmental
variable on the physiological processes of an organism
- science of behavior does not require knowledge of physiological
processes
- behavior can be controlled by controlling the environment
Behavior is not determined entirely by the environment:
- sensitivity to reinforcement has a genetic basis
- some behaviors are more easily conditioned than others
- some behaviors have an entirely genetic basis: the process of
evolution shaped innate behaviors
- future physiologists will explain the laws of behavior
"He will be able to show how an organism is changed when
exposed to contingencies of reinforcement and why the changed organism then
behaves in a different way, possibly at a much later date." (Skinner, 1974, pp.
236-237)
The Development of Personality a la Skinner
- personality is a collection of behavior patterns
- the development of personality is the development of behavior patterns
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Thorndike – Law of Effect
- it is the effect of a response (voluntary behavior) that leads to its being
learned or not learned
- responses that occur just before a "satisfying state of affairs" tend to be
learned
- responses that occur just before an "annoying state of affairs" tend not to
be learned
Operant Conditioning
operant – a response (voluntary behavior) that operates on the environment and
changes it
e.g., crossing the street, boiling an egg, throwing spitballs
reinforcer – anything that makes a response (behavior) more likely
- reinforcers are most effective if they follow quickly after the response
punishment – anything that makes a response less likely
- punishments are most effective if they follow quickly after the response
(Smoking – immediate reinforcement
delay of punishment)
- shaping – changing behavior by reinforcing steps leading to the desired
behavior (successive approximations)
Reinforcement Schedules
continuous reinforcement – reinforcement follows every time a response is made
- quickly extinguished
schedules of partial reinforcement – reinforcement follows only some of the time
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- resistant to extinction
partial reinforcement effect – non-reinforcement cues persistence
superstitions – behaviors are learned which were only followed by the reinforcer,
but not related to it
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