Operant or Instrumental
Conditioning
Psychology 3306
Introduction
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Thorndike and his
puzzle boxes
Guthrie and Horton
Superstitious
Behaviour
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Interim
Terminal
Adjunctive
Not exactly
superstitious or
random
Shaping
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Successive approximations
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Secondary reinforcers
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Get closer and closer to behaviour
Feeder click for example
Behaviour modification
Freddie!
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Coined the phrase
‘Operant conditioning’
The animal operates on
the environment
Unlike ‘respondent
conditioning’ (Pavlovian)
Pioneered the use of free
operants
Pioneered the use of
respone rate
The Skinner Box
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Basically this allowed
the researcher to walk
away
Allowed for a
dependent variable
that could be easily
measured and
compared across
species too
Criticisms of the Skinner box
Is it artificial?
 Well duh…
 But
 Many species can be tested
 Real world applications
 Therapy
 Who cares?
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Key concepts and terms
Discriminative stimulus
 Three term contingency
 Acquisition
 Extinction
 Spontaneous recovery
 Generalization
 Conditioned reinforcement
 Response chains
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Constraints
Instinctive drift and the Brelands
 Autoshaping (Brown and Jenkins, 1968)
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Superstitious behaviour?
 Form of response depends on reinforcer
(Jenkins and Moore, 1973)
 Wasserman’s chicks (1973)
 Timberlake’s behaviour systems approach
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Schedules of Reinforcement
You could give a reinforcement after each
behaviour you are interested in
 This is called CRF or Continuous
reinforcement
 However this is rarely used
 Does not maintain behaviour very well
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Schedules of Reinforcement
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Fixed Interval
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First response after a
given interval is
rewarded
FI Scallop
Variable Interval
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Like FI but varies with
a given average
Scallop disappears
Schedules of Reinforcement
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Fixed Ratio
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Reinforcement is given
after a given number
of responses
A little less smooth
Variable Ratio
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After a varying number
of responses
Schedules and their properties
Variable schedules are more robust
 PREE, Partial reinforcement extinction
effect
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Harder to extinguish responding on VI, FI, VR
and FR than on CRF
DRL, Differential reinforcement for low
rates of responding
 DRH, High rates
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Schedule this….
Concurrent and chained schedules
 Behaviour follows the schedule in effect at
the time
 Allowed people to determine that the post
reinforcement pause in FR schedules is
due to the present schedule and not the
previous one
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Applications
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Work with autistic kids
Prompts
 Fading
 Secondary reinforcers
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Token economies
 I/O applications
 Behaviour therapy
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These ideas are nothing new…
Most folks are unaware of schedules and
contingencies
 Systematic application thereof
 Who cares?
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Punishment and avoidance
Behavior
increases
Stimulus
Presented
Stimulus
Removed or
omitted
decreases
Positive
reinforcement
punishment
Negative
reinforcement
Omission
Avoidance
Shuttle box
 Go from escape to avoidance
 Avoidance paradox
 Two factor theory
 Avoid by escaping CS
 Animals will avoid a CS that predicts
shock in another context
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But….
Does the CS induce fear?
 Equivocal at best
 Maybe avoidance itself is reinforcing
 This is the one factor theory
 The Sidman test shows that this is true,
avoidance itself is reinforcing
 But, temporal conditioning
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Cognitive theories
Selligman and Johnston
 Expectations
 Animal expects:
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No shock if it responds
 Shock if it does not respond
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This explains the slow extinction
 Shock avoidance response blocking,
remove the ability to escape, you get
extinction
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More on avoidance
Bob Bolle’s idea about SSDRs
 Learned helplessness
 Is it depression?
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Suggestive, but not quite I don’t think
Punishment
Opposite of reinforcement?
 Sorta
 But, to be effective it must be:
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Introduced at full intensity
 Given immediately
 After every behaviour
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Motivational effects
 Other contingencies and behaviours
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Bad boys bad boys, watcha gonna
do?
Maybe a punisher is an SD?
 All that said punishment CAN control
behaviour
 So, what’s the down side?
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punishment
Fear and anger are bad for learning
 General suppression
 Constant monitoring needed
 Avoidance
 Reluctance to use it
 Bad consequences
 It is just plain mean
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Omission
The avoidance of punishment
 Easily learned
 With all this stuff on punishment,
remember morality and data are two
different things
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