Operant Conditioning (Skinner, 1938)

Question 1

Operant Conditioning assumes that

Answer 1

behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences

Question 2

Thorndike (1911) conducted an experiment where he put a cat in a cage with a latch on the door and put food outside the cage, what did the cat do after accidentally hitting the latch?

Answer 2

got food and once the experiment was repeated the at realised he would get food if he hit the latch, food was reinforcement

Question 3

How much time did it take the cat to get out of the cage on the first trial and after 10 trials?

Answer 3

5 minutes - 5 seconds

Question 4

What was the skinner box?

Answer 4

A box to put pigeons or rats in to learn specific behaviours by being punished through electric shocks or rewarded through food

Question 5

Reinforcement was proved in the skinner box as

Answer 5

food could only be recieved by pulling a lever and this behaviour increased in frequency after the rats or pigeons realised they could get food

Question 6

Positive Reinforcement is when

Answer 6

something good is given because of the behaviour, so the behaviour is repeated

Question 7

Negative reinforcement is when

Answer 7

something bad is taken away because of the behaviour, so the behaviour is repeated

Question 8

Positive punishment is when

Answer 8

something bad is given and the behaviour is stopped

Question 9

Negative punishment is when

Answer 9

something good is taken away and the behaviour is stopped

Question 10

Primary reinforcement is when

Answer 10

the reward is a basic need like foor or warmth

Question 11

Secondary reinforcement is when

Answer 11

the reward is something that can buy or get a basic need, like money or tokens

Question 12

contingency means what is going to affect

Answer 12

the organism - reinforcer/punishment, has to relate to the behaviour so there is a clear link between them

Question 13

contiguity means there must not be a

Answer 13

time lapse between the reward or punishment and the behaviour, if there is too long between, learning might not occur

Question 14

Shaping is

Answer 14

reinforcing small behaviours over time that when brought together form a big behaviour

Question 15

OC cannot account for

Answer 15

behaviours that develop as a result of observing others - not a complete explanation

Question 16

OC is useful as the principals can be used in

Answer 16

therapy in order to encourahe desriable behaviour and reduce undesirable behaviour through punishment e.g tokens in prison

Question 17

Unlike CC it helps explain the development of new behaviours and

Answer 17

offers ways to deliberately alter the behaviour through shaping, making it useful

Question 18

Tolman and Homzik (1930) studied rats who were taught to run in a maze to find food, if the route that they had learnt to get the food was then blocked, they would

Answer 18

go another route which they did not have to learn, it seems as if they had built a cognitive map of the maze - Latent Learning - suggests cognitive element

Question 19

OC could be reductionist as it isolates specific aspects of behaviour and consequences which means reducing behaviour to such a small part of normal activity, so

Answer 19

the results may not be true to real life as other social factord or individual differences may have an impact, lacks validty

Question 20

Objective measures and careful controls are used when researching OC meaning that it is

Answer 20

studied scienfically, giving it more credibility, e.g Skinner isolated animals in a cage to control all variables meaning that cause and effect conclusion could be drawn

Question 21

Pickens and Thompson (1968) did 3 experiments to copare the effects of food and cocaine as sources of p reinforcement by varying the size of the reinforcer and the schedule, they found that

Answer 21

cocaine was an effective reinforcer which resulted in level ressing and transferred learning from one lever to another, cocaine was similar to food

Question 22

May be some issues in generalising the supporting animal studies to humans aas there are too many differences e.g

Answer 22

animals have much smaller cortex in the brain, meaning humans may respond differently to animals when deciding whether to repeat or stop the behaviour

Question 23

Skinner’s study with the box supports the theory as he used both positive and negative reinforcement which was found to

Answer 23

make the rats more likely to press the lever, adds to credibilty

Question 24

Continuous reinforcement schedule is

Answer 24

rewarding a person for every time they display the target behaviour, results in slow, steady progress

Question 25

Fixed ratio reinforcement schedule is

Answer 25

giving reinforcement after a specific number of the target behaviour has been displayed, produces a high and steady display of the behaviour

Question 26

Variable ratio schedule is when people are only

Answer 26

reinforced after the behaviour in question has been displayed several imes, the no. is on average, for e.g every 10th then 17th time -highest display and stays constant

Question 27

Fixed interval schedule is when you

Answer 27

provide reinforcemnet at regular times like every weeked, results in uneven display of behvaiour - only do the behaviour right before the reward

Question 28

Variable interval schedule provides

Answer 28

reinforcement at timed intervals but the gap betwen each reward varies around an average, high and frequent displays of behaviour