Escape, Avoidance, and Punishment Flashcards
(32 cards)
Explain the avoidance theory of punishment.
Punishment involving a type of avoidance conditioning where the avoidance response consists of any behaviour other than the behaviour being punished.
Explain the conditioned suppression theory of punishment.
The assumption that punishment does not weaken a behaviour, but produces an emotional response that interferes with the occurrence of the behaviour.
What is the exposure and response prevention (ERP)?
A method of treating obsessive-compulsive behaviour that involves prolonged exposure to anxiety-arousing events while not engaging in the compulsive behaviour pattern that reduces the anxiety.
Define extrinsic punishment.
Punishment that is not an inherent aspect of the behaviour being punished but that simply follows the behaviour.
What is a generalised (or generalised secondary) punisher?
An event that has become punishing because it has in the past been associated with many other punishers.
Define intrinsic punishment.
Punishment that is an inherent aspect of the behaviour being punished.
What is learned helplessness?
A decrement in learning ability that results from repeated exposure to uncontrollable aversive events.
What is the Premack principle of punishment?
A low-probability behaviour (LPB) can be used to punish a high-probability behaviour (HPB).
What is a primary (or unconditioned) punisher?
Any event that is innately punishing.
Define response cost.
A form of negative punishment involving the removal of a specific reinforcer following the occurrence of a behaviour.
What is a secondary (or conditioned) punisher?
An event that has become punishing because it has in the past been associated with some other punisher.
Define time-out.
A form of negative punishment involving the loss of access to positive reinforcers for a brief period of time following the occurrence of a problem behaviour.
What is the two-process theory of avoidance?
The theory that avoidance behaviour is the result of two distinct processes: classical conditioning, where a fear response is elicited by a conditioned stimulus, and operant conditioning, where moving away from the conditioned stimulus is negatively reinforced by a reduction in fear.
Negative reinforcement is associated with two types of behaviour:
Escape behaviour, and avoidance behaviour.
What is the shuttle avoidance procedure used to demonstrate?
How organisms first learn to escape from a behaviour, and then to avoid it.
Give another name for the two-process theory of avoidance.
The two-factor theory of avoidance.
Who created the two-process theory of avoidance?
Mowrer.
Give two problems with the two-process theory of avoidance.
Avoidance responses are persistent, and avoidance responses occur so quickly they cannot be easily extinguished.
Explain the anxiety conservation hypothesis.
Avoidance responses occur so quickly that there is insufficient exposure to the conditioned stimulus for the conditioned fear to fully extinguish.
Explain the one-process theory of avoidance.
The act of avoidance is negatively reinforced by the lower rate of aversive stimulation with which it is associated.
Who invented the species-specific defence reaction theory?
Bolles.
Explain the species-specific defence reaction theory.
Many avoidance behaviours are actually elicited behaviours rather than operant behaviours.
Give Mineka’s two limitations in applying models of experimental avoidance to human phobias.
In experimental avoidance conditioning, the animal avoids the unconditioned stimulus, but in phobias, people avoid the conditioned stimulus; and the avoidance behaviour seems to condition less readily and tends to be less certain than avoidance behaviour in a phobia.
Stampfl proposed that an adequate experimental analogue of human phobias would require: (3)
The reliable establishment of a fear response with only a single, brief pairing of the US and CS, and subsequent avoidance of the CS as well as the US, the occurrence of successful avoidance on 100% of trials.
