Task 6 Flashcards
Instrumental Conditioning
instrumental conditioning
= process whereby organisms learn to make responses unordered to obtain or avoid certain consequences; form of associative learning
Throndike
- law of effect
- Thorndike
- concluded that when an animal’s response was followed by a satisfying consequence, then the probability of that response increased
- law of effect: Stimulus S —> Response R —> Consequence C
Box of Skinner vs Box of Thorndike
- Box of Skinner:
- animal can operate apparatus freely
- Box of Thorndike:
- discrete operat conditioning
classical vs instrumental/operant conditioning
- classical:
- animals receive consequence whether or not they have learned the conditioned response
- instrumental:
- consequence occurs only if the animal performs that response
- more voluntary
experiment of Skinner
- Skinner box
- free-operant paradigm
- reinforcement
Components of Learned Association
- Stimuli
- discriminative stimuli = stimuli that signal whether a particular response will lead to a particular outcome
- habit slip
- Protestant ethic effect = more likely to work for it
Components of Learned Association
- Responses
- oganism learns to give a particular response to obtain (or avoid) a particular consequence
- defined as effect on environment of particular pattern of motor actions
- shaping = technique in which successive approximations to the desired response are reinforced
- chaining = technique in which organisms are gradually trained to execute complicated sequences of discrete responses —> useful for training humans as well
Components of Learned Association
- Consequences
- reinforcer
- primary reinforcers: food, water, sleep, sex
- drive reduction theory = Clark Hull; idea that organisms have innate drives to obtain primary reinforcers and that learning reflects the innate biological need to reduce these drives
- primary reinforcers: food, water, sleep, sex
- punishers
- factors determining how effective punishment will be:
(1) discriminative stimuli for punishment can encourage cheating
(2) concurrent reinforcement can undermine the punishment
(3) initial intensity matters
Building the S-R-C Association
- Timing Affects Learning
- instrumental conditioning is faster if the R-C interval is short
- superstitions ( = responses that individuals make because they believe those responses lead to desired outcomes (or avert undesired outcomes); e.g. rain dances
Building the S-R-C Association
- Instrumental Conditioning Paradigms
- Positive/Negative Reinforcement
- Positive/Negative Punishment
- positive reinforcement = something is added to the environment, and this encourages (reinforces) behavior
- negative reinforcement = something is subtracted from the environment, and this encourages (reinforces) behavior
- positive punishment = behavior is punished by adding something to the environment
- negative punishment = behavior is punished by taking good things away
Building the S-R-C Association
- Schedules of Reinforcement
- continuous reinforcement schedules
- concurrent reinforcement
- partial reinforcement schedules:
- FR: fixed-ratio schedule = some fixed number of responses must be made before a reinforcer is delivered
- FI: fixed-interval schedule = reinfoced that first response after a fixed amount of time
- VR: variable-ratio schedule = e.g. VR5 schedule produces reinfocement after every 5 responses, on average —> responder never knows exactly when a reinfocement is coming —> linked to gambling
Choice Behavior
- matching law of choice behavior
= an organism’s relative rate of responding will (approximately) match the relative rate of reinforcement
Choice Behavior
- behavioral economics
= study of how organisms “spend” their time and effort among possible options
- bliss point = allocation of resources that provides maximal subjective value
Choice Behavior
- Premack principle
= opportunity to perform a highly frequent behavior can reinforce a less-frequent behavior
- response deprivation hypothesis = suggest that the critical variable is not which response is normally more frequent but merely which response has been restricted: by restricting teh ability to execute almost any response, you can make the opportunity to perform that response reinforcing
Brain Substrates
- Basal Ganglia
- stimulus- response associateions may be stored in direct conticocotical connections or indirectly via the basal ganglia
- stimulus inforcation: processed by cortical areas such as V1, S1 and frontal cortex
- voluntary responses: generated by motor cortex (M1)
- instrumental conditioning - basal ganglia helps link associations between sensory and motor cortex, so that stimuli elicit appropriate motor responses
