Chapter 6: Operant Conditioning and Reinforcement

Vocabulary flashcards covering the key principles, historical experiments, reinforcement types, and schedules of operant conditioning from Chapter 6.

Learning

The acquisition of knowledge.

Memory

The ability to recall or retain things that have been learned in the past.

Associative Learning

A form of learning based on the tendency of the mind to notice patterns or relationships between events.

Classical Conditioning

A type of associative learning involving automatic, unlearned behaviors where a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus prior to a response.

Operant Conditioning

Learning that occurs when an organism associates favorable or unfavorable consequences with its voluntary, consciously controlled actions.

Law of Effect

E. L. Thorndike's principle stating that a behavior followed by a reward is likely to be repeated.

E. L. Thorndike

A behaviorist who formulated the law of effect after testing the ability of cats to escape from various puzzle boxes by rewarding correct actions.

B. F. Skinner

A behaviorist who built upon Thorndike's law of effect to train animals in specific skills using an operant chamber.

Operant Chamber (Skinner Box)

A small experimental enclosure equipped with mechanisms like levers, food dispensers, lights, and speakers used to condition and test animal behavior.

Reinforcement

Any event that increases or strengthens the preceding behavioral response.

Primary Reinforcer

A stimulus or reward that naturally satisfies basic survival needs, such as food, water, safety, or affection.

Secondary Reinforcer

A conditioned stimulus that gains reinforcing value through its association with a primary reinforcer, such as money or reward tokens.

Shaping

The operant conditioning process of gradually using reinforcers to guide behavior closer and closer to a desired response.

Successive Approximations

The increasingly close intermediate behaviors that are reinforced step-by-step throughout the shaping process.

Delayed Reinforcement

The delivery of a reinforcer after a time delay following an action, requiring the organism to delay gratification for a larger future payoff.

Walter Mischel's Marshmallow Test

An experiment testing delayed gratification in children by offering the choice between eating one marshmallow immediately or waiting to receive two.

Positive Reinforcement

A strategy that increases or strengthens a behavior by presenting or adding a positive, pleasant stimulus after the behavior occurs.

Negative Reinforcement

A strategy that increases or strengthens a behavior by removing or subtracting an unpleasant, aversive stimulus, thereby providing relief.

Continuous Reinforcement

A schedule where a behavior is reinforced every single time the desired response occurs, producing the quickest learning and the quickest extinction.

Partial (Intermittent) Reinforcement

A schedule where a behavior is reinforced only some of the time, resulting in slower learning but greater resistance to extinction.

Fixed Ratio Schedule

A reinforcement schedule where a reward is delivered only after a specific, predetermined number of responses have been completed.