Operant Conditioning Flashcards

Flashcards covering operant conditioning concepts, principles, and applications as discussed in the lecture notes.

Operant Conditioning

A type of learning where organisms associate their actions with consequences; actions followed by reinforcers increase, while those followed by punishers decrease.

Classical Conditioning vs. Operant Conditioning

Classical conditioning involves associations between stimuli (CS and US) and respondent behavior, while operant conditioning involves organisms associating their own actions with consequences.

Operant Behavior

Behavior that operates on the environment to produce rewarding or punishing stimuli.

B.F. Skinner

Influential figure in modern behaviorism who elaborated on the law of effect and developed a behavioral technology to reveal principles of behavior control.

Law of Effect

Developed by Edward L. Thorndike, states that rewarded behavior tends to recur.

Skinner Box (Operant Chamber)

A device used in Skinner's experiments, containing a bar or key that an animal presses to release a reward of food or water, along with a device to record responses.

Reinforcement

Any event that strengthens or increases the frequency of a preceding response.

Shaping

Gradually guiding an animal's actions toward the desired behavior by rewarding successive approximations.

Discriminative Stimulus

A stimulus that signals that a response will be reinforced (e.g., a green traffic light).

Positive Reinforcement

Strengthening a response by presenting a typically pleasurable stimulus immediately after the response.

Negative Reinforcement

Strengthening a response by reducing or removing something negative.

Primary Reinforcers

Innate satisfying stimuli (e.g., food when hungry) that are unlearned.

Conditioned Reinforcers (Secondary Reinforcers)

Stimuli that gain their power through learned association with primary reinforcers (e.g., money, good grades).

Immediate Reinforcers

Reinforcers that occur directly after a behavior, leading to more effective learning.

Delayed Reinforcers

Reinforcers that are delayed in time, requiring the ability to delay gratification for effective learning.

Continuous Reinforcement

Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs, leading to rapid learning but also rapid extinction.

Partial (Intermittent) Reinforcement

Reinforcing responses only sometimes, resulting in slower acquisition but greater resistance to extinction.

Fixed Ratio Schedules

Reinforcing behavior after a set number of responses.

Variable Ratio Schedules

Providing reinforcers after a seemingly unpredictable number of responses.

Fixed Interval Schedules

Reinforcing a response after a fixed time period.

Variable Interval Schedules

Reinforcing the first response after varying time intervals.

Time-out

Removing a misbehaving child from access to desired stimuli.

Punishment

Tells you what not to do and trains a particular morality focused on prohibition.

Correlation

A measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, indicating how well either factor predicts the other; does not prove causation.