Operant Conditioning: Reinforcement, Punishment, and Scheduling

Operant conditioning involves associating consequences with behaviors to influence the likelihood of their repetition.
Reinforcement: Any consequence that follows a behavior and increases the likelihood of that behavior being repeated.
Positive Reinforcement: Adding or presenting a stimulus to increase a behavior (e.g., candy, stickers, or verbal praise).
Negative Reinforcement: Removing an unpleasant or aversive stimulus to increase a behavior (e.g., turning off an annoying sound or stopping nagging).
Punishment: A consequence that follows a response to decrease the likelihood of that behavior being repeated; it is intended to suppress behavior.
Aversive Consequence: An unpleasant, painful, or uncomfortable event (includes both punishment and negative reinforcement).

Punishment may be powerful in the short term but fails to teach prosocial or positive behaviors.
Escape Learning: Learning to respond in a way that ends an aversive stimulus as quickly as possible.
Avoidance Learning: Learning to respond in a way that prevents or postpones an aversive stimulus before it occurs.
Negative Outcomes: Punishment can increase aggression and violent reactions.
Effective Punishment Requirements: Must be appropriate/proportional to the behavior, occur immediately after the behavior, and be combined with reinforcement.

Primary Reinforcers: Rewards that fulfill innate biological needs or desires, such as Food, Water, and Sex.
Secondary Reinforcers: Rewards that a subject learns to value, often through association with primary reinforcers.
Categories of Secondary Reinforcers:
- Tokens: Items with no inherent value that can be exchanged for primary reinforcers (e.g., money).
- Social Reinforcers: Reinforcement from others, such as praise, attention, or affection.
- Feedback: Information provided to a person regarding the results of their behavior (e.g., score indicators in a video game).

Continuous Reinforcement: Providing reinforcement every time the behavior is performed; useful for initial learning but prone to satiation and lack of long-term realism.
Partial Reinforcement: Reinforcing behavior only some of the time; creates higher resistance to extinction.
Fixed Ratio (FR): Reinforcement is delivered after a specific, predetermined number of responses (e.g., every third time).
Variable Ratio (VR): Reinforcement is delivered after an unpredictable, changing number of responses (e.g., gambling/slot machines); results in high, consistent response rates.
Fixed Interval (FI): Reinforcement is delivered after a specific amount of time has elapsed (e.g., every $30\,\text{seconds}$ or a weekly salary); often results in slower responses that increase near the end of the interval.
Variable Interval (VI): Reinforcement is delivered after a varying, unpredictable amount of time has elapsed (e.g., on average every $30\,\text{seconds}$ ); produces slow, steady, and persistent response rates.