This link has been bookmarked by 37 people . It was first bookmarked on 08 Sep 2008, by Shari Lynn.
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organism encounters a special kind of stimulus,
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02 Feb 14
jdaviseduProvides a biography of B.F. Skinner and his theory based on operant conditioning.
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06 Nov 13
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11 May 13
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23 Feb 12
Lea TothHistory with theory and other info
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Theory B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does. During this “operating,” the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant -- that is, the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is operant conditioning: “the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.”
Imagine a rat in a cage. This is a special cage (called, in fact, a “Skinner box”) that has a bar or pedal on one wall that, when pressed, causes a little mechanism to release a food pellet into the cage. The rat is bouncing around the cage, doing whatever it is rats do, when he accidentally presses the bar and -- hey, presto! -- a food pellet falls into the cage! The operant is the behavior just prior to the reinforcer, which is the food pellet, of course. In no time at all, the rat is furiously peddling away at the bar, hoarding his pile of pellets in the corner of the cage.
A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
What if you don’t give the rat any more pellets? Apparently, he’s no fool, and after a few futile attempts, he stops his bar-pressing behavior. This is called extinction of the operant behavior.
A behavior no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results in a decreased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
Now, if you were to turn the pellet machine back on, so that pressing the bar again provides the rat with pellets, the behavior of bar-pushing will “pop” right back into existence, much more quickly than it took for the rat to learn the behavior the first time. This is because the return of the reinforcer takes place in the context of a reinforcement history that goes all the way back to the very first time the rat was reinforced for pushing on the bar!
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so on, until you have the animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life. Skinner and his students have been quite successful in teaching simple animals to do some quite extraordinary things. My favorite is teaching pigeons to bowl!
I used shaping on one of my daughters once. She was about three or four years old, and was afraid to go down a particular slide. So I picked her up, put her at the end of the slide, asked if she was okay and if she could jump down. She did, of course, and I showered her with praise. I then picked her up and put her a foot or so up the slide, asked her if she was okay, and asked her to slide down and jump off. So far so good. I repeated this again and again, each time moving her a little up the slide, and backing off if she got nervous. Eventually, I could put her at the top of the slide and she could slide all the way down and jump off. Unfortunately, she still couldn’t climb up the ladder, so I was a very busy father for a while.
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20 Nov 11
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31 Jul 11
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12 Jun 11
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11 May 11
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operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does.
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organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer.
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special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant
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the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is operant conditioning
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the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.”
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A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
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stops his bar-pressing behavior. This is called extinction of the operant behavior.
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fixed ratio schedule
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There is a fixed ratio between behaviors and reinforcers: 3 to 1, 5 to 1, 20 to 1, etc. This is a little like “piece rate” in the clothing manufacturing industry: You get paid so much for so many shirts.
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fixed interval schedule uses a timing device of some sort. If the rat presses the bar at least once during a particular stretch of time (say 20 seconds), then he gets a goodie. If he fails to do so, he doesn’t get a goodie. But even if he hits that bar a hundred times during that 20 seconds, he still only gets one goodie!
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Variable ratio means you change the “x” each time -- first it takes 3 presses to get a goodie, then 10
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Variable interval means you keep changing the time period -- first 20 seconds, then 5,
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shaping, or “the method of successive approximations.” Basically, it involves first reinforcing a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so on, until you have the animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life.
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aversive stimulus is the opposite of a reinforcing stimulus, something we might find unpleasant or painful.
A behavior followed by an aversive stimulus results in a decreased probability of the behavior occurring in the future.
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if you remove an already active aversive stimulus after a rat or Johnny performs a certain behavior, you are doing negative reinforcement. If you turn off the electricity when the rat stands on his hind legs, he’ll do a lot more standing. If you stop your perpetually nagging when I finally take out the garbage, I’ll be more likely to take out the garbage (perhaps).
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Behavior followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
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07 Mar 11
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24 Feb 11
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03 Aug 10
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17 Jul 10
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02 Jun 10
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B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does. During this “operating,” the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant -- that is, the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is operant conditioning: “the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.”
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Skinner likes to tell about how he “accidentally -- i.e. operantly -- came across his various discoveries. For example, he talks about running low on food pellets in the middle of a study. Now, these were the days before “Purina rat chow” and the like, so Skinner had to make his own rat pellets, a slow and tedious task. So he decided to reduce the number of reinforcements he gave his rats for whatever behavior he was trying to condition, and, lo and behold, the rats kept up their operant behaviors, and at a stable rate, no less. This is how Skinner discovered schedules of reinforcement!
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A question Skinner had to deal with was how we get to more complex sorts of behaviors. He responded with the idea of shaping, or “the method of successive approximations.” Basically, it involves first reinforcing a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so on, until you have the animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life. Skinner and his students have been quite successful in teaching simple animals to do some quite extraordinary things. My favorite is teaching pigeons to bowl!
I used shaping on one of my daughters once. She was about three or four years old, and was afraid to go down a particular slide. So I picked her up, put her at the end of the slide, asked if she was okay and if she could jump down. She did, of course, and I showered her with praise. I then picked her up and put her a foot or so up the slide, asked her if she was okay, and asked her to slide down and jump off. So far so good. I repeated this again and again, each time moving her a little up the slide, and backing off if she got nervous. Eventually, I could put her at the top of the slide and she could slide all the way down and jump off. Unfortunately, she still couldn’t climb up the ladder, so I was a very busy father for a while.
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30 Apr 10
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06 Feb 10
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10 Jan 10
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24 Mar 09
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born March 20, 1904, in the small Pennsylvania town of Susquehanna.
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he was an atheist
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He wanted to be a writer and did try, sending off poetry and short stories. When he graduated, he built a study in his parents’ attic to concentrate, but it just wasn’t working for him.
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They had two daughters, the second of which became famous as the first infant to be raised in one of Skinner’s inventions, the air crib. Although it was nothing more than a
combination crib and playpen with glass sides and air conditioning, it looked too much like keeping a baby in an aquarium to catch on. -
reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer.
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operant -- that is, the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer.
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What if you don’t give the rat any more pellets?
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extinction
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A behavior no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results in a decreased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
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Now, if you were to turn the pellet machine back on, so that pressing the bar again provides the rat with pellets, the behavior of bar-pushing will “pop” right back into existence, much more quickly than it took for the rat to learn the behavior the first time.
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schedules of reinforcement!
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Continuous reinforcement is the original scenario:
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fixed ratio schedule
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There is a fixed ratio between behaviors and reinforcers:
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fixed interval schedule uses a timing device of some sort.
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variable schedules. Variable ratio means you change the “x” each time
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these schedules are very resistant to extinction
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idea of shaping, or “the method of successive approximations.” Basically, it involves first reinforcing a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so on, until you have the animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life.
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This is the same method that is used in the therapy called systematic desensitization, invented by another behaviorist named Joseph Wolpe.
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This could be something your parents were carefully doing to you, as if you were a rat in a cage. But much more likely, this is something that was more or less unintentional.
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something we might find unpleasant or painful.
A behavior followed by an aversive stimulus results in a decreased probability of the behavior occurring in the future.
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describes the form of conditioning known as punishment.
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On the other hand, if you remove an already active aversive stimulus after a rat or Johnny performs a certain behavior, you are doing negative reinforcement.
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Behavior followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
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the therapy technique based on Skinner’s work. It is very straight-forward: Extinguish an undesirable behavior (by removing the reinforcer) and replace it with a desirable behavior by reinforcement.
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Behavior modification -- often referred to as b-mod -
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There is an offshoot of b-mod called the token economy.
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There is a drawback to token economy: When an “inmate” of one of these institutions leaves, they return to an environment that reinforces the kinds of behaviors that got them into the institution in the first place.
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Beyond Freedom and Dignity.
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aversive stimuli don’t work well anyway, so out with them! Instead, we’ll only use reinforcers to “control” society. And if we pick the right reinforcers, we will feel free, because we will be doing what we feel we want!
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behavioral technology, we can design culture.
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Skinner calls mentalistic constructs -- unobservable and so useless for a scientific psychology.
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03 Jan 09
ding dingView highlights at: http://awurl.com/G3DtZVjvD
"A question Skinner had to deal with was how we get to more complex
sorts
of behaviors. He responded with the idea of <b>shaping</b>, or
“the
method of successive approximations.... -
08 Sep 08
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17 Aug 08
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31 May 08
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