I) Can any behavior by operant?A) Some people think soB) Relating to the changing of the distribution of behaviors based on reinforcementII) Belongingness in Instrumental ConditioningA) Response-reinforcer belongingness effects are also found in instrumental conditioningB) Thorndike’s puzzle boxes1) Scratching self/yawning as escape responses are harder to train via reinforcementC) Breland and Breland (1961) attempted to condition response chains in various animals for entertainment in zoos1) Some responses would change from the reinforced type to an unwanted form instinctive drift: behaviors would drift into a form that was more natural for the response-reinforcer relationshipD) Shettleworth found that food reinforcement could increase environment-directed activities in hamsters, but not self-care responses1) The giving of free reinforcement can actually activate the food-search behaviors2) Reinforced self-care responses do not increaseIII) Quantity and Quality of the ReinforcerA) Hutt (1954) varied both the amount of liquid and the quality (acid, normal, sweet) of the liquid used to reinforce lever pressing behavior1) Larger amounts of liquid (within a certain range) produce more vigorous responding2) For all amounts, sweet water > normal water > acidic watera) Acidic water still produces a positive response (lever pressing)B) What about a change in quantity of a reinforcer?1) Mellgren (1972)a) Rats are trained to run down a runwayi) Small rewardii) Large rewardb) In phase 2: half the rats in each condition are switched to the other conditionc) Measure speedi) Phase 1high reward groups produce a slightly higher response (faster) than the low reward groupii) Phase 2low-high group increased speed to much faster than the h-h group’s phase 1 or 2 levelsPositive contrast effectHigh-low group decreased speed far below that of the low group’s phase 1 levelFrustration/disappointment? Negative contrast effect2) Tinklepaugh and his monkeysa) We previously learned that the reinforcer itself wasn’t part of the association  but clearly these animals are learning not just what to do but what to expectIV) Contiguity vs. ContingencyA) Contiguity: how close in time the reinforcer follows the response (temporal relationship)1) How can we overcome longer delays in reinforcement?a) Secondary conditioning/conditioned reinforcement: immediately follow the correct response with a stimulus that has previously been paired with the reinforcerb) Marking procedure: marking each instance of a response, correct or noti) Example: press a lever, light turns on for 5 seconds, 25 seconds later= foodThe light is the markii) Marks make your response more salient and improve performanceB) Contingency: to what degree delivery of the reinforcer depends on the occurrence of the instrumental response1) Is the contingency between the response and reinforcer necessary to strengthen an instrumental response?a) Skinner discovered “superstitious” behavior in pigeons when food was delivered every 15 seconds irrespective of behaviori) Adventitious (accidental) reinforcement of whatever behavior the pigeon happened to be engaged when food was deliveredii) Relation to human superstitious behavior?b) Staddon & Simmelhag (1971) w/ behavior systems theory: the food is engaging the behavior system (as they come to expect the food they’ll move from general search behaviors towards focal search behaviors)i) Terminal responsesii) Intrim responsesV) Controllability of reinforcersA) If a subject has experienced a lack of control over a reinforcer, he/she will show a decrement in learning to make a responseB) To degrade contingency, present the reinforcer in the absence of the target behavior1) All bar presses are followed by food, but not all food was predicted by a bar pressC) Learned helplessness1) Impairs the ability to learn avoidance techniquesa) Making can “rescue” and animal from learned helplessnessD) What about attentional deficit?1) They learn to pay less attention to their own actions than do animals in a group where their actions influence the environmentE) Why doesn’t escapable shock impair learning?1) Sensory feedback stimuli accompanying the escape response sensations of your own body that you create can signal the end of the shock sessiona) These associations reduce fear2) If you signal the end of the shock in an escapable group, they will be more likely to learn an escape behavior in the next phase05/10/2012I) Can any behavior by operant?A) Some people think soB) Relating to the changing of the distribution of behaviors based on reinforcementII) Belongingness in Instrumental ConditioningA) Response-reinforcer belongingness effects are also found in instrumental conditioningB) Thorndike’s puzzle boxes1) Scratching self/yawning as escape responses are harder to train via reinforcementC) Breland and Breland (1961) attempted to condition response chains in various animals for entertainment in zoos1) Some responses would change from the reinforced type to an unwanted form instinctive drift: behaviors would drift into a form that was more natural for the response-reinforcer relationship D) Shettleworth found that food reinforcement could increase environment-directed activities in hamsters, but not self-care responses1) The giving of free reinforcement can actually activate the food-search behaviors 2) Reinforced self-care responses do not increaseIII) Quantity and Quality of the ReinforcerA) Hutt (1954) varied both the amount of liquid and the quality (acid, normal, sweet) of the liquid used to reinforce lever pressing behavior1) Larger amounts of liquid (within a certain range) produce more vigorous responding2) For all amounts, sweet water > normal water > acidic watera) Acidic water still produces a positive response (lever pressing)B) What about a change in quantity of a reinforcer?1) Mellgren (1972)a) Rats are trained to run down a runwayi) Small rewardii) Large rewardb) In phase 2: half the rats in each condition are switched to the other conditionc) Measure speedi) Phase 1-high reward groups produce a slightly higher response (faster) than the low reward groupii) Phase 2-low-high group increased speed to much faster than the h-h group’s phase 1 or 2 levelsoPositive contrast effect-High-low group decreased speed far below that of the low group’s phase 1 leveloFrustration/disappointment? Negative contrast effect2) Tinklepaugh and his monkeysa) We previously learned