The Handy Psychology Answer Book. Lisa J. Cohen

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      This dog is receiving a treat. Dog treats are often used as positive reinforcement to teach dogs new behavior through the method of operant conditioning.

      What is the difference between positive and negative reinforcement?

      Positive reinforcement is also called reward, and refers to the positive consequence of a behavior, which increases its likelihood of recurring. For example, employees are paid to do their job and performers who perform well are applauded. Negative reinforcement, to be distinguished from punishment, involves the removal of a negative condition as a consequence of the targeted behavior. If you lose weight by dieting, that is negative reinforcement.

      In the 1980s, a man with a saxophone and a small kitten on his shoulder frequented the New York City subways. He would play a harsh note on the saxophone as loudly as possible and offer to stop only if the passengers gave him money. This man was utilizing the principles of negative reinforcement (in this case it was also blackmail).

      How effective is punishment?

      Punishment involves the introduction of a negative consequence to a behavior with the intent of diminishing the frequency of the behavior. When a child is grounded for getting into a fight, this is punishment. The parents are trying to diminish the targeted behavior. Likewise, the criminal justice system relies on punishment to maintain an orderly and lawful society. Punishment can be extremely effective but it also has drawbacks. Although the early behaviorists avoided mental considerations, it is now clear that punishment, if done too frequently, creates anger, fear, and resentment and can breed an oppositional mindset, in which people try to cheat the system instead of willingly following the rules. B.F. Skinner distrusted punishment as well, stating that it had only short term effects and it did not teach alternative behavior.

      How is operant conditioning relevant to everyday life?

      Operant conditioning is in evidence in almost every aspect of daily life. When we are paid for our work, evaluated for a merit raise by our managers, thanked by a friend for being considerate, penalized for paying taxes late, or even given a parking ticket, operant conditioning is in play.

      How is operant conditioning relevant to animal life?

      Most of animal training involves operant conditioning. When we spray our cat with a squirt gun after he jumps on the kitchen counter or give our dog a treat after he rolls over, we are using operant conditioning. Even pigeons can be shaped to do a particular behavior, such as peck at a lever, by successively rewarding behavior that more closely approximates the desired behavior.

      How is classical conditioning related to drug addiction?

      Classical conditioning is central to the process of drug addiction. Addiction treatment often focuses on the management of craving. Craving, or the urge to use the problem drug, can be very strong and frequently leads to relapses in people striving for sobriety. Craving is triggered by cues, both external and internal, via the process of classical conditioning. In other words, the person encounters a reminder of drug use (such as drug paraphernalia or the bar where the person used to drink) and the association stimulates craving. This is basically the same conditioning process Pavlov noticed with his dogs. External cues include environmental factors (people, places, and things). Internal cues include emotions, thoughts or physical sensations that previously led to drug use.

      What is extinction?

      When the association starts to erode between the stimulus and the response (in classical conditioning) or between the behavior and the reinforcement (in operant conditioning), a behavior becomes extinguished. A behavior is extinguished when it is no longer performed. This can be a positive thing if the behavior was undesirable to begin with. It can also be negative if the behavior was valued. In general, the behavior should eventually extinguish if it is no longer accompanied by either the prior reinforcement or the unconditioned stimulus. If you stop paying people to go to work, they will probably stop going. If you stopped taking your dog for a walk after you put on your shoes, the dog will eventually stop barking and wagging his tail each time you put them on. The association between sneakers and walk will be extinguished.

      How do reinforcement conditions affect learning?

      Although the principles of conditioning are very simple, they are less simple in practice. A number of factors affect the effectiveness of conditioning. Timing is important, specifically the time separating the unconditioned and conditioned stimulus. If the sneakers go on too soon before the dog is walked, it will be hard to associate the shoes with the walk.

      Relatedly, the reinforcement should closely follow the behavior for the act to be connected with the consequence. This is why news of global warming has had so little effect until recently, although we’ve known about it for decades. The consequences were not immediate. This is also why it is so difficult to instill healthy habits in the young, when the consequences of their self-care will not be evident for decades. The schedule of reinforcement also affects learning. Should the behavior be reinforced every time it occurs? What kind of reinforcement makes a behavior most resistant to extinction?

      Why is intermittent reinforcement more resistant to extinction?

      Intermittent reinforcement, in which the behavior is only reinforced intermittently, best protects a behavior from extinction. If people do not expect the behavior to be reinforced every time it occurs, they will be less likely to stop the behavior when it is not reinforced. It will take longer for them to give up on the behavior. Further, when intermittent reinforcement is unpredictable, it is even more resistant to extinction.

      What problems with behaviorism started to show up even among the faithful?

      As the reign of behaviorism continued, the limits of the paradigm became more evident. Animals kept behaving in ways that could not be explained by behaviorist theory alone. For example, Skinner had thought that any animal could be taught any behavior with the appropriate reinforcement schedule. But this did not turn out to be the case. The same behavior was learned easily by some animals, with difficulty by others, and not at all by still others. Rats could easily learn to press a bar for food, while cats would do so only with difficulty. These findings suggest that the genetics of each animal species set the parameters of what could and could not be learned. There were limits to what could be taught.

      How did Tolman’s contributions mark the beginning of the end of the behaviorist era?

      Edward Chase Tolman (1886–1959) was a devoted behaviorist who studied maze-running behavior in rats (a favorite topic of behaviorist researchers). Despite his expectations, he repeatedly observed behavior in rats that he could not explain solely by stimulus-response connections. He noticed that rats in a maze would often stop, look around, and check out one path, then another before choosing a particular route. He could only explain this behavior (and many other similar behaviors he observed) by inferring some kind of mental process. The rat seemed to have a mental picture of the layout СКАЧАТЬ