Ap Psychology Unit 2

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UGC NET - PSYCHOLOGY PAPER II – UNIT 2 Instrumental Learning Operant conditioning - Introducation • Other names: instrumental learning or instrumental conditioning. • It is the study of how behavior is affected by its consequences. • Defn: Operant conditioning explains how voluntary responses are strengthened or weakened depending on positive or negative consequences. • In classical conditioning the original behavior is a natural biological response. • On the contrary, operant conditioning is applied on the behaviors that are voluntary. • In other words, it deals with the modification of the “voluntary behavior”. • In operant conditioning the organism performs a behavior deliberately in order to produce a desirable outcome. • This was…show more content…
That means the lack of any consequence following a behavior. – When a behavior is inconsequential (i.e., producing neither favorable nor unfavorable consequences) it will occur with less frequency. – When a previously reinforced behavior is no longer reinforced with either positive or negative reinforcement, it leads to a decline in the response. – In the Skinner box experiment, this is the rat pushing the lever and being rewarded with a food pellet several times, and then pushing the lever again and never receiving a food pellet again. Eventually the rat would cease pushing the lever. 4. Noncontingent reinforcement – – – – refers to delivery of reinforcing stimuli regardless of the organism's (aberrant) behavior. The idea is that the target behavior decreases because it is no longer necessary to receive the reinforcement. This typically entails time-based delivery of stimuli identified as maintaining aberrant behavior, which serves to decrease the rate of the target behavior. As no measured behavior is identified as being strengthened, there is controversy surrounding the use of the term noncontingent "reinforcement“.…show more content…
– Rather, the aversive stimulus (mostly shocks) are presented without explicit warning stimuli. – There are two crucial time intervals determining the rate of avoidance learning. • This first one is called the S-S-interval (shock-shock-interval). This is the amount of time which passes during successive presentations of the shock (unless the operant response is performed). • The other one is called the R-S-interval (response-shock-interval) which specifies the length of the time interval following an operant response during which no shocks will be delivered. – Note that each time the organism performs the operant response, the R-Sinterval without shocks begins anew. Two-process theory of avoidance • This theory was originally established to explain learning in discriminated avoidance learning. • It assumes two processes to take place: a) Classical conditioning of
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