Schedules of Reinforcement
Gambling and lottery games
What is Variable Ratio?
Whenever you see a scary movie, you always eat a box of thin mints. Now you find that just seeing thin mints makes you feel scared.
What is fear?
After a DUI charge you lose your driver's license. You stop drinking and driving as a result.
What is Negative Punishment?
You get stung by a bee and now you sweat when you hear a buzzing noise.
What is the Bee Sting?
relatively permanent change in behavior that results from experience.
What is learning?
Hospital patient uses patient-controlled, doctor-timed pain relief
What is Fixed Interval?
You meet a new person who is an excellent cook. After a few excellent meals you find yourself liking the person very much.
What is a pleasurable feeling?
You feel good after working at a soup kitchen. You go back because you enjoy those feelings.
What is Positive Reinforcement?
John Watson conducted an experiment with a boy named Albert in which he paired a white rat with a loud, startling noise. Albert now becomes startled at the sight of the white rat.
What is the Loud Noise?
Any event or situation that evokes a response
What is a stimulus?
In the video game Donkey Kong you receive an extra life for every one hundred bananas collected.
What is Fixed Ratio?
At Christmas you get a present and you feel excitement. Eventually you feel excitement just thinking about Christmas.
What is excitement?
Removing curfew when a teenager has proven she is responsible and practices common sense. The teen will continue to be trustworthy without her curfew.
What is Negative Reinforcement?
At Christmas you get a present and you feel excitement. Eventually you feel excitement just thinking about Christmas.
What is the present?
A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipated events
What is classical conditioning?
Jobs that require X amount of responses in order to receive compensation. For example, a worker receives X amount of dollars for every 100 envelopes they stuff or every 100 fliers they stick on windshields.
What is fixed ratio?
People receiving chemotherapy often vomit during or shortly after the procedure. After several chemotherapy sessions, people begin feeling sick at the sight of the treatment room.
What is feeling sick?
The teacher yells, "Stop talking!" in the middle of the lecture to the class and all the other students glare at the offenders. They stop talking and do not interrupt again.
What is Positive Punishment?
John is 3 years old and always loves playing with balloons. One day John was playing with a red balloon and it popped. The loud noise upset him and he cried. Ever since that day, whenever he sees a red balloon, he starts to cry.
What is the Balloon Pop?
the theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning
What is behaviorism?
Imagine that you are training a rat to press a lever, but you only reinforce the first response after a ten-minute interval. The rat does not press the bar much during the first 5 minutes after reinforcement but begins to press the lever more and more often the closer you get to the ten-minute mark.
What is Fixed Interval?
Every day the mother of a four year old comes home from work and rings the doorbell prior to entering the house. A few seconds later, she enters the house to give her child a big hug, which all children find pleasurable. Eventually the child shows excitement and joy to the sound of the doorbell.
What is joy?
When the light goes green at a traffic light, the car in front of Sarah doesn’t move. She hates when this happens and from experience knows that blasting her car horn gets cars that are in front of her out of her way. She dutifully blasts the horn and the car moves out of her way.
What is Negative Reinforcement?
Jim goes to the dentist to have a cavity filled. He hears the shrill sound of the drill, his muscles tense and he experiences pain as the dentist works on his teeth. After that experience, whenever Jim hears the sound of the drill, his muscles tense and he becomes anxious.
What is the Cavity Procedure?
the diminishing of a conditioned response
What is extinction?