Operant Conditioning
This principle proposed by Thorndike states that behaviors followed by satisfying consequences become more likely to occur.
What is the Law of Effect?
This schedule reinforces behavior after a set amount of time has passed since the last reinforcement.
What is a Fixed Interval (FI) Schedule?
In learning theory, these are the three basic events involved in learning relationships.
What are Stimulus (S), Response (R), and Outcome (O)?
Responding differently to two stimuli because one signals reinforcement and the other does not is called this.
What is Stimulus Discrimination?
In this procedure, reinforcement is delivered only if the organism waits a certain amount of time between responses, encouraging low response rates.
What is Differential Reinforcement of Low Rates (DRL)?
In this procedure, reinforcement is delivered while the organism can respond at any time, allowing researchers to continuously measure response rate.
What is a Free-Operant Procedure?
This concept explains why the value of a reward decreases as the delay to receiving it increases.
What is Delay Discounting?
This theory proposes that Pavlovian emotional responses combine with instrumental conditioning to influence behavior.
What is the Two-Process Theory (Rescorla & Solomon)?
Responding to stimuli similar to the original training stimulus is called this.
What is Stimulus Generalization?
According to this hypothesis, organisms stop trying to escape an aversive situation because they previously experienced uncontrollable outcomes.
What is Learned Helplessness?
A trainer rewards a dog for first lifting its paw, then raising it higher, and finally placing it in the trainer’s hand to create a handshake behavior.
What is Shaping?
Slot machines operate on this schedule of reinforcement.
What is a Variable Ratio Schedule?
This test measures how a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus affects an instrumental response trained separately.
What is the Pavlovian Instrumental Transfer (PIT) Test?
When two stimuli are presented together and the more salient one dominates learning, this occurs.
What is Overshadowing?
If two stimuli produce the same outcome and come to evoke the same response, they are said to belong to this type of class.
What is an Equivalence Class?
A rat presses a lever and receives food. The rat presses again but food does not appear. Over time the rat presses less often. This change in behavior reflects weakening of this relationship between response and outcome.
What is Response–Reinforcer Contingency?
This schedule produces a “break-and-run” pattern where organisms pause after reinforcement and then respond rapidly until the next reinforcement.
What is a Fixed Ratio Schedule?
A child must finish homework before playing video games. Because playing video games is a more probable behavior, it reinforces homework completion according to this principle.
What is the Premack Principle?
After discrimination training between two similar stimuli, the strongest responding occurs to a stimulus slightly different from the reinforced stimulus and farther from the inhibitory stimulus.
What is the Peak Shift Effect?
In concurrent schedules, organisms distribute responding across alternatives according to this behavioral principle.
What is the Matching Law?
Raccoons trained to deposit coins in a box begin rubbing and manipulating the coins rather than dropping them, demonstrating the phenomenon in which instinctive behaviors interfere with learned responses.
What is Instinctual Drift?
A student checks their email every few minutes because messages can arrive at unpredictable times. This pattern of reinforcement most closely resembles this schedule.
What is a Variable Interval Schedule?
This theory suggests reinforcement occurs when access to a behavior is restricted below its preferred baseline level.
What is the Response Deprivation Hypothesis?
When a light signals that a tone will predict food, but the tone alone does not produce responding, the light functions as this type of stimulus.
What is a Modulator?
When S+ and S− are very similar during discrimination training, the difference between excitation and inhibition gradients produces this shift in responding.
What is the Peak Shift Effect?