Let’s Review:

Which schedule?

• Door-to-door salespeople• People checking the oven to see if the cookies

are done • Airline frequent-flyer programs that offer a

free flight after every 25,000 miles of travel

Continuous vs. Partial Schedules

• Continuous are excellent for training behavior quickly– Quick results must be reinforced after every

desired behavior occurs– Issue: extinguishes too quickly

• Best way to have desired behavior stick – use a partial schedule– More resistant to extinction

Reinforcement• Positive vs. Negative reinforcement

OC Term Description Examples

Positive Reinforcement Add a desirable stimulus

Getting a hug, receiving a paycheck

Negative Reinforcement

Remove an aversive stimulus

Fastening seatbelt to turn off beeping

Punishment: opposite of reinforcement

• Punisher = any consequence that decreases frequency of behavior

• Positive vs. Negative punishment

Positive vs. Negative Punishment

Type of Punisher Description Possible Examples

Positive punishment Administer an aversive stimulus

Spanking, parking ticket

Negative punishment

Withdraw a desirable stimulus

Time-out from privileges, revoked driver’s license

Controversies and difference in delineation

• Arizona introduces exceptionally harsh sentence for first-time drunk drivers – it did not affect the drunk driving rate

• Kansas City started patrolling a high crime area to increase the sureness and swiftness of punishment– Crime rate dropped dramatically

• What’s the conclusion?

Punishment and Parenting: 4 Drawbacks according to psychologists who agree that physical

punishment is wrong• Punished behavior is suppressed, not forgotten

– Suppression, although temporary, aims to negatively reinforce parents’ behaviors for punishing

• Punishment teaches discrimination– Have you ever been punished for something and learned

just that you had to stop the behavior in a certain environment, but continued it elsewhere?

• Punishment can teach fear– Teacher who punishes often may create avoidance of

students in classroom• Physical punishment may increase aggressiveness by

modeling aggression as a way to cope with problems

Baumrind’s Parenting Research: Punishment may be effective in some cases

• Based on principle that punishment tells you what not to do, reinforcement tells you what to do– A swat is used only as backup to milder

disciplinary tactics, like a time-out, removing them from reinforcing surroundings

– Swatting with a generous dose of reasoning

Conclusion: Change the conversation for punishment that is successful

• Punishment is only effective if paired with reinforcement – doesn’t mean that punishment should be used in every scenario

• Language is as important as intensity of action– “Clean your room or no dinner!” vs. “You’re

welcome to join us for dinner after your room is cleaned.”

Role of Cognition in Operant Models

• Latent Learning – learning occurs, but is not apparent, until incentive is in place– Studying rats in mazes (Tolman and Honzik)– Cognitive map: mental representation of the

layout of one’s environment

Cognition in operant cont’d:

• Insight Learning – Wolfgang K, Mentality of Apes– Sudden awareness of solution

to a problem• Ex: using a short stick to reach a

longer stick to reach some fruit

Biological Predispositions and Operant Conditioning

• Biological constraints predispose organisms to learn associations that are naturally adaptive– Birds can peck to get food and

flap wings to avoid shock, but they can’t flap to gain food or peck to avoid shock as the behaviors aren’t available to a natural tendency

– Instinctive drift: animals revert to their biologically predisposed patterns

In the end, it’s all about motivation…• Intrinsic vs. extrinsic

Observational Learning: Social Learning

Observational learning

• Learning that takes place by watching another individual model the learning task and then imitating the behavior

Albert Bandura • Bobo Doll Experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHdovKHDNU

– Implications for humans• Frustration-aggression principle

– Ex: potential neg. effects of violent TV or pos. effects for children with appropriate role models

How does it work biologically?

• Mirrors in the brain: Emotions are contagious– Mirror neurons: neural basis for observational

learning based in the frontal lobe• Underlies our intensely social nature and need to

affiliate– PET scans show mirror neurons that support

empathy and imitation• Known as Theory of Mind (empathy driven ability to

infer another’s mental state)– ASD individuals have “broken mirrors”

• Prosocial vs antisocial– “do as I say, not as I do” teaches what?

Antisocial Effects• May help explain why abusive parents can

have aggressive children• Effects of television

– Bullying is an effective way to control others– Sex is easy and pleasurable without consequence

TV Stats

• During the late 20th century– Average child viewed 8000 TV murders, 100,000

acts of violence before finishing elementary school (not from cable)

– In 1996-1997, out of 3,000 programs, 6/10 featured violence

• 74% of violence went unpunished• 58% didn’t show victims pain• Nearly half involved “justified violence” of an attractive

perpetrator

Violence Viewing Effect

• Violence-viewing effect: violence viewing leads to violent behavior

– Careful though! Correlation doesn’t prove causation

1. Based in imitation (remember Bobo)2. Prolonged exposure also desensitizes viewers,

they become indifferent• Studies show males who view sexually explicit shows

or movies tend to become progressively less bothered by rape and slashings

• Conclusion: watching cruelty fosters indifference