Week 5/ Chapter 6

• Facets and applications of operant conditioning:
• Discriminative stimulus signals the possibility of reinforcement
• Training using shaping involves successive approximations
• Chaining is a sequence where the outcome serves as a signal for the next step
• Withdrawing reinforcement can temporarily increase behavior, known as extinction burst
• Premack principle involves performing a less desirable activity to access a more desirable one
• Result of random reinforcement can lead to superstitious behavior
• Random schedules can strengthen irrelevant responses, especially in "lean" reinforcement environments
• Combining operant conditioning and classical conditioning:
• Two process theory of anxiety is caused by classical conditioning but maintained by negative reinforcement
• Limits of radical behaviorism:
• Early behaviorists did not believe that thinking played a significant role in learning
• Skinner and radical behaviorists consider thinking and emotions as behaviors, albeit covert ones
• Today, psychologists acknowledge at least some role for cognition, leading to the cognitive revolution in the 1960s
• Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on changing thoughts
• Artificial intelligence is also a part of this acknowledgment
• Exceptions to behavioral learning theory:
• Insight is not just trial and error
• Kohler's chimpanzees and "Aha!" moments suggest that humans and other animals may gain insight
• Observational and vicarious learning involve learning by watching others or learning without engaging in trial and error
• Bandura's research on observing aggression is an example of this type of learning
• Biological influences on learning:
• Conditioned taste aversions are easily acquired with novel tastes and gastrointestinal sickness after only one trial
• Conditioned taste aversions show little generalization, especially when taste is the conditioned stimuli
• Biological influences also include the tendency for animals to return to innate behaviors following repeated reinforcement, known as instinctive drift
• Biological preparedness is the evolutionary predisposition to learn some pairings of feared stimuli over others due to their survival value
• Cook and Mineka's study on wild-reared monkeys showing fear of snakes compared to laboratory-reared monkeys highlights biological preparedness