U09 Psych 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6.3: Operant Conditioning Chamber, Operant Conditioning, Reinforcement

• School: WUSTL
• Department: Psychology
• Course: U09 Psych 100
• Professor: Rice Heather, Duchek, Carpenter

Document Summary

Law of effect (thorndike) any behavior that leads to a satisfying state of affairs is likely to occur again, and any behavior that leads to an annoying state of affairs is less likely to occur again. Reinforcement (skinner) to describe an observable event that produces an observable learned response. Reinforcer - a stimulus that follows a response and increases the likelihood that the response will be repeated: he believed that behavior occurs because it has been reinforced. Developed the operant chamber so he wouldn"t have to do anything but just observe. A major problem with operant conditioning outside the skinner box is that the animal might take a while to perform the action you want. Shaping - a process of operant conditioning; it involves reinforcing behaviors that are increasingly similar to the desired behavior: reinforcing successive approximations eventually produces the desired behavior; the animal learns to discriminate which behavior is being reinforced.