PSYC 2330 Lecture Notes - Incentive Salience, Reticular Formation, Benzodiazepine

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2330
• Professor: Francesco Leri

Document Summary

Operant conditioning occurs when s, r and s* occur together in time: the extreme of automatic behavior. Guthrie made the point that a stimulus and response will be associated with each other as long as they happen together in time. We agree with the other school that the rat in running a maze is exposed to stimuli and is finally led as a result of these stimuli to the responses which actually occur. We feel, however, that the intervening brain processes are more complicated [and] more autonomous than do the stimulus-response psychologists. Rs are highly flexible and the primary role of a s* is to motivate behavior. Responses usually continue in the absence of a reinforcer for quite some time. A reinforcer is an event that follows a response and changes the probability that the response will be emitted in the future. If the memory trace is followed by a reinforcer, it will enhance the stability of the memory trace.