PSYC39H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: B. F. Skinner, Neuroscience, Reinforcement
Document Summary
Instrumental learning: operant conditioning, social learning, mere exposure hypothesis, doesn"t really have to be reinforcement. But if people are exposed to something, they tend to favour it due to familiarity. Precluded neurobiology at the time because process-relevant neurobiological processes could not be observed for technological reasons (e. g. they didn"t know about synapses at the time: data must be comparable and replicate. Iv: environmental stimuli: dv: behaviour, acknowledged presence of mental activity but believed it was irrelevant, pigeons, rats, and people have different mental activity so it shouldn"t matter (according to skinner) Punishment: an organism receives noxious or painful stimuli as consequences of behaviour. Extinction: a person/animal receives neither reinforcement/punishment where behaviour gradually disappears. Operant learning & crime: arguable link to criminal behaviour, criminal behaviour is learned and strengthened because of the reinforcement it brings. Transcended skinner"s rigid focus on directly observable behaviour.
