PSYC 3222 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Behaviorism, Operant Conditioning, Uch

• School: CU Denver
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3222
• Professor: Karen Crawford

Document Summary

Once embedded, hard to change unless you change the whole scenario. Teaching the organism where to go to get its reward (example: food) The experimenter demonstrates the processes for attaining the reward. The subject is typically deprived of food for 24+ hours to increase the reinforcer"s effectiveness. Initial learning is usually more rapid if every correct response is reinforced. When intermittent schedules of reinforcement are used, changes in responding are haphazard and slow. Consider the differences in studying behavior in a class with a regular friday exam vs. on with pop quizzes. People generally study more often when there are pop quizzes, and on thursdays for the friday exams. Extinction rate: the amount of time that passes before the organism stops responding after the withdrawal of reinforcement. Fixed schedule extinction is greater than variable schedule extinction. Rate of response is high immediately following reinforcements stopping. Example: baby cries more at first when mom stops coming in every time he cries.