01:830:311 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Edward Thorndike, Learned Helplessness, Reinforcement
9 Apr 2017
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Thorndike"s thesis showed that cats learn through a gradual process of trial and error. This trial and error leads to the stamping in of correct responses. Led to much of his later work and to the work of others, looking at the function of reward and punishment on learning. Drifting of an organism"s behavior away from the reinforced behavior toward instinctive behaviors that occur when animal is presented with reinforcer. Autoshaping provides an example of a situation where such behaviors may facilitate operant conditioning. Pigeons will peck at stimuli associated with the presentation of food and drink, even when pecking has no effect on the delivery of reinforcers. Animal"s instincts can disrupt efforts to train them. Better quality reinforcers or larger quantities of the reinforcer, produce better or stronger conditioned responses. These effects show that prior experience with a reinforcer can influence how the individual response to a current reinforcer.
