PSYC 325 Chapter 5: Chapter 5 - Behaviour Notes
27 Nov 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
What can you do with operant conditioning? https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=h9ydv8sscye. Operant conditioning: organisms learn to have particular behaviours to obtain positive, or avoid negative, outcomes. Studied how cats learned to escape from puzzle boxes. No explicit training - spontaneous behaviours only. Law of effect: in the presence of a particular stimulus, called the discriminative stimulus (s), a particular response (r) may lead to a particular outcome (o). In context (s), response (r) produces outcome (o). Initially, it was thought to be a rote motor program. But - if the normal motor program is blocked, animals can use other methods to achieve the same goal. Therefore: r = behavioral unit a class of behaviors that can produce an effect. a goal or intention. Operant conditioning is about contingencies (if r, then o). Learning discriminative stimuli allows us to select behaviors that are appropriate to the situation. Context (s): light that signals box is on . +/ shock through wires in the floor (punishment)
