INSTRUMENTAL (OPERANT) CONDITIONING

INSTRUMENTAL (OPERANT) CONDITIONING

1. Relations between environmental stimuli and our own behv - operant because the organism learns through responding through operating on the environment - animals own behv is the cause of an event in the environment

   • Skinner's box - Rat was placed in the box, and the mechanism gave small amounts of food each time the rat performed a particular action, such as pressing a lever.. With the operant conditioning chamber attached to a recording device, Skinner was able to discover schedules of reinforcement.

2. Principle behind Operant Conditioning

   • When an action has good consequences, tends to be repeated - when bad = tends not to be repeated

3. Edward Thorndyke's Law of Effect

   • Consequences of a behv are backed upon the organism, affecting the likelihood that the behv that just occurred will occur again

4. Pavlovian vs. Operant Conditioning

   • Operant -> the animal must undertake some action or response in order for the conditioning process to produce learning

5. Insight Learning

   • Responses to novel situations or events - think about the problem and possible solutions - imagine a solution, then try it!

6. Behaviourism and Cognitivism

   • All behaves can be understood in terms of simple, learned stimulus-response links
     • Reliance on observable behv - the brain has little to do with what is directly observed - given the correct stimuli, the organism could learn to behave (respond) in a predictable way
   • Animals do things that mean they must hold mental representations of info - and manipulate them
     • Delayed-response tasks - appropriate experiments can reveal something about mental events, even if they can't get at mental experiences