SKINNER

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SKINNERS THEORY OF INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING

• Two-term contingency R ? SR
• Nature of reinforcer can vary R ? S SR, Sr,
  S-R, S-r.
• 3-term contingency (Discriminative operant)
• SD R ? SR (light bar press ? food)
• S? R ? SR (no light bar press ? food)
• Chaining of discriminative operants
• Nature of discriminative stimulus can vary
  exteroceptive, interoceptive, proprioceptive.

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SKINNERS THEORY (cont.)

• Contingency of reinforcement can vary Rn/t ? SR
• Schedule of reinforcement can vary R ? SR
• subject must emit n responses within a particular
  time frame t.
• Verbal Behavior. Behavior that is reinforced by
  a member of ones verbal community.
• Private events. Discriminative responding to
  proprioceptive or interoceptive stimuli (stimuli
  under our skin, Sd r ? Sr)

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Behaviorist Approach

• All learned behavior (human and animal) can be
  explained by the principles of classical and
  instrumental learning theory (2-factor learning
  theory).
• Classical conditioning
• assumes that CSs and USs can be paired
  arbitrarily.
• assumes that temporal contiguity of CS and US is
  necessary and sufficient for establishing CR.
• Instrumental conditioning
• assumes that responses selected for reinforcement
  are arbitrary.
• No need to postulate mental processes.

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EVIDENCE THAT QUESTIONED BEHAVIORISTS ASSUMPTIONS

• Misbehavior of organisms
• Garcias experiment on taste aversion
• Autoshaping and omission training
• Blocking
• Rescorlas experiment on predictiveness of US.
• Experiments on animal cognition
• Hunters definition of representation
• Radial maze
• Matching-to-sample

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GARCIA EXPERIMENT ON TASTE AVERSION

• Rats signalled about two types of noxious stimuli
  (nausea and shock) by two types of CS (taste and
  sound).
• taste liquid sweetened with saccharine
• nausea induced by lithium chloride
• Group I Compound CS taste sound ? Shock
• Group II Compound CS taste sound ? Nausea
• Effect of CS evaluated in 2-bottle choice test
• Bottle 1 saccharine flavored water
• Bottle 2 water
• Group I preferred sweet drink (natural
  preference)
• Group II preferred water (avoid natural
  preference)

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Blocking experiment (Kamin)

• Training CS1 ? Shock
• CS1 CS2 ? Shock
• Test CS1 ? fear
• CS2 ? no fear

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Predictable and Unpredictable Occurrences of Food




































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Omission Training
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EVIDENCE THAT QUESTIONED BEHAVIORISTS ASSUMPTIONS

• Misbehavior of organisms
• Garcias experiment on taste aversion
• Autoshaping and omission training
• Blocking
• Rescorlas experiment on predictiveness of US.
• Experiments on animal cognition
• Hunters definition of representation
• Radial maze
• Matching-to-sample

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HUNTER ON REPRESENTATIONS

• ...If comparative psychology is to postulate a
  representative fact, ...it is necessary that the
  stimulus represented be absent at the moment of
  the response. If it is not absent, the reaction
  may be stated in sensory-motor term (Hunter,
  1913, p. 21).

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MATCHING-TO-SAMPLE
A. Matching-to-Sample
Peck
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RADIAL MAZE
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