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When trying to distinguish primary and secondary reinforcers in human examples, use the "caveman test." If the stimulus is something that a caveman would naturally find desirable (e.g. candy) then it is a primary reinforcer. If, on the other hand, the caveman would not react to it (e.g. a dollar bill), it is a secondary reinforcer.
Learned helplessness is a term to explain a specific pattern of behavior that occurs in both animals and humans. When an animal or human is consistently exposed to an aversive condition (pain, unpleasant noise, etc.) and is unable to escape this condition, that animal or human will become helpless and stop attempting escape.
The rate of terminal reinforcement is = + where is the average duration of an initial link and is the number of terminal reinforcements obtained during a single entry to a terminal link. A critical prediction of this formulation is that matching is obtained when the terminal links are equal durations.
Just as "reward" was commonly used to alter behavior long before "reinforcement" was studied experimentally, the Premack principle has long been informally understood and used in a wide variety of circumstances. An example is a mother who says, "You have to finish your vegetables (low frequency) before you can eat any ice cream (high frequency)."
Shaping sometimes fails. An oft-cited example is an attempt by Marian and Keller Breland (students of B.F. Skinner) to shape a pig and a raccoon to deposit a coin in a piggy bank, using food as the reinforcer. Instead of learning to deposit the coin, the pig began to root it into the ground, and the raccoon "washed" and rubbed the coins together.
For example, the presence of a stop sign at a traffic intersection alerts the driver to stop driving and increases the probability that braking behavior occurs. Stimulus control does not force behavior to occur, as it is a direct result of historical reinforcement contingencies , as opposed to reflexive behavior elicited through classical ...
President Joe Biden is facing mounting pressure from Democratic lawmakers and allies to extend protections to immigrants in the United States amid party fears over President-elect Donald Trump’s ...
Reinforcement of a response to a behavior supplies an effect that satisfies a need. In other words, this satisfaction of needs helps create habits out of behaviors. Specifically, Hull's theory posits that behaviors that satisfy needs, later described by Hull as cravings rather than needs, reduce these cravings.