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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.
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.
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)."
Secondary gain can also be a component of any disease, but is an external motivator. If a patient's disease allows them to miss work, avoid military duty, obtain financial compensation, obtain drugs , avoid a jail sentence, etc., these would be examples of a secondary gain.
Behavioral momentum is a theory in quantitative analysis of behavior and is a behavioral metaphor based on physical momentum.It describes the general relation between resistance to change (persistence of behavior) and the rate of reinforcement obtained in a given situation.
Operant conditioning originated with Edward Thorndike, whose law of effect theorised that behaviors arise as a result of consequences as satisfying or discomforting. In the 20th century, operant conditioning was studied by behavioral psychologists, who believed that much of mind and behaviour is explained through environmental conditioning.
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.