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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)."
Reinforcement is more likely to influence behavior if given shortly after the response is emitted. The longer people have to wait for a reward, the less effect and the less they will learn. This is the principle of delay discounting. Immediate token reinforcement can bridge later reinforcement. [7]
The controlling effects of stimuli are seen in quite diverse situations and in many aspects of behavior. For example, a stimulus presented at one time may control responses emitted immediately or at a later time; two stimuli may control the same behavior; a single stimulus may trigger behavior A at one time and behavior B at another; a stimulus may control behavior only in the presence of ...
In operant conditioning, the delay reduction hypothesis (DRH; also known as delay reduction theory) is a quantitative description of how choice among concurrently available chained schedules of reinforcement is allocated.
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.