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There is also negative reinforcement, which involves taking away an undesirable stimulus. An example of negative reinforcement would be taking an aspirin to relieve a headache. Reinforcement is an important component of operant conditioning and behavior modification. The concept has been applied in a variety of practical areas, including ...
Of the concepts and procedures described in this article, a few of the most salient are the following: (a) availability of primary reinforcement (e.g. a bag of dog yummies); (b) the use of secondary reinforcement, (e.g. sounding a clicker immediately after a desired response, then giving yummy); (c) contingency, assuring that reinforcement (e.g ...
Primary drives are innate drives (e.g., thirst, hunger, and sex), whereas secondary drives are learned by conditioning (e.g., money). Doris Kraeling and Byron Campbell conducted experiments to determine if “reduction would be more effective as a reinforcer if the initial drive were low than if the initial drive were high.”
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.
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.
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]
While similar to reinforcement, punishment's goal is to decrease behaviors while reinforcement's goal is to increase behaviors. Different kinds of stimuli exist as well. Rewarding stimuli are considered pleasant; however, aversive stimuli are considered unpleasant. There are also two types of punishers: Primary and secondary punishers.
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)."