Behavior Principles in Everyday Life

1
Behavior Principles in Everyday Life

• Chapter 5
• The Stimulus Collage

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The Stimulus Collage

• The ability of any stimulus in the stimulus
  collage to influence behavior depends on
• (1.) an individuals past conditioning (or lack
  of conditioning) with the stimulus and similar
  stimuli,
• (2.) the salience (or conspicuousness) of the
  stimulus in the present stimulus collage, and
• (3.) the presence of other stimuli that evoke
  facilitative or competing responses.

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The Stimulus Collage Cont.

• (1.) First, past conditioning can cause any
  stimulus (even relatively small or faint ones) to
  have significant influences over behavior. A
  mother who hears the faint cry of her sick baby
  in the next room may find her thoughts and
  attention instantly drawn to the child even
  though she is in the midst of an interesting
  conversation. The babys crying functions as a
  CS that elicits the mothers emotional responses
  and an SD for the mother to go to the aid of the
  sick child.

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The Stimulus Collage Cont.

• (2.) Second, if the infant had been in the same
  room with the mother, early signs of distress
  would have been more salient more conspicuous
  and noticeable to the mother. She would have
  noticed the infants restlessness and early
  whimpers (which were not salient when the child
  was in the next room), and she would have helped
  the infant before the child began to cry. Thus,
  stimuli that are nearby and salient tend to
  affect behavior more than distant and
  inconspicuous stimuli.

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The Stimulus Collage Cont.

• (3.) Third, the ability of any given stimulus to
  control behavior can be increased or decreased by
  facilitative or competing responses produced by
  other stimuli in the sensory collage. If the
  mother of a crying infant had been talking to a
  neighbor about her efforts to be a good mother
  when her baby first began to cry, the SDs of the
  conversation about being a good parent would have
  facilitated her operants of taking care of the
  child.

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The Stimulus Collage Cont.

• On the other hand, if the mother had been engaged
  in a bitter quarrel with her husband about his
  neglecting the child, the SDs of the quarrel
  might have set the occasion for competing
  responses. She might have said, There she is
  crying again. Why dont you go see whats the
  matter this time? How come Im always the one?

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Stimulus Control

• Those stimuli in the sensory collage that are
  effective in producing responses are said to have
  stimulus control over the responses.

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External and Internal Stimuli

• The antecedent stimuli that influence behavior
  can be located either outside or inside the body.
  The stimuli that lie outside the body are
  detected through the five primary senses and they
  can influence both Pavlovian and operant
  behavior. Seeing or hearing a friend coming in
  the front door alters your stimulus collage by
  adding external stimuli that can be
• (1.) CSs for conditioned reflexive responses
  such as pleasant feelings and a smile, and
• (2.) SDs for operant behaviors such as saying
  something congenial.

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External and Internal System Cont.

• Stimuli from inside your body also contribute to
  the total stimulus collage, affecting both
  Pavlovian and operant behavior. A toothache is
  an internal US that elicits the feelings of pain.
  It is also an internal SD for such operants as
  taking a pain reliever and calling your dentist.

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External and Internal System Cont.

• A persons behavior can be influenced
  simultaneously by both external and internal
  stimuli. The external CSs of hearing your
  employer criticize your latest work may bring a
  lump to your throat, a quiver to your voice,
  strong heartbeats, and other emotional responses.
  These responses then serve as internal SDs for
  thoughts such as I hope she doesnt think Im
  nervous about this. She might not think Im in
  control of the situation.

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External and Internal System Cont.

• Many of our behaviors come under the control of
  both external and internal stimuli. Eating, for
  example, can be controlled by numerous external
  stimuli (such as the clock hands pointing to
  noon, being in the kitchen, smelling delicious
  food, seeing other people eating, being told to
  eat) and internal stimuli (such as stomach
  sensations that indicate hunger).
• Peoples own behavior can influence the salience
  of stimuli from both outside and inside the
  body that control their next response.

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Stimulus Control Research

• Schaefer (1970) demonstrated that head-banging
  could be developed and brought under stimulus
  control in rhesus monkeys. Schaefer was
  interested in head-banging because this form of
  self-injurious behavior sometimes is seen in
  people with mental retardation.
• Through a procedure called shaping, Schaefer got
  the monkeys to engage in head-banging and
  reinforced this behavior with food.

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Stimulus Control Research

• Discrimination training occurred in the following
  way. Standing in front of the cage, Schaefer
  sometimes made verbal statements (SD) to the
  monkey and sometimes said nothing (S?).
• When Schaefer said, Poor boy! Dont do that!
  Youll hurt yourself! and the monkey hit its
  head, he delivered a food pellet. When he did not
  provide the verbal stimulus and the monkey hit
  its head, no food was provided.
• As a result, stimulus control developed, and the
  monkey hit its head only when Schaefer made the
  statements (when the SD was present).

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Operant Generalization

• When an operant behavior has been reinforced in
  the presence of certain stimuli and comes under
  SD control of those stimuli, there is a tendency
  for similar stimuli to control the response, too.
• This is stimulus generalization as seen in
  operant conditioning. The more closely that some
  new stimulus resembles the original SDs
  associated with reinforcement, the more likely it
  is to control the operant, too.

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Generalization

• Stimulus generalization has also occurred when a
  response occurs in different circumstance- in a
  different context, at a different time, or with
  different people- from those in which it was
  originally learned.
• Parents may teach their young a request (SD), the
  child complies with the request (R), and the
  parents praise the child (SR). When the child
  complies with novel requests the parents make,
  stimulus generalization has occurred.
• The specific request might be new, but it shares
  the relevant features of the SD present during
  discrimination training It is a request or
  instruction made by the parent. Requests made by
  the parent are part of a stimulus class
  antecedent stimuli that share similar features.

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Operant Generalization Cont.

• The more similar the present stimulus collage is
  to the stimulus settings in which a behavior was
  learned, the more likely that behavior is to
  occur.
• The probability of responding to each of the
  stimuli (SD, S1, S2, S3, S4) produces a curve
  called a generalization gradient.
• Whenever a behavior comes under the control of
  specific SDs in one setting, there is a certain
  amount of generalization to other similar
  situations. The degree of generalization depends
  on the number of cues in the other settings that
  resemble crucial SDs in the first stimulus
  collage.

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Operant Generalization Cont.

• As a person moves into situations that are
  increasingly different from the original SD
  context in which the response is reinforced,
  there are fewer and fewer stimuli that resemble
  the original SDs. As the stimulus collage
  becomes increasingly different from the original
  one, and the number of controlling SDs for the
  response declines, the probability of the
  response declines.
• In addition, the generalized response is usually
  performed less quickly, less intensely, and less
  rapidly than than the response in the original SD
  context as one moves out the generalization
  gradient.

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Operant Generalization Cont.

• The world is always changing. We never
  experience exactly the same stimulus patterns
  twice yet our world is similar enough from day
  to day that we can respond to our ever-changing
  environment with many of the same operants that
  worked for us yesterday. This is the first
  benefit of generalization.
• Second, as we gain skills, we often benefit from
  our ability to apply them to new situations due
  to generalization.

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Operant Generalization Cont.

• If generalization is too broad and causes a
  person to emit an operant behavior in
  inappropriate circumstances, the operant is said
  to be overgeneralized.
• If generalization is too narrow and fails to
  produce the two benefits described in the prior
  section, the operant is called undergeneralization
  .
• Additional Reinforcement. No matter how much an
  operant has generalized, reinforcing it in new
  contexts can further increase the probability of
  the response in these new contexts.

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Generalization

• Parents probably want to limit stimulus control
  so that the child does not comply with the
  request or instructions of all adults, including
  strangers. Otherwise, the child would be at risk
  for exploitation.
• The parents can prevent undesirable
  generalization by using stimulus discrimination
  training. To do so, the parents specifically
  reinforce compliance to requests made by parents,
  teachers, the babysitter, or grandparents.
• However, they do not reinforce compliance to
  requests made by any other adult. In this way,
  the parents are establishing a stimulus class for
  compliance that consists only of requests from
  parents, teachers, the babysitter, and
  grandparents.

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Generalization in What We Eat

• To eat less meat, many of us turn to meat
  substitutes made of soy. Chicken patties,
  chicken nuggets, bacon and sausage patties, hot
  dogs and corn dogs are made from soy products.
• But why would soy products be made to resemble
  meat products not only in taste but also in
  appearance?

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Generalization in Who or What We Love

• Why would anybody sacrifice time, effort and
  finances to love and raise a child who is
  unrelated biologically?
• Why would anybody love their dog or cat? Or even
  to love them enough to pay thousands of dollars
  in medical treatments for an ailing pet?
• Why would a pet owner want their deceased pet
  preserved as a mounted or stuffed animal?

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Operant Discrimination

• As an operant is followed by reinforcement in
  some stimulus contexts, but not others, people
  learn to respond differently to different
  antecedent stimuli. This is the process of
  learning operant discrimination.
• Whereas generalization involves performing one
  response in various situations, discrimination
  involves learning to do the responses in the
  presence of SDs but not when S?s are present.
  This is stimulus discrimination as seen in
  operant conditioning.

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Operant Discrimination

• The primary cause of discrimination learning is
  differential reinforcement, which occurs when any
  given behavior can be followed by reinforcement
  or punishment and there are antecedent cues that
  help predict when the behavior will lead to
  rewards or punishers. Those antecedent stimuli
  that precede reinforced responses and are good
  predictors of reinforcement become SDs for
  responding whereas those antecedent stimuli that
  precede and predict punishment or
  nonreinforcement become S?s that inhibit
  responding.

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Social Sensitivity

• Some people learn to discriminate subtle
  differences in social cues involving facial
  expressions, tone of voice, body posture, and
  numerous other aspects of behavior. Others
  remain insensitive to all but the most obvious
  social cues. The learning of the subtle
  discriminations involved in social sensitivity is
  based largely on differential reinforcement.

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Social Sensitivity Cont.

• Facial expressions are important to us because
  they provide countless predictive stimuli that
  often correlate with reinforcement or punishment.
• For example, when you begin joking with someone
  who is smiling, there is a better chance that you
  will experience positive reinforcement than if
  the person was frowning like a grouch. Thus,
  smiles are predictive stimuli that become SDs,
  setting the occasion for friendly joking and
  many other responses that have been reinforced in
  this SD context.

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Social Sensitivity Cont.

• Note that the very same facial expression which
  functions as an SD for joking can function as an
  S? that inhibits other responses. If you try to
  start a serious philosophical discussion while a
  friend is smiling, your friend may punish your
  serious response.
• Social sensitivity is also based on the
  combination of differential reinforcement for
  noticing other peoples emotional responses and
  accurately describing those emotions either out
  loud or in the inner words of our thoughts.

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Generalization v. Discrimination

• Generalization and discrimination are often
  described as opposite kinds of effects.
• Generalization refers to the process by which we
  respond in the same way to different stimuli,
  because we recognize their similarities.
• Discrimination refers to the process by which we
  learn to respond in different ways to different
  stimuli, as we notice how they predict different
  consequences.

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Pavlovian Generalization

• When a predictive stimulus precedes a reflex and
  becomes a CS that elicits a reflexive response,
  stimuli that are similar to the CS will elicit
  the response, too. This is stimulus
  generalization as seen in Pavlovian conditioning.
• New stimuli can elicit a conditioned response to
  the degree that they physically resemble the
  original CS to which the response was conditioned.

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Stimulus Generalization

• In classical conditioning, stimulus
  generalization is the tendency for a CR to occur
  in the presence of a stimulus that is similar to
  the CS.
• Semantic generalization is the generalization of
  a conditioned response to a verbal stimuli that
  are similar in meaning to the CS. Anti-abortion
  protester tactics
• For example, if humans are exposed to a
  conditioning procedure in which the sight of the
  word car is paired with shock, that word
  eventually becomes a CS that elicits a fear
  response. When participants are shown other
  words, generalization of the fear response is
  more likely to occur to those words that are
  similar in meaning to car, such as automobile
  or truck, than to words that look similar, such
  as bar or tar.

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Pavlovian Generalization Cont.

• Additional Conditioning. After a reflexive
  response generalizes to some new stimulus, the
  response to the new stimulus may become even
  stronger if it undergoes additional Pavlovian
  conditioning in the presence of that stimulus.

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Pavlovian Discrimination

• If two stimuli originally elicit the same
  reflexive response, but one of these stimuli is
  later paired with a different reflex (or with
  neutral stimuli), a person will learn to respond
  differently to the two stimuli. This type of
  learning is stimulus discrimination in Pavlovian
  conditioning.

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Stimulus Generalization

• Generalization and discrimination play an
  important role in many aspects of human behavior.
  Phobias, for example, involve not only the
  classical conditioning of a fear response but
  also an overgeneralization of that fear response
  to inappropriate stimuli.
• For example, a woman who has been through an
  abusive relationship may develop feelings of
  anxiety and apprehensiveness toward all men.
  Eventually, however, through repeated
  interactions with men, this tendency will
  dissipate and she will begin to adaptively
  discriminate between men who are potentially
  abusive and those who are not. Unfortunately,
  such discriminations are not always easily made,
  and further bad experiences could greatly
  strengthen her fear.

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Pavlovian Stimulus Generalization

• How could any normal heterosexual man be
  aroused by a drag queen?
• How could any normal heterosexual man be
  aroused by erotic cartoons?
• How could any normal heterosexual man have sex
  with a love doll?

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The Role of Words in the Stimulus Collage

• Both external and internal words can function as
  CSs and SDs or S?s.

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The Role of Words In the Stimulus Collage Cont.

• A simple ghost story can frighten a young child
  because it contains so many words that function
  as fear-eliciting CSs for children. Happy fairy
  tales, in contrast, contain words that are CSs
  for pleasant emotions and thus can elicit smiles
  and laughter from children. Even adults can talk
  or think themselves into the depths of depression
  of they ponder too many words that are CSs for
  negative emotional responses. Conversely, by
  focusing on words that function as CSs for
  pleasant emotions, people can talk or think
  themselves into an optimistic, cheerful mood.

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The Role of Words in the Stimulus Collage Cont.

• Complex or Ambiguous Situations. When a
  situation is complex or ambiguous and people do
  not know how to respond to it, authoritative
  words can often have a powerful influence in
  controlling behavior.

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The Role of Words In the Stimulus Collage Cont.

• When several thirsty hikers come upon a pool of
  water in an otherwise dry streambed, they may
  find themselves in an ambiguous situation. The
  water functions as an SD for drinking but the
  slightly stagnant condition of the water serves
  as an S? that inhibits drinking. As they
  vacillate between drinking and not drinking, a
  local person approaches them and says, That
  waters bad. The verbal label adds crucial
  discriminative stimuli verbal S?s to the
  total stimulus collage and brings an end to the
  hikers vacillation. The verbal S?s tip the
  balance in favor of not drinking.

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The Role of Words in the Stimulus Collage Cont.

• Operant Behavior. Verbal labels can serve as SDs
  that can have surprising strength in ambiguous
  situations.
• When clear labels are added to the stimulus
  collage by a trusted friend, or several other
  people simultaneously, the labels act as strong,
  unambiguous SDs for responses appropriate to the
  descriptive words.

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The Role of Words In the Stimulus Collage Cont.

• Once a person has acquired a label either
  favorable or stigmatizing it is often difficult
  for other people to respond to the persons
  behavior without being controlled by SDs of the
  label.
• Reflexive Responses. Descriptive labels play an
  important role in determining peoples emotional
  responses in ambiguous situations.

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Behavior Modification

• In order to practice behavior modification,
  people often find it useful to identify the
  stimuli that control behavior they want to
  change.
• One of the best ways to identify stimulus control
  of either operant or reflexive behavior is to
  look for the stimuli that precede and best
  predict the given behavior.
• (1.) First, select a target behavior, and then
  ask which stimuli usually occur just prior toand
  are highly correlated withthe behavior. These
  are the stimuli most likely to control that
  behavior.

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Behavior Modification Cont.

• (2.) A second way to sensitize yourself to
  stimulus control is to notice when you feel
  subjective urges or pressures to do
  somethingbefore you do it. These subjective
  feelings are among the first signs that you are
  feeling stimulus control, and you can ask, What
  stimuli make me feel this urge or pressure?
• The skills for identifying stimulus control can
  help people modify their own behavior.

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What factors make an addiction relapse likely?
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Antecedent events making relapse more probable
(High-risk situations)

• A high-risk situation is defined broadly as any
  situation which increases the risk of potential
  relapse.
• In an analysis of 311 initial-relapse episodes
  obtained from clients with a variety of problem
  behaviors (problem drinking, smoking, heroin
  addiction, compulsive gambling and overeating),
  three primary high-risk situations that were
  associated with three quarters of all the
  relapses reported were negative emotional states,
  interpersonal conflict, and social pressure.

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Antecedent events making relapse more probable
(High-risk situations)

• Negative emotional states
• In these situations (35 percent of all relapses
  in the sample), the individual is experiencing a
  unpleasant or aversive emotional state, mood or
  feeling such as frustration, anger, anxiety,
  depression, or boredom prior to or at the time
  the first lapse occurs.

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Antecedent events making relapse more probable
(High-risk situations)

• Interpersonal conflict
• These situations (16 percent of the relapses)
  involve an ongoing or relatively recent conflict
  associated with any interpersonal relationship,
  such as marriage, friendship, family members, or
  employer-employee relationships.
• Arguments and interpersonal confrontations occur
  frequently in this category.

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Antecedent events making relapse more probable
(High-risk situations)

• Social pressure
• In these situations (20 percent of the sample),
  the individual is responding to the influence of
  another person or group pf people who exert
  pressure on the individual to engage in the taboo
  behavior.
• Social pressure may be either direct (direct
  interpersonal contact with verbal persuasion) or
  indirect (e.g., being in the presence of others
  who are engaging in the same target behavior).

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Stimuli Paired with Drug Delivery

• An ashtray or a lighter has obviously been
  paired with hundreds or thousands of nicotine
  deliveries. Two effects are likely
• Placebo or needle freak effects the ashtray
  actually has some of the same CR effects as
  nicotine.
• Later on, the first effect is often replaced by a
  compensatory-tolerance effect where the ashtray
  can elicit CRs that are opposite to the
  nicotines effects, and can induce
  withdrawal/craving for nicotine.