REINFORCEMENT AND PUNISHMENT

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REINFORCEMENT AND PUNISHMENT

• PSYCH 3720

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REINFORCEMENT AND PUNISHMENT

• Review of traditional theories of reinforcement
  and punishment.
• Pavlov, Thorndike, and Skinner, Hull.

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PAVLOV

• Biologically meaningful stimuli elicit survival.
• Promoting reflexes.

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PAVLOV

• new behaviours can be learned by the
  association of these reflexes with neutral
  stimuli.

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THORNDIKE

• Proposed the law of effect.
• Response followed by a satisfying state tend to
  increase.
• Responses followed by an aversive state
  (annoyers) tend to decrease in frequency.

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SKINNER

• Defined reinforcement as the process of
  increasing the probability of response by
  applying a reinforcer.

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HULL

• Drive reduction theory of behaviour.
• Hull attempted to predict performance in a
  learning task by specifying physiological and
  psychological variables.
• Physiological needs induced drives that when
  reduced reinforced behaviour.

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Modern views

• Many activities we engage in are pleasurable in
  spite of the fact that our survival doesnt
  depend on them.
• Many do not involve drive reduction but they do
  produce pleasure.

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MODERN VIEWS

• Social approval may be one of the most effective
  reinforcers for both children and adults but is
  it drive reducing?

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BANDURA

• Social reinforcement theory.
• Argues that much of human behaviour is imitative
  and persists in the absence of overt reinforcers.
• Social reinforcers.

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NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT

• Remember that reinforcement of any kind including
  negative reinforcement increases the rate of the
  preceding response.

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ESCAPE AND AVOIDANCE PROCEDURES

• SIDMAN ESCAPE AND AVOIDANCE PROCEDURES.
• Learn via negative reinforcement.

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DETERMINANTS OF AVOIDANCE RESPONSE RATES

• Shock intensity.
• Passage of time.

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DISCRETE TRIAL AVOIDANCE SCHEDULES

• A specific discriminative stimulus is added to
  the experimental environment.
• Signaled discrete trial avoidance.
• Shuttle box.

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WHAT IS THE REINFORCEMENT IN NEGATIVE
REINFORCMENT?

• How can the absence of a stimulus reinforce
  behaviour?
• Logically we presume that some aspect of the
  reinforcer is always there.
• Memory.

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TWO-FACTOR THEORY OF AVOIDANCE

• Mowrer (1947).
• Suggested that there are two factors underlying
  avoidance behaviour.
• Classically conditioned emotional behaviour.
• Conditioned motor responses.

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EXPERIMENT

• Kamin, Brimer, and Black (1963).
• Phase 1 rats trained to bar press for food.
• Phase 2 shuttle-box training where a tone set
  the occasion for avoidance behaviour.

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EXPERIMENT

• Four groups trained to avoid shock on 1,3,9, 27
  consecutive trials.
• Phase 3 a groups returned to the bar press for
  food. Tone was presented while bar pressing and
  the effect of the tone on response rate was
  recorded.

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RESULTS

• The tone produced different levels of responses
  in each group.
• 3,9 trials to criterion groups suppressed to the
  tone.
• 27 trials to criterion group did not suppress to
  the tone.

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RESULTS

• The latter group shows a high level of
  proficiency at the avoidance task but is less
  fearful.

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STRENGTH

• Avoidance responses extinguish slowly because the
  consequence of responding is reinforcement and
  the consequence of not responding is punishment.

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PUNISHMENT

• PSY 3720

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PUNISHMENT

• A response has produced an aversive consequence.
• A ticket and associated fine.

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PUNISHMENT

• Response tendencies that diminish because they
  produce aversive consequences define the process
  of punishment.

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OTHER EXAMPLES OF PUNISHMENT

• Withholding a positive stimulus.
• Examples.

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WHAT IS PUNISHING?

• Innate or primary punishers.
• Acquired or secondary punishers.

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EFFECTIVENESS

• Both Thorndike and Skinner claimed that
  punishment is ineffective in controlling
  behaviour.
• The general public feels that punishment is
  highly effective.

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EFFECTIVENESS

• Modern views suggest that under the right
  conditions punishment can have specific and
  long-lasting effects on behaviour.

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PUNISHMENT IS ASSOCIATIVE

• Both punishment training and classical
  conditioning are largely determined by

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PUNISHMENT IS ASSOCIATIVE

• Classical conditioning and punishment procedures
  share the common effects of

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SKINNERS PUNISHMENT EXPERIMENT

• Used a spring-loaded lever that slapped the rat
  in the paw if it bar pressed for food.
• Low intensity aversive stimulus.
• Showed response suppression but during extinction
  the response quickly returned to baseline levels.
• Skinner concluded that punishment was ineffectual.

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OTHER FACTORS INFLUENCING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF
PUNISHMENT

• TRIALS EFFECT the more that responses are
  punished, the lower is the subsequent response
  rate.
• RESPONSE-PUNISHMENT INTERVAL RULE the shorter
  the response-to-punishment interval, the more
  effective is the punishment treatment.

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PUNISHMENT AND DELAY
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Applied approaches
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EXPERIMENT

• Subjects were trained to bar-press for food.
• After reaching baseline levels each pecking
  response was punished with a mild electric shock.
• Resulted in a half the rate of responding.
• These trials were alternated with non-punished,
  non-food reinforced sessions.

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RESULTS

• The subjects eventually learned to continue
  responding for food if their responses were
  punished and to stop responding if they were not
  punished.

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MASOCHISTS

• Is it possible that masochists learn to use pain
  as a discriminative stimulus for pleasure?

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ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS

• Many abused women do not leave their husbands or
  if they do return soon after?
• This behaviour seems maladaptive and women are
  often criticized for putting themselves in harms
  way.

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ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS

• What reinforcement and punishment contingencies
  are present?