Assignment

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Assignment 2

• Topics (Choose ONE)
• Different sports have different techniques for
  deterring unwanted behaviour (e.g. penalty box in
  hockey, yardage penalties in football). Discuss
  sports penalties in terms of the four operant
  contingencies. You can pick your favourite sport
  or compare across several.
• Discuss Gallups self recognition task. What are
  the procedures, who has been used as subjects and
  what does this say about self-awareness?
• Pick an event that often evokes superstitious
  behaviour (e.g. gambling, sports, exams).
  Explain where the behaviour comes from.

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Chapter 7

• Operant Applications

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Overview

• Animal Care Training
• Self-Awareness
• Self-Control
• Verbal Behaviour
• Insight
• Creativity
• Superstition
• Delusions Hallucinations

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Animal Care Training
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Veterinary Care

• Large animals, carnivores, stress-susceptible
• Shaping
• Change behaviour patterns
• Positive reinforcement rather than punishment

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Self-Awareness
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Observing the World

• Social animals
• Understanding anothers behaviour beneficial
• Reinforcement through watching others
• Observation of self own behaviour

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Gallups Mirror Self-Recognition Task

• Allow chimp time to learn about mirror
• Stages
• Tranquilize chimp and paint dot on head
• See if chimp notices changed appearance
• Mental self-image
• Used with children

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Epsteins pigeons

• Trained to peck a blue dot
• Experience with mirror
• Blue dot on pigeon under bib
• Peck at bib
• Other animals
• Elephants, dolphins, children

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Shaping of Self-Observation?

• Skinner
• Kinds of questions we ask children reinforces
  self-observation
• e.g., are you hungry? what are you doing?
• Accurate response likely results in some form of
  desired outcome (i.e., reinforcement of behaviour)

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Self-Control
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Self-Control

• Choice
• Forgoing a small, immediate reinforcer for large,
  delayed reinforcer
• Humans, non-humans
• Circular explanation (will power)

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Techniques

• Physical restraint
• Distancing
• Distraction
• Deprivation Satiation
• Assistance
• Behaviour monitoring

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Physical Restraint

• Physically prevent behaviour from occurring
• e.g., lock liquor cabinet
• e.g., cut up credit cards

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Distancing

• Behaviour more likely to occur in specific
  environment
• Avoid environment to assist self-control
• e.g., smokers who want to quit should avoid
  places where smokers frequent

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Distraction

• Engage in behaviour incompatible with undesired
  behaviour
• e.g., want a snack, go for a walk

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Deprivation and Satiation

• To avoid excesses
• e.g., to avoid overeating at party, eat small
  meal earlier
• Partial satiation

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Assistance

• Inform others of your goals
• Get help
• Changes the environment
• e.g., friends may be enablers

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Behavioural Monitoring

• Keep track of your own behaviour
• Notebook, graphs, etc.
• Visible indicators
• Dieters in room with candy bowl those who had to
  leave wrappers on table ate fewer pieces than
  those who could put wrappers in garbage

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Verbal Behaviour
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Skinner (1957)

• Verbal Behavior
• Suggests ideas not encoded into words by speaker
  and decoded by listener
• Words are behaviours
• Functional relationship between a word and an
  outcome (i.e., reinforcement or punishment)
• Social consequences provide shaping and
  maintenance of language

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Early Shaping of Words

• Babies babble
• Parents reinforce certain sounds with attention,
  etc.
• Increases frequency of these sounds
• Gradually, reinforcement for more complex
  vocalizations only

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Shaping Language?

• Greenspoon (1955)
• Reinforced or punished plural nouns in subjects
  lists of words
• problem
• Verplanck (1955)
• Reinforced or didnt reinforce subjects use of
  opinion statements
• Quay (1959)
• Reinforced statements about family members
• Psycho-therapy?

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Complex

• Life-long reinforcement (and punishment) history
• Much vocal reinforcement without conscious
  knowledge
• Reinforcing lies

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Insightful Problem Solving
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Problem Solving

• Trial and error, accidental success
• Insight Sudden solution
• think things through
• Skip intermediate steps

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Suspended fruit task

• Kohler ? Sultan
• Pushed box under banana
• Epstein (1984) ? pigeons
• Suggested insight could be due to reinforcement
  history

Cant reach!
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Creativity
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Can Creativity be Shaped?

• Novelty, original behaviour
• Provide reinforcement only for novel behaviour
• creativity
• Pryors (1969) work with porpoises and pigeons
• Various studies with children

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Rewards and Creativity

• Some studies suggest rewards reduce creativity
• Reward for task or no reward for task
• Find more creative responses in non-rewarded
  group
• But, typically it is not creativity that is
  rewarded, but task completion
• Society and status quo
• Peer pressure what is normal?
• Failure

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Superstition
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Accidental Conditioning

• B.F. Skinner (1948)
• Pigeons
• Grain every 15 seconds
• Development of behaviours
• Accidental strengthening

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Humans

• Bruner Revusky (1961)
• Teenagers and 4 buttons only button 3 gave
  reinforcement on FI schedule
• Wagner Morris (1987)
• Children and clown doll giving marbles
• Ono (1987)
• University students and levers told to gain as
  many points as possible, but points just given
  periodically

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Timing?

• Staddon Simmelhag (1971)
• Interim and terminal behaviours

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Delusions and Hallucinations
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Attention Seeking

• Not always a biological root
• Patients
• Delusions provide attention from staff
• Social reinforcement
• Weird behaviours might be shaped
• Stop reinforcement to reduce behaviour
• Maintenance of behaviour (catch on)

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Self-Injurious Behaviour
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Self-Injuries

• Punishment often effective for suppression
• Lovaas Simmons (1969)
• Boy making 30 hits per minute
• Four behaviour-contingent electric shocks to leg
• Self-injurious behaviour stopped

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Escape

• Wolf (1967)
• Injurious behaviour increased when teacher asked
  boy questions
• Injurious behaviour dropped when teacher stopped
  asking questions
• Negative reinforcement
• Lack of demands
• Use of DRI to reduce SI behaviour