Chapter 14: Fundamental Philosophical Issue 🧠

Fundamental Philosophical Issue 🧠

• Behaviorists: humans behave like animals; violence = animal instinct 🐾⚡
• Quran: some live like four-legged animals 🐄, others soar like birds 🦅

Operant Conditioning (Skinner) 🎛️

• Voluntary learning; modifies behavior through consequences
• Classical conditioning = involuntary behaviors (Pavlov)
• Skinner used rats & pigeons; applied Pavlov’s reflexes
• Skinner Box: lever(s), light(s), reinforcer (food) 🍽️

Skinner’s Rat Experiment 🐀

• Starved rat presses lever → food delivered → presses more
• Even when full, rat continues pressing
• Without reinforcement → pressing decreases → extinction ❌
• Human link: rewarded behaviors persist regardless of morality 💵

Extinction ❌

• Behavior weakens if reward stops or punishment stops

Discrimination 🔴🟢

• Reinforcement only under specific conditions
• Example: Green light → food → lever pressing increases; Red light → no food → decreases
• Shows shaping of behavior

Generalization 🌸

• Similar stimuli → same response
• Similar responses → reinforced together

Response Discrimination 🎯

• Only reinforced activity ↑; non-reinforced ↓
• Example: Green light → food → press lever ↑; Red light → no food → press lever ↓
• Humans: work for rewarded activities, avoid unrewarded ones 💼✅

Principles of Learning Theory 📚

1. Learning by Association: Events occurring together become linked
2. Stimulus-Stimulus Association: Bell → food; Green light → food 🔔🍎
3. Response-Response Association: Bar press → food; Button press → reward
4. Association Chains: Linking behaviors into series → behavioral chain

Schedules of Reinforcement ⏱️

• Continuous: reward every time → fastest learning
• Intermittent: reward sometimes → maintains behavior

Fixed Interval Schedule ⏳

• First correct response after set time → reinforced
• High response near end of interval, slow after reward

Variable Interval Schedule ⌛

• First correct response after unpredictable time → reinforced
• Produces slow, steady response (pop quizzes 📋)

Fixed Ratio Schedule 🔢

• Reward after specific number of responses → learning new behavior
• High response with brief pause after reward (food after 15 lever presses)

Variable Ratio Schedule 🎰

• Responses needed for reward change → maintains behavior
• High, steady response (gambling, lottery 🎲💰)

Things to Remember 📝

1. Variable Ratio → most responding
2. Variable Interval → next best
3. Fixed Interval → moderate
4. Fixed Ratio → least learning effect