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B.F Skinner Lect 3

Skinner's theory of personality focused on behaviorism and operant conditioning. He rejected explanations of behavior based on inner states like anxiety. Instead, he believed behavior is shaped by its consequences - positive or negative reinforcement and punishment. Skinner discovered reinforcement strategies like continuous reinforcement for every desired response, and extinction which stops reinforcement to reduce undesired behavior. He also studied how behaviors generalize and different schedules of reinforcement like fixed and variable intervals and ratios.

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72 views13 pages

B.F Skinner Lect 3

Skinner's theory of personality focused on behaviorism and operant conditioning. He rejected explanations of behavior based on inner states like anxiety. Instead, he believed behavior is shaped by its consequences - positive or negative reinforcement and punishment. Skinner discovered reinforcement strategies like continuous reinforcement for every desired response, and extinction which stops reinforcement to reduce undesired behavior. He also studied how behaviors generalize and different schedules of reinforcement like fixed and variable intervals and ratios.

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Faisal Ahmad
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SKINNER’S THEORY OF

PERSONALITY
Positive Reinforcement
Extinction
Punishment
Generalization
Schedules of reinforcement
Radical Behaviorism
• Radical Behaviorism is the brand of Psychology that is practically
synonymous with Skinner’s name.
• Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism He rejected the use of inner states such
as anxiety as the explanation of our overt / observable behavior.
• Example You are not comfortable at social gatherings, you are invited
to a party so you prepare yourself for the party you begin to feel
nervous, tense, so you stay at home so you avoided the party because
you are anxious.
• For Skinner such an explanation is incorrect.
• The behavior does not change because you feel anxious.
• It changes because of the aversive contingencies which generate the
condition felt as anxiety which is the inner cause.
• Example You rush in to a building which is on fire to save people from
dying alive, it is not because you are heroic or supreme but because
you have a history of exposure to reinforcements in similar situations.
• Behaviorism is a school of thought that focuses on the idea that all
behavior is learned. Behavior is basically overt and observable.
• It is an association between stimulus and response. Stimulus and
response behavior is respondent or classical conditioning .
• Skinner discovered two basic reinforcement strategies for increasing
the frequency of behavior Positive reinforcement the behavior
increases because it is followed by reward.
• The frequency of a behavior can increase with the negative
reinforcement or with the removal or lessening of an unpleasant
stimulus.
• Positive Reinforcement
• A student works hard and gets an “A” on a test this behavior will
increase it will be followed by working hard for all tests
• The hungry rat learns to press the bar to get a food pellet and the
frequency of this behavior increase with the positive reinforcement
that is food pellet.
• The rat that can turn off an electric shock by pulling a string will quickly
learn to pull the string frequency of this behavior will increase with the
lessening of an unpleasant stimulus.

• People with severe headaches learn that when they take rest they are
relaxed and their headaches are gone - the frequency of a behavior can
increase with the lessening of an unpleasant stimulus.

• Let us take a very simple example of operant conditioning.

• We can teach a child to ask for candy frequently by giving candy whenever
it asks for candy.
• We positively reinforce the response of asking for candy.

• We can also extinguish the response of asking for candy by simply not
presenting the candy when the child asks for it.

• We then find that the frequency of occurrence of asking for candy


declines.
• Skinner discovered two basic reinforcement strategies for decreasing
the frequency of undesired behavior:
• 1-Extinction is where we stop the reinforcement and the behavior will
be extinguished.
• 2- Punishment The frequency of behavior is reduced when it is
followed by an aversive stimulus.
• Examples (Extinction) A teacher might send the disruptive child out of
the class into the hall for discipline Example (Punishment)
• The student who gets a D grade has to attend summer school and no
vacations or his favorite toys are taken away.
• There is another way that we can reduce the occurrence of the
response. When the child asks for candy, we can punish it by slapping
it.
• When we perform an operation like this, of adding something to the
situation that reduces the probability of responding, we have
punished the response.
• A punishing stimulus is an aversive stimulus, which, when occurring
after an operant response, decreases the future likelihood of that
response.
• It is important to note that a punishment is not the same as a
negative reinforcer.
• Reinforcement increases the likelihood of occurrence of a behavior
with which it is paired, and a punishment decreases the likelihood of
a behavior.
• A behavior can be reinforced by the removal of an aversive stimulus,
however, in which case we refer to a negative reinforcer.
• For example, a parent might reinforce a child for receiving good grades by
excusing the child from doing the dishes.

• Similarly, a person with a phobic fear of snakes reinforces the avoidance


response by turning away whenever a snake is encountered, thereby
eliminating the aversive fear triggered by the snake.

• These are both examples of negative reinforcement.

• When behavior is reinforced it may generalize to other behavior as well.


• Generalization
• Examples 1
• A child is praised for performing well on a psychology test, then he
may generalize this behavior to other subjects.
• By learning how to deal with one angry problematic student, teacher
learns how to deal with the same student in different situations and
with different students with the same angry attitude.
• Discrimination It is important to discriminate among stimuli,
situations, events and persons.
• Example “You look nice today.” You has said it and in what tone of
voice
Schedules of reinforcement
• What are schedules of reinforcement ?
• Skinner demonstrated that particular patterns (schedules) of
reinforcement lead to changes in both rate of responding and
extinction.
• 1- If reinforcement is presented on each occasion this is referred to as
a continuous reinforcement schedule. Every time the desired
response is made it is reinforced Every time a good grade is achieved
it is rewarded.
• 2-If the reinforcement is contingent on an interval of time, it is
referred to as interval reinforcement;
• 3-if this interval is unchanging (e.g. every five or ten minutes), we
have a fixed-interval reinforcement schedule.
• Instead of providing reinforcement following a constant interval of
time,
• 4- The investigator may wish to reinforce according to an intermittent
or variable-interval schedule.
• Here, although the reinforcement may be available on the average at
five minute intervals, the actual interval will vary randomly around
this average.
• 5- A ratio reinforcement schedule here the reinforcement is
determined by the number of responses that have been emitted since
the last reinforcement.
• 6- It is a simple only every tenth response is reinforced or every
twentieth or any other number.

• This would be referred to as fixed-ratio reinforcement.

• On some trials the reward might follow the second or third response
while on others it would follow the seventh or eighth. This would be
called a variable ratio schedule.

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