Question

Just answer 17,18,19,20

17. Five-year-old Angela scribbles on the wall with a crayon. Her mother scolds her for this. Then Angela does it again and she gets another scolding. Now Angela does this more often. In terms of operant conditioning, the mother’s scoldings were:

18.You tell your dog to “Sit.” He sits and then you give him food. If he sits without getting the command first, he does not get the food. In terms of operant conditioning, the command is a:

19. To establish superstitious behavior in pigeons, Skinner gave the pigeons food: [...using what procedure?

20. In an experiment by Catania and Cutts on human superstition , what kind of evidence indicated the presence of a superstition

Answer 1

ANS 17) The research of Skinner was rooted in a view that classical conditioning was a simplistic to complete explanation of complex human behavior. He believed that the best way to understand behavior is to look at the causes of an action & its consequences. He called this approach operant conditioning.It is a method of learning that occurs through rewards & punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior.

Positive reinforcement is the additional stimulus that encourages a certain behavior. An example of this type of operant conditioning is a parent rewards a child for completing his chores with a piece of candy. ... On the other hand, negative reinforcement is commonly misunderstood to mean punishment.

Types of Operant Conditioning

Name	Behavior	Condition
Positive reinforcement	Strengthened	Positive
Negative reinforcement	Strengthened	Negative
Punishment	Weakened	Negative
Extinction	Weakened	Positive or negative

ANS 18) This is a positive Reinfprcement (+R) A reward is only a reward if the animal increases the likelihood of the behavior.

ANS 19)This random reinforcement, Skinner argued, that- is the animal version of superstition. Modern researchers claim superstitious behaviors aren’t totally random themselves, but Skinner’s insight is still a powerful one.

ANS 20)Superstitious behavior arises when the delivery of a reinforcer or punisher occurs close together in time (temporal contiguity) with an independent behavior. Therefore, the behavior is accidentally reinforced or punished, increasing the likelihood of that behavior occurring again.. A superstitious behavior can include rituals you engage in to produce a specific outcome. We learn superstitious behaviors through a simple reinforcement process

Catania & cutts on human superstitions :

Superstitions were demonstrated with human subjects when presses on one button were reinforced on a VI 30-sec schedule while presses on a second were never reinforced. Superstitious responding, on the second button, was often maintained because presses on that button were frequently followed by reinforcement for a subsequent press on the first button. The introduction of a changeover delay (COD), which separated in time presses on the second button and subsequent reinforced presses on the first button, reduced or eliminated the superstitious responding of these subjects. Some complex superstitions were also demonstrated with other subjects for which the COD was in effect from the beginning of the session.