Transcript Observational Learning

Let’s Review:
Which schedule?
• Door-to-door salespeople
• People checking the oven to see if the cookies
are done
• Airline frequent-flyer programs that offer a
free flight after every 25,000 miles of travel
Continuous vs. Partial Schedules
• Continuous are excellent for training behavior
quickly
– Quick results must be reinforced after every
desired behavior occurs
– Issue: extinguishes too quickly
• Best way to have desired behavior stick – use
a partial schedule
– More resistant to extinction
Reinforcement
• Positive vs. Negative reinforcement
OC Term
Description
Examples
Positive Reinforcement
Add a desirable
stimulus
Getting a hug, receiving
a paycheck
Negative Reinforcement Remove an aversive
stimulus
Fastening seatbelt to
turn off beeping
Punishment:
opposite of reinforcement
• Punisher = any consequence that decreases
frequency of behavior
• Positive vs. Negative punishment
Positive vs. Negative Punishment
Type of Punisher
Description
Possible Examples
Positive punishment Administer an
aversive stimulus
Spanking, parking
ticket
Negative
punishment
Time-out from
privileges, revoked
driver’s license
Withdraw a
desirable stimulus
Controversies and difference in
delineation
• Arizona introduces exceptionally harsh
sentence for first-time drunk drivers
– it did not affect the drunk driving rate
• Kansas City started patrolling a high crime
area to increase the sureness and swiftness of
punishment
– Crime rate dropped dramatically
• What’s the conclusion?
Punishment and Parenting:
4 Drawbacks according to psychologists who agree that physical
punishment is wrong
• Punished behavior is suppressed, not forgotten
– Suppression, although temporary, aims to negatively
reinforce parents’ behaviors for punishing
• Punishment teaches discrimination
– Have you ever been punished for something and learned
just that you had to stop the behavior in a certain
environment, but continued it elsewhere?
• Punishment can teach fear
– Teacher who punishes often may create avoidance of
students in classroom
• Physical punishment may increase aggressiveness by
modeling aggression as a way to cope with problems
Baumrind’s Parenting Research:
Punishment may be effective in some cases
• Based on principle that punishment tells you
what not to do, reinforcement tells you what
to do
– A swat is used only as backup to milder
disciplinary tactics, like a time-out, removing them
from reinforcing surroundings
– Swatting with a generous dose of reasoning
Conclusion:
Change the conversation for
punishment that is successful
• Punishment is only effective if paired with
reinforcement – doesn’t mean that
punishment should be used in every scenario
• Language is as important as intensity of action
– “Clean your room or no dinner!” vs. “You’re
welcome to join us for dinner after your room is
cleaned.”
Role of Cognition in Operant Models
• Latent Learning – learning occurs, but is not
apparent, until incentive is in place
– Studying rats in mazes (Tolman and Honzik)
– Cognitive map: mental representation of the
layout of one’s environment
Cognition in operant cont’d:
• Insight Learning
– Wolfgang K, Mentality of Apes
– Sudden awareness of solution
to a problem
• Ex: using a short stick to reach a
longer stick to reach some fruit
Biological Predispositions
and Operant Conditioning
• Biological constraints
predispose organisms to learn
associations that are naturally
adaptive
– Birds can peck to get food and
flap wings to avoid shock, but
they can’t flap to gain food or
peck to avoid shock as the
behaviors aren’t available to a
natural tendency
– Instinctive drift: animals revert
to their biologically
predisposed patterns
In the end, it’s all about motivation…
• Intrinsic vs. extrinsic
Observational Learning:
Social Learning
Observational learning
• Learning that takes place by watching another
individual model the learning task and then
imitating the behavior
Albert Bandura
• Bobo Doll Experiment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHdovKHDNU
– Implications for humans
• Frustration-aggression principle
– Ex: potential neg. effects of violent TV or pos.
effects for children with appropriate role models
How does it work biologically?
• Mirrors in the brain: Emotions are contagious
– Mirror neurons: neural basis for observational
learning based in the frontal lobe
• Underlies our intensely social nature and need to
affiliate
– PET scans show mirror neurons that support
empathy and imitation
• Known as Theory of Mind (empathy driven ability to
infer another’s mental state)
– ASD individuals have “broken mirrors”
• Prosocial vs antisocial
– “do as I say, not as I do” teaches what?
Antisocial Effects
• May help explain why abusive parents can
have aggressive children
• Effects of television
– Bullying is an effective way to control others
– Sex is easy and pleasurable without consequence
TV Stats
• During the late 20th century
– Average child viewed 8000 TV murders, 100,000
acts of violence before finishing elementary
school (not from cable)
– In 1996-1997, out of 3,000 programs, 6/10
featured violence
• 74% of violence went unpunished
• 58% didn’t show victims pain
• Nearly half involved “justified violence” of an attractive
perpetrator
Violence Viewing Effect
• Violence-viewing effect: violence viewing
leads to violent behavior
– Careful though! Correlation doesn’t prove causation
1. Based in imitation (remember Bobo)
2. Prolonged exposure also desensitizes viewers,
they become indifferent
•
•
Studies show males who view sexually explicit shows
or movies tend to become progressively less
bothered by rape and slashings
Conclusion: watching cruelty fosters indifference