Lecture 8 - Punishment

Punishment: adding something negative or taking away something positive ● Goal is to suppress/STOP behavior while reinforcement perpetuate/encourages it ● Skinner: best way to STOP is to find and remove the reinforcer, but it takes time to do especially to find what is the reinforcer and consistently to stop it ● Punishment Removal: ex. Not cleaning up toys, so can’t play with for 2 days Conditions for Efficacy ● Immediate and consistent every time after behavior, but isn’t practical in long-term ○ Ex. Cussing at young age, then physically punished after, so learned not to cuss in front of just parents. Reinforced of cussing by friends at the same time. The punishment isn’t ineffective as its inconsistent and became better at hiding it so it can’t be monitored all the time ● Solution: paired with reinforcement for an appropriate alternative behavior ○ Ex. Saying “oh shoot” instead of the cuss word to be reinforced ○ Ex. Apologizing to sister and the grounding gets removed to be reinforced ○ Ex. Parents tell friends to not laugh, which reinforces not to cuss Learned Helplessness: tendency to fail to act to escape from a situation due to history of repeated failures in the past, animal learns to be powerless/helpless ● Dogs with experimental boxes using classical conditioning. The grill on the floor shocks the dog if the A is turned on, and same for B. There is a tone played before the shock to condition the dog to recognize that the light is associated with the shock. The dog then jumps over the small fence to the safe side then quickly realizes and jumps back and forth ● Some dogs were strapped onto the floor so they couldn’t avoid the shock. ○ Dogs learn nothing helps or seems to affect the outcome ● Connected association to depression and post trauma as nothing done will help ○ Ex. Severely hurt soldiers kept in camps with lower guards. Given chances to escape but get punished to do so, so they are helpless and stop ○ Ex. Repeatedly failing college algebra, so won’t enroll again ● Steven Maier: due to higher-level brain region (ventromedial prefrontal cortex vmPFC) that helps subjects determine what is controllable Bandura – Observational Learning: people can learn by watching others be reinforced Learning/performance Distrinction: learning can take place without actual performance of the learned behavior (a kind of latent learning) ● Can avoid circumstances by seeing other people be punished, so know not to do it ● The Bobo Doll study: Kids where they can play with various toys and started playing. One of them was an inflatable clown doll with sand and water so when punched it comes back up. Filmed an adult playing with the toys, especially the clown Bobo doll, to see how often and if the kids would play it in the same way. The adult has fun when he hit the doll with the mallet, threw it in the air, kicked it, and beats it up. The kids saw this aggression modeling and drove them to do the same actions to the doll and increased attraction to guns even though it never modeled. ○ Child not reinforced, but learned and created own aggressive behavior ● Disinhibition: lack of visible punishments works against societal inhibitions against violence ○ Ex. The adult is being aggressive and happy but not being punished. Usually, would be but the kids see it isn’t, so they’re interested in it too ● Must attend to model and understand/engage in it to mimic it ● Must remember behavior easier to learn simple rather than complex behaviors ● Must be able to imitate physically of strength or skills ○ Ex. Not being able to correctly crack eggs after watching parent do it ● Must want to imitate have the motivation as seeing someone being reinforced ○ Prefers to imitate favorite show rather than parents ● Attention, Memory, Imitation, Desire (AMID) In classical conditioning, behavior is involuntary In Operant conditioning, behavior is voluntary