User:Dastan Bamwesigye, Ing./sandbox

Reinforcement Behavior-Linking reinforcement to reward and stimulus.

Bamwesigye Dastan, Hon., Zico Abel, Hon.

Key words: reinforcement, reward, stimulus

The term reinforcement behavior was first presented by Pavlov at the beginning of the 20th Century to describe the establishment of the connotation between an unconditioned and a conditioned stimulus whose outcomes when the two are offered together. Intended for Pavlov, any unconditioned incentive, such as food, was a probable reinforce; the pairing of such a stimulus with a neutral stimulus constituted reinforcement. The term denoted for Pavlov the establishment of an association between a conditioned stimulus and its unconditioned parent stimulus (Pavlov, 1928).

The term reinforcement is used further in relation to response learning than to stimulus learning. Whereas Thorndike deliberated the essential concept of reinforcement, it was not until 1933 that Skinner (Skinner, 1933) espoused Pavlov’s term reinforcement to represent the strengthening of stimulus-response associations towards behavior.

Skinner pointed out that there are two major types of conditioned reflex, defined according to whether the reinforcing stimulus is correlated with a response (Skinner, 1933, Skinner, 1937, Skinner, 1938, Skinner, 1953). He provided a systematic explanation of the manner in which environmental variables control and contribute behavior or societal performance for human being. Having just totally stated that the operant is a behavioral emission, Skinner further suggested what the animal learns is the relationship between its behavior and its consequences, a form of learning branded response-outcome (R-O) learning by more recent workers. Consequently in the Skinnerian context, it is the association between a response and its consequence that is learned and strengthened

Behavioral Models of Reinforcement

According to operant conditioning, positive reinforcement contains the addition of a reinforcing stimulus subsequent of a behavior that brands it more likely that the behavior may occur again in the future. When a promising outcome, event, or reward happens after an action, that particular response or behavior will be strengthened (Skinner, 1953). Reinforcement procedures have been used with both typical and atypical developing children, teenagers, elderly persons, animals, and different psychological disorders.

There are two types of reinforcement i.e. positive and negative; whose difference is negative reinforcement and is often confused with punishment. Negative reinforcement is when a certain stimulus is removed after a specific behavior is shown. The likelihood of that behavior occurring again in the future is increased because of avoiding the negative stimuli. Evidence that reinforcers enhance memory consolidation comes from studies in which the reinforcer is administered following an unrelated training episode.

The ideal demonstration involved a step-down avoidance assignment; animals that were given admission to food after training trials showed greater retention of the avoidance training than did animals not given immediate food. Similarly, other trials like footshock can reinforce memory consolidation (Skinner, 1953, Olds, Milner, 1954, White 1989).

Operant Conditioning Chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning Fig1: B.F Skinner

Individual correlations

Although positive reinforcers/rewards are often connected with conscious pleasure, it is not strong that they are essentially so. It is un-clear that negative rein forcers need be associated with conscious situation positive or negative. It is not clear that reinforcement has basic subjective correlations. Definitely, the subjective ratings of two sets of reinforcing stimuli do not necessarily predict which agreed subject will lever to the opinion (Aharon et al., 2001, Schacter et al., 2011). However, there is a stimulus achieved in all the two reinforcements/rewards (Fig1). It is probable that there is no cognizant correlation of the fundamental process of reinforcement, and that pleasure or pain are reported merely as the subject’s best guess as to what influenced their behavior. For example, studies in humans of the subjective correlates of motivation and reinforcement and attempts to model subjective states in animals have led to the conclusion that wanting a motivation and liking an encouragement are not necessarily conscious experiences (Toates, 2009).

Conclusion

Positive reinforcement is such an influential and effective tool to help shape and modify behavior. Positive reinforcement performs by presenting a inspiring item to the person after the desired behavior is exhibited, making the behavior more likely to happen in the future (Skinner, 1953, Slater, 2004, Carlson, Neil, (2009)

Ceteris paribus, the study concludes that physiological psychologists tend to prefer the term reward whereas behavioral pharmacologists tend to prefer the term reinforcement because of such an example that self-administered drugs, like self-administered brain stimulus, have both priming and reinforcing actions.

The study recommends that most foreigners are also affected by reinforcement factors to adopt to different cultures which are both negative rewards and positive rewards such as recognition at a new church in Brno Jesuits church as a positive reward which leads to repeated behavior of attendance in the same church where as where foreigners are not recognized, or even looked at with a “bad eye” there is avoidance of being there again (Aharon et al., 2001).

References

Aharon I, Etcoff N, Ariely D, Chabris CF, O'Connor E, Breiter HC (2001) Beautiful faces have variable reward value: fMRI and behavioral evidence. Neuron 32:537-551.

Olds J, Milner PM (1954) Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 47:419-427.

Pavlov IP (1928) Lectures on conditioned reflexes. New York: International Publishers.

R.Carlson, Neil (2009). Psychology-the science of behavior. U.S: Pearson Education Canada; 4th edition. p. 207. ISBN 978-0-205-64524-4.

Schacter, Daniel L., Daniel T. Gilbert, and Daniel M. Wegner (2011) "B. F. Skinner: The Role of Reinforcement and Punishment" Psychology. ; Second Edition. N. P. Worth.

Skinner BF (1933) The rate of establishment of a discrimination. Journal of General Psychology 9:302-350. Skinner BF (1937) Two types of conditioned reflex: A reply to Konorski and Miller. Journal of General Psychology 16:272-279.

Skinner BF (1938) The Behavior of Organisms. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Skinner, B.F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. New York: Macmillan. Slater, L. (2004) Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century, London, Bloomsbury

Toates, F. (2009). Burrhus F. Skinner: The shaping of behavior. Houndmills, Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

White NM (1989) Reward or reinforcement: what's the difference? Neurosci Biobehav Rev 13:181-186.