Learned helplessness is a behavioral understanding of depression suggests when once successful behaviors fail to elicit expected reinforcers, or if reinforcement becomes so unpredictable the subject is unable to tell what response works, the organism stops responding even if conditions change and the behavior could be successful again. The reformulated learned helplessness model posits that depressed people tend to attribute bad things that happen to them to internal, global, and stable factors.
Lewinsohn’s Behavioral Model states that depression is associated with a low rate of response-contingent positive reinforcement, suggesting that people with depression have deficits in skills that produce positive reinforcement or minimize unpleasant outcomes. When removal of a reinforcer does not immediately decrease behavior, but rather temporarily increases the behavior, Response burst has occurred. Behavioral contrast occurs when 1 of 2 reinforced behaviors is extinguished, leading to an increase in frequency of the behavior that continues to be reinforced.Spontaneous recovery refers to, after a behavior has been extinguished, an organism’s increased responsiveness in the absence of any reinforcement trials
A primary reinforcer is inherently valuable and does not acquire its reinforcing value through prior experience (food, water, sex), whereas a secondary reinforce acquires its value only through repeated pairings with the former (light paired with food eventually becomes a reinforcer). Money is one example of Generalized conditioned reinforcers, which refers to when secondary reinforcers acquire a power unrelated to any individual primary reinforcer as a result of being paired with many types of primary reinforcers. Continuous schedule of reinforcement is a schedule of reinforcement that provides reinforcement for every response and leads to fast learning, fast satiation, and fast extinction. The process of switching from a continuous to an intermittent schedule of reinforcement is known as Thinning.
The 4 intermittent schedules of reinforcement are Fixed-ratio, fixed-interval, variable-ratio, and variable-interval. Associated with fixed-interval schedules, Scallop effect occurs when responding is very slow or nonexistent immediately following reinforcement, then progressively increases and is finally rapid just before another reinforcement is due (e.g., child’s good behavior just before their birthday). A Variable-ratio schedule of reinforcement generates the most constant response rate and behaviors most resistant to extinction, while fixed-interval schedules produce the lowest response rates and behaviors with the lowest resistance to extinction.
The Matching Law posits that when subjects are provided 2 or more simultaneously available opportunities for reinforcement, their rate of responding will be proportional to the relative rate of reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is associated with an increase encompasses Escape and avoidance. Escape conditioning requires some action that allows the organism to get away from an aversive stimulus (e.g., torture stops after victim gives information). In Avoidance (Mowrer’s 2-factor theory: factor 1 = classical conditioning, factor 2 = operant conditioning) conditioning, organisms learn through classical conditioning that certain events lead to aversive experiences, and are negatively reinforced for performing a behavior that stops the aversive experience from occurring. These types of behaviors are very resistant to extinction.
The process of an organism behaving one way in the presence of a specific stimulus but not another is known as Stimulus discrimination, while responding to a stimulus that is similar but different than the original stimulus is referred to as stimulus generalization. When a behavior is reinforced only in the presence of a certain stimulus, thus leading to the behavior occurring only when that stimulus is present, the stimulus is referred to as a Discriminative stimulus, which is an environmental cue that a particular behavior will be reinforced. A stimulus that serves as an environmental cue that a certain behavior will not be reinforced is called S-delta stimulus.
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