Review the material from sections 2.3 and 2.4. Then find a bMod topic that you are interested in related to the current readings. Then find some websites based on that topic and read them and use them to write about a topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube clips that demonstrate something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. But use at least 3 sources.
Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter, and why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you found related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about it. At the end, please include working URLs for the three websites.
By now you all should be skilled at synthesizing the topical material you have obtained from the various web sites you visited. If you need a refresher please let me know.
Include a list of the terms and concepts you used in your post. (example - Terms: positive reinforcer, extinction, reinforcer, discriminative stimulus...)
Thanks,
--Dr. M
I decided to explore the topic of superstitious behaviors. Superstitious behaviors are behaviors that are sometimes emitted that don’t directly lead to reinforcement. This relates to the topic of extinction in a way that people look to superstitious behaviors to hope that something pleasurable and reinforcing would come out of it. Skinner showed that actions or behaviors that are performed by an animal or human and are coincidental can cause people or animals to believe that these actions have altered events or situations into good or bad things. There are many superstitious behaviors that we as humans believe in and that many people rely on superstitious behaviors to explain things. However, I came across an article here that shows many people are superstitious, until it comes to the topic of death.
There are many superstitious behaviors that we as humans believe in. Such behaviors are that its horrible luck to break a mirror or to walk underneath an open ladder, and walking in the path of a black cat. All these behaviors have a bad association related to them. Many humans believe that performing these behaviors causes more punishment than reinforcement. So many people will attempt to avoid performing such behaviors. There are some behaviors that people feel bring more reinforcement consequences rather than punishable ones. Such a behavior could be what people call the “rain dance.” One time a person did a dance to hopefully bring some rain, and soon it started to rain. People associate that if you were to perform the rain dance, then it would cause it to rain. Other superstitious behaviors that people have are like wearing lucky charms or wearing lucky clothing, because wearing such things have brought a reinforcing action due to them. A recent study showed that people use superstitious behaviors to help control uncertainty about things and decrease the feelings of helplessness that they have over things. People who are quite superstitious believe that fate and chance control their lives more than they do themselves. However this study also discovered that such people were not too superstitious when it came to the topic of death. Most people do not feel superstitious about their deaths, they don’t feel that chance and fate are things that cause and relate to death. Their beliefs in superstitious behaviors decrease when they are referring to death. One of the researchers stated that, “It boggled me that people would use a good luck charm to do well on a test rather than studying for it. We wanted to know why people would go about almost actively hurting themselves.” This just shows that people feel they have more fate and control of their behaviors when it comes to death.
The researcher of this study also came up with some tips on how to avoid and not believe in superstitious behaviors.
• Don’t believe in bad luck and take some ownership over what control you do have in situations. Sometimes we use bad luck to let ourselves off the hook, Saucier said, but we should instead focus on what we can do to avoid difficult situations in the first place.
• Be decisive and proactive. People who are less decisive believe in superstition more, Saucier said, and those who are proactive are less superstitious.
• Don’t be in a situation where you have to rely on bad luck.
http://www.essortment.com/all/superstitiousbe_rsqz.htm
http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/09/03/scientific-view-of-superstitious-behavior/17698.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100902131736.htm
Terms: Superstitious behaviors, extinction, emitted, punishment, reinforcement
Thanks for the blog, I found it interesting that people who are very superstitious decrease their superstitous thoughts when dealing with the topic of death.
In section 2.3 the text says that we will be going over DRO in later chapters but I wanted to get a head start on understanding this term.
One technique of applied behavior analysis that has proven to be useful in decreasing frequent, severe, or repetitive behaviors, is differential reinforcement of other behaviors (DRO). Since this cleary states that it decreases frequent behaviors, you would think that DRO is associated with positive and negative punishment. I originally thought that since it is adding a reward to the absence of behavior and decreasing the target behavior, then it would be considered a positive punishment. However, there is no punishment involved. It is actually the process of differentially reinforcing someone if the undesired behavior (target behavior) does NOT occur.
When using DRO on a student, a teacher might reinforce the student everytime she/he does something the teacher wants. If a student had trouble raising their hand and just interrupts class, a teacher might ignore the students behavior and when the student raises their hand, the teacher will reinforce the student. This way the student can discriminate when they will be reinforced. This way the student will eventually figure out for themselves which behaviors will be reinforced and which behaviors will be punished. The differenece between DRO and reinforcement is that differential reinforcement only reinforces behaviors in certain time periods and certain places.
In conclusion, it is important to know that DRO is not a form of punishment although it decreases undesired behavior.
Terms: Differential reinforcement of other, positive and negative punishment, target behavior, discriminate, reinforcement, positive punishment.
http://www.behavioradvisor.com/DRO.html
http://www.autismnetwork.org/modules/behavior/dr/lecture01.html#topic1
http://www.autismnetwork.org/modules/behavior/dr/lecture03.html#topic3
If you want to modify a behavior we know there are multiple procedures one can use to do it. Positive and negative punishment and reinforcement work in different ways. In section 2.3 the procedure of applying punishment is defined and explained. We learn how punishment will be more effective if it is swift and consistent, but we also learn that using aversive procedures like punishment and negative reinforment should be avoided. Positive reinforcement and extinction may work better than punishment in reducing behaviors that we find aversive. Take for example the link to The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon is postively reinforcing //// to increase behaviors he likes, therefore reducing behaviors he doesn't like. If you know these characters you would know that if he were to punish her by yelling at her, throwing water in her face everytime she did something he didn't like, it would elicit negative emotions in her and she would probably emit more aversive behaviors to annoy Sheldon than before.
I think a lot of the time punishment doesn't work not only because it is neither swift nor consistant, but but because we see hypocrocy in those that administer the punishment. In the modern family clip, you see a dad punishing his son for shooting his sister with a bb gun, by shooting him. He is obviously administering punishment because the behavior he wants to reduce is dangerous to others, but he's producing the same behavior he's punishing. This is similare to when parents yell at their kids for yelling. This use to happen all the time in the car with me and my siblings. We would get yelled at for yelling while dad was driving. It really didn't teach us not to yell.
Consistency is key. If punishment doesn't happen everytime an aversive behavior happens, it will be hard for the subject you are trying to modify the behavior of, to tell if what they are doing is pleasurable or aversive. While a behavior may take on different topographical or functional roles, it is important for both the subject and the adminstrator to know the target behavior being modified.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA96Fba-WHk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmg--iHzNUQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7vCIMVhjgw
I decided to do my topical on punishment techniques in teaching and/or modifying behavior in children. Typically I’m more of a fan of teaching children by reinforcement, as I’ve learned through the course of the last few weeks that things usually work out better, but I thought it’d be interesting to know some ways in which punishment can be used in obtaining target behaviors as well, or at least some different methods that are used.
First of all, I’ve found it difficult to find good ways of modifying behavior that truly have to do with punishment, and not really just being reinforcement. Many of my sources divided up different types of punishments and two of them (that they said were most effective) were withholding rewards and applying penalties. However, one may argue that withholding rewards could be a type of reinforcement instead. An example of this would be “You can’t watch tv until you have finished your homework” which may be seen as a reinforcement when rewording it as this “If you finish your homework you may watch TV” which would be a type of positive reinforcement. Applying a penalty would be a type of positive punishment in that the administrator would elicit an adverse stimuli to the situation or organism after the behavior has been emitted. An example of this would be to make a child pay for the damages out of his allowance after he broke a window.
The other types of punishment, verbal punishment, physical punishment, and time out disciplines. Verbal punishments and physical punishments usually tend to be the most ineffective. These could not work for a variety of reasons, one of the main reasons, though, is that these types of punishments may make the child think that they are “bad.” And when a child thinks they are bad they will typically act bad, instead of behaving properly. These types of punishments may also make the child rebel because they are receiving attention when they may not be receiving attention for positive behavior.
Time-outs are also proven to work well because they isolate the children and attention is not being given to their behavior. This could be seen as a type of extinction process. The child would be negatively punished by being forced to stand in a corner or retreat to their room where they may continue to behave adversely. However, in most time-out situations the parents ignore the child’s behavior (which is typically acting out even more because they are upset that they are in a time-out) which would in turn lead to extinction because eventually they would give up the bad behavior because they would no longer be receiving reinforcement or attention from it.
In conclusion, many of the studies and articles I read also commented at the end that reinforcing their child for GOOD behaviors is ultimately the best way to achieve target behaviors. So even articles that are referring to better ways of punishment seem to think that reinforcement is usually the better choice under most circumstances.
http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/350/350-111/350-111.html
http://www.suite101.com/content/discipline-is-not-punishment-a209791
http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/how-should-kids-be-punished-373.html
terms: emit, elicit, positive punishment, positive reinforcement, reinforcement, target behaviors, extinction.
I decided to do my topical on punishment techniques in teaching and/or modifying behavior in children. Typically I’m more of a fan of teaching children by reinforcement, as I’ve learned through the course of the last few weeks that things usually work out better, but I thought it’d be interesting to know some ways in which punishment can be used in obtaining target behaviors as well, or at least some different methods that are used.
First of all, I’ve found it difficult to find good ways of modifying behavior that truly have to do with punishment, and not really just being reinforcement. Many of my sources divided up different types of punishments and two of them (that they said were most effective) were withholding rewards and applying penalties. However, one may argue that withholding rewards could be a type of reinforcement instead. An example of this would be “You can’t watch tv until you have finished your homework” which may be seen as a reinforcement when rewording it as this “If you finish your homework you may watch TV” which would be a type of positive reinforcement. Applying a penalty would be a type of positive punishment in that the administrator would elicit an adverse stimuli to the situation or organism after the behavior has been emitted. An example of this would be to make a child pay for the damages out of his allowance after he broke a window.
The other types of punishment, verbal punishment, physical punishment, and time out disciplines. Verbal punishments and physical punishments usually tend to be the most ineffective. These could not work for a variety of reasons, one of the main reasons, though, is that these types of punishments may make the child think that they are “bad.” And when a child thinks they are bad they will typically act bad, instead of behaving properly. These types of punishments may also make the child rebel because they are receiving attention when they may not be receiving attention for positive behavior.
Time-outs are also proven to work well because they isolate the children and attention is not being given to their behavior. This could be seen as a type of extinction process. The child would be negatively punished by being forced to stand in a corner or retreat to their room where they may continue to behave adversely. However, in most time-out situations the parents ignore the child’s behavior (which is typically acting out even more because they are upset that they are in a time-out) which would in turn lead to extinction because eventually they would give up the bad behavior because they would no longer be receiving reinforcement or attention from it.
In conclusion, many of the studies and articles I read also commented at the end that reinforcing their child for GOOD behaviors is ultimately the best way to achieve target behaviors. So even articles that are referring to better ways of punishment seem to think that reinforcement is usually the better choice under most circumstances.
http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/350/350-111/350-111.html
http://www.suite101.com/content/discipline-is-not-punishment-a209791
http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/how-should-kids-be-punished-373.html
terms: emit, elicit, positive punishment, positive reinforcement, reinforcement, target behaviors, extinction.
The topic that I chose to further research is extinction. I was interested in researching extinction because the reading stated that positive reinforcement and extinction are the two best tools for behavior modification. Section 2.4 described extinction as the process of stopping reinforcement of behaviors which had already been reinforced. The reading mentioned that extinction is many times confused with punishment. However, the difference between extinction and punishment is that extinction specifically involves a behavior that was previously reinforced. The reading further explained that when reinforcement is initially withheld, the behavior that was previously reinforced with occur more frequently. The individual will try harder and harder to get the reinforcement that they had once received, which is known as extinction burst. Variability is another key component present during an extinction burst. Variability is expressed when the individual or organism emits the behavior your attempting to extinguish, but also will emit many other similar behaviors to try and receive reinforcement. Sometimes if the reinforcement used to be significant, the extinction process might cause the child to emit aggressive behavior. The reading stated that the worst thing to do when trying to extinguish a behavior is to give in to the behavior by reinforcing the behavior. According to my first research item; an educational teaching website, the best way to extinguish a behavior is to ignore the aversive or unwanted behavior. The website encourages that the behavior you want to extinguish should be identified, but also encourages appropriate alternative behaviors to be identified. The webpage recommends that the behavior you want to extinguish should be ignored and appropriate alternative behaviors should be reinforced. The teaching website offers an example of a teacher ignoring a girl who shouts out answers during class, but praises her (reinforcement) when she raises her hand to share her answer. The webpage reminds readers that eye contact, sighing, or scolding can actually serve as reinforcement for the behavior you’re trying to extinguish because you’re still acknowledging/ giving attention to the unwanted behavior. The webpage then introduces two variations for the technique of extinction. The first technique introduced is proximity praise. Proximity praise is when you ignore the individual displaying the behavior your trying to extinguish and praise someone close to the individual who is emitting an appropriate behavior. The next technique described is differential reinforcement. Differential reinforcement still ignores the inappropriate behavior, but rewards an incompatible replacement behavior. The second resource I used was another website. The website was a perfect example of how extinction works. When you first enter the website, you scroll down and the page informs you to click a button that says extinction if you want to read more about extinction. When you push the button, nothing happens, so you push it again and again…..still nothing happens! You then give up because you realize that your behavior (clicking the button) will not be reinforced by providing you with more information on extinction. The last research item that I found helpful was a Youtube video that depicted an extinction burst. The video displayed a dog that got reinforced for carrying clean socks to the owner’s hand. The owner of the dog then began to reinforce the dog less often. The dog displayed an extinction burst by trying harder to be reinforced by pushing the socks in the owner’s hand, looking to the owner for reinforcement for a behavior that had been previously reinforced.
http://www.usu.edu/teachall/text/behavior/LRBIpdfs/Extinction.pdf
http://psy1.clarion.edu/mm/General/Schools/Behaviorism/StoppingBehavior.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1LYpUca2ww
Terms: extinction, extinction burst, extinguish, positive reinforcement, differential reinforcement, emit, punishment.
I am going to do my topical on Superstitious behaviors as they have to do with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. These superstitious behaviors are one of the main reasons that many people are obsessive compulsive. They think that if they do not turn off the bedroom light exactly 6 times and if it feels right after the operant behavior is emitted. Someone who does not have OCD can still have a little bit of room in their lives for superstitious behaviors, but we do not let it rule and ruin our lives like people that are diagnosed with OCD. Patients with OCD believe that if they do not emit these ritualistic behaviors everyday and do them the exact same way every time until it feels right, then they fear harm upon themselves or their loved ones.
Sometimes the patients themselves get overwhelmed and upset because they cannot lead normal lives that they go into an extinction burst and might take their aggression out on objects like walls.
By using the ABCs we can analyze a behavior or ritual of someone with OCD. Here is an easy one. I just woke up from a restful nights sleep and notice that my breath really smells. Because my breath really smells the thought pops into my head that I will have bad luck for a week straight if I do not brush my teeth at least ten time in a row and after I am done and if I do not hear a squeaking sound when I rub my finger over my front teeth then I have to start the process all over. The Antecedent is waking up and noticing the smelly breath. The Behavior is brushing my teeth ten times in a row and checking for squeaking sound. The Consequence to doing this behavior is that I will not have bad luck for a week straight if the ritual is done correctly. Obviously this is a extreme example but this is something that a person with OCD might think of or have to do everyday.
Terms:superstitious behavior, operant behavior, emitted, extinction burst, antecedent, behavior, consequence.
http://westsuffolkpsych.homestead.com/superstition.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn1OYlYzgm8
http://missionocd.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-does-superstitious-behavior-relate.html
My choice of topic this week was spontaneous recovery. I found it interesting from the example given in the reading, that after years of knowing a restaurant is closed, one would spontaneous recover by going to it.
Spontaneous recovery is when a previously reinforced stimulus that is no longer reinforced but the response remains the same. A response that has been extinguished for a time, but out of no where gets the desired response, without the reinforcement.
An example being a dog having been fed with a ring of a bell, elicited the response salivating at the sound of the bell but there is no reinforcement. After a time, when the dog hears a random bell, he spontaneously recovers by salivating.
The video I found on stuttering, though appearing to be a project perhaps, proves true of as another example of spontaneous recovery. Having recovered from the stuttering for some years, the stuttering response returns when a situation elicits a stressful behavior or a nervous response is emitted. I can defiantly understand where such a reaction would come from. Organism, specially humans when speaking in public may emit a nervous response just by being in front of people and speak with hesitation even when they had spoken clearing in practice.
Terms:
spontaneous recovery, reinforced, stimulus, emitted, response, organism, extinguished, reinforcement, elicited, behavior,
Forgot to put down my sources:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW-gvw3oVpI
http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Spontaneous%20Recovery
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-spontaneous-recovery.htm
I decided to look more into superstitious behavior because I think it is an interesting topic. I guess I have always had an interest in superstitions such as the black cat or “step on a crack” (I was always so worried about breaking my mother’s back as a kid!!). While reading the sections 2.3 and 2.4 I never really thought of superstitious behaviors relating to behavior modification, but when it was brought up it makes so much sense. I decided to research it a little more about what it is and really just more information about it.
First I should define superstitious behavior (as in the section) as behaviors are sometimes emitted that don’t directly lead to reinforcement, but simply because they are associated with a reinforcer or a behavior, the behaviors do not lead to reinforcement themselves. An example like mentioned above which the black cat. You might crossed paths with an all black cat and ran into a door right after. Now every time you see a black cat you try to avoid it thinking that if you cross paths with it you will run into another door. Or while you are driving and every time you approach a red light you shout “GREEN!!!” and it turns green, maybe every time you approach another red light you do the same, with the same results (I tend to do this when I am in a hurry and sometimes it doesn’t turn green, I get upset). You are starting to believe that by shouting “GREEN!!” you are making that red light turn green because you were reinforced with it before.
I also mentioned about the stepping on the crack as an example. It is form children’s riddle that was common growing up at my elementary. I had a superstitious behavior to miss every crack because I had this fear that if I did she wouldn’t break her back. I every time I came home my mom’s back wasn’t broken! It was a great feeling. I grow out of that because one day I stepped on a crack and mom was with me and nothing happened. While reading about this topic I wanted to look more into breaking the superstitious behaviors and how to overcome it. You should try not to believe in bad luck (hard to do especially if one has been taught about never walking under a ladder or something similar). You should be decisive and proactive; it was found that the more proactive one is the less superstitious they tend to be.
This is a very interesting behavior considering almost everyone does something that they do because of superstitious behavior. I discovered I had a lot! My volume in my car has to be on even number because it seems every time it is on an odd number something bad happens (maybe I’m slightly OCD…). I think that this is a very interesting in learning about behavior modification and how we learn these behaviors!
Terms: superstitious behavior/reinforcer/reinforcement/emitted
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100902131736.htm
http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/faculty/wasserman/glossary/superstitious%20behavior.html
http://www.essortment.com/superstitious-behavior-cause-cure-36002.html
I looked for examples of positive and negative punishment, adding an aversive stimulus to decrease a behavior and taking away a pleasurable stimulus to decrease a behavior.
In raising my daughter I have always been against spanking, I have many reasons why spanking doesnt work and why it should not be used as a form of positve punishment, such as it is teachin the child taht hitting, especially while you are upset is ok to do. I could go on and on aboout my anti spanking plea but Ill hold it to a minimum. ONe of the sites below gives just 10 reasons why spanking doesnt work, and actually hurts as a form of positive punishment. Instead, try negative punishment by taking something away that is pleasurable to the child.
This youtube video takes away a girls cell phone bc of bad grades on her report card.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmg3H62ebjk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuNdm58OX3Y
http://www.askdrsears.com/html/6/T062100.asp#T062101
I decided to do my blog on Skinner’s idea of a Utopian, punishment-free society and the science behind it. I haven’t read Walden Two yet, but once I do I’ll probably comment on this post with more specifics about it. Generally, thanks to SparkNotes, Walden Two is the name of an experimental community in which everything is shared, there is no money, people are conditioned early on to be productive and good citizens, and the system is mostly based on reinforcement. Whenever there is a new social practice that could make the 1,000-member community happier and healthier, it’s implemented and observations are made about the success or lack thereof. The entire thing is tied to behavioral science.
This book has made a huge impact on some people’s lives. Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia was formed using Walden Two as its guidance. The community is about 100 strong and as self-sufficient as a community can be. Each member works 42 hours a week in various chores that differ every day in order to bring income to the community to pay for the 25% of their electricity that they do not make themselves. Everything but personal items is shared. There’s a clothing “library” where members borrow clothes, there are 17 cars for the 100 members to share, and everyone lives in dorms where they have a small private bedroom and all other areas are shared. There was a high turnover rate when the community started, and some members admit to feeling trapped as there is almost no way to built savings or equity while living at Twin Oaks, but most of the member feedback is positive. The society is in no way the Utopia expressed by Skinner yet, but it seems to be on the right track.
So how does this all work? There isn’t a whole lot I’ve been able to find on how the communal democracy works, but there is no leader and all members participate in the governing of Twin Oaks. There is nothing that says how the target behaviors that are necessary for the community to work are reinforced. So what makes people emit the behaviors that they do? What I’ve read on it leads me to believe that the antecedent for moving to Twin Oaks and behaving in the expected manner is weariness from the rest of the US society. The people who live there were not born into it and gently cultured into it, they are people who chose to move there by their own accord (with exception of the children of some of the members). They come into the community already accepting the ideas and values of it, so there doesn’t seem to be as much of a need for reinforcing positive behaviors. People who don’t enjoy it leave. People who do stay on. The consequence of moving to Twin Oaks is getting the life that they want, which is the only reinforcer that I have been able to determine. It’s almost unnerving that there is almost no mention of the how side of why it works. It is also nearly impossible to find good sources that have anything negative to say about Twin Oaks. The only ones I could find were other people’s preconceived notions about what it means to live in an alternative community, some members occasionally feel trapped, and that if you work your 42 hours a week, you are taken care of. Absolutely everything is covered. There is no explanation of how that works, but health care is paid for if you live there. Food comes from the community and is shared by all, so that’s covered. Childcare is everywhere. If you’re not working, you watch other kids. If you are working, your kids are watched by the part of the community that is not currently working, or you can take your kids with you. People really get whatever reinforcers that they want. if they want freedom from regular society, they get it.
The YouTube clip I found does a pretty good job of talking about the community in general. Once I read Walden Two, I’ll look at the sites again and determine how well Skinner’s ideas have been implemented. Perhaps I’ll also be able to recognize some things as reinforcers then as well.
Sites:
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/walden2/summary.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTwJz8c4wcY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community,_Virginia
http://www.twinoaks.org/index.html
Terms: reinforcer, target behaviors, emit
Spontaneous recovery is associated with learning and conditioning. It specifically refers to the reappearance of a response that has been extinct. It is called spontaneous recover because it comes out of nowhere and pretty unexpected. After a response has been extinct and unresponsive to extinction burst, the response comes back.
It is believed that spontaneous recovery is just one of many procedures that that helps confirm ideas that extinction is not a method that can erase a conditioned behavior from an organism. Why does spontaneous recovery occur? It occurs for no visible reason, hence spontaneous. ☺
Spontaneous recovery, as well as many other concepts and terms in behavior modification can have pleasurable or aversive outcomes. One performance of spontaneous recovery that is extremely aversive is drug usage. The discontinuance of drugs may be very difficult for someone and spontaneous recovery can serve as a horrible outcome. When drugs of any kind elicit a person’s craving or need for drugs, their body may immediately respond to the spontaneous recover by emitting the use of drugs after their sobriety. This creates a very aversive response. Although a person may go through rehabilitation and treatment services which serve as a discriminate stimulus, their operant behavior, which responds to spontaneous recovery, may disagree with the treatment. ☹
http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.cfm?term=Spontaneous%20Recovery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_recovery
http://web.mst.edu/~psyworld/classical_conditioning.htm
Thanks for posting this blog, spontaneous recovery was an idea that I didn't fully understand. After reading your blog,my confusion is cleared.
For this week I decided to explore the topic of superstitious behaviors. Superstitious behaviors are behaviors that are sometimes emitted that don’t directly lead to reinforcement. This in many ways relates to extinction because often the superstitious behaviors allow other behavoiors to go extinct. When I think about superstitious behaviors I think about all the crazy things that my grandmother believes in and the things she does because because of aversive thing could possible happen if she did not do a certain behavior.
When Skinner did his experiment with the pigions he noticed that they too had superstitious behavior. This is because when you are rewarded for a superstitious behavior you tend to think that it is a pleasurable behavior that you are emmiting. I also thing about the saying knock on wood. When you knock on wood it is suppose to make sure that a aversive behavior or action does not happen. Many times or at least for me it doesnt happen. So that is why many including my self continue to use the saying knock on wood. I feel that superstitious behavior has become an everyday action for many people. This is because when something continues to happen and is pleasurable for you, well you are going to continue to do it.
If you really start to think about superstitious behavior, well it starts when you are little. Dont step on the cracks or you will break your mothers back. Or if you break a mirror you will have seven years of bad luck. Cross a black cat, walk under a ladder, spill the salt there is all sorts of things that many people believe. This however causes them to preform aversive and or pleausurable behaviors. How and why do we do the behaviors that we do. I personally say that it is becuase of our traditions and our culture. We say these things to our kids and grandkids which continues to get passed down.
Humans and animal emmit superstitious behavior all the time. It is even worse when we are rewarded for the superstitious behavior that we preform. In many ways we are reinforced for silly things. And this just does not happen every now and then it happens all the time. People reinforce animals and other people when they preform superstious behaviors which allows one to believe that if they preform that action again they will be rewared over and over again. This is not the best way to be reinforced but sometimes it needs to happen in order for one to get what they want. Also the last thing that I can think about with superstitious behavior is the full moon and everyone action werid on the full moon and also here on campus. During homecoming if you do not bring you love one to the clock during homecoming at like midnight and kiss him or her then you will have brick fall on your head. No we all know that a brick is not going to fall on your head but many people emmit the behavior to be safe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbH78wscGw
http://www.essortment.com/superstitious-behavior-cause-cure-36002.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1348309/
I decided to do this blog on positive vs. negative punishment. Positive punishment sounds like an oxymoron. Positive punishment is the attempt to decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring in the future by the application of an aversive stimulus. Negative punishment is an attempt to decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring in the future by the removal of a wanted stimulus. Positive punishment sounds like an oxymoron, because it definitely is not positive in the sense that it is pleasant. I would rather experience negative punishment than positive punishment. I tend to get positive punishment mixed up with negative reinforcement especially when it comes to waterboarding. One could look at it as the removal of an aversive stimulus to get someone to talk (negative reinforcement) or one could look at it as the application of an aversive stimulus for not talking (positive punishment). Negative punishment has become more popular method for punishment because of the stigma that goes a long with positive punishment. Corporal punishment is frowned upon and even a child spanking their own kid is frowned upon today, when 100 years ago it was the go to method when your child did something wrong. I am not sure exactly the reason why it has over the years become less popular, maybe it has to do with the fact that punishment if not used correctly is ineffective. And Bandura’s Bobo doll study and how modeling violent behavior can cause violent behavior might also contribute to the fact that positive punishment has decreased in popularity. This is why that negative punishment is used a lot more. Being grounded for prime example is probably the most common punishment for teenagers, which is negative punishment. Things like cell phones, xbox’s, and cars are taken away to decrease an unwanted behavior such as getting horrible grades.
I still believe that whenever possible reinforcement should be used over punishment. Punishment is never consistent. Someone is always going to get away with doing something wrong without being punished, speeding is a great example. I speed all the time and rarely am I punished, therefore I continue my speeding behavior.
Terms: negative punishment, positive punishment, negative reinforcement, stimulus
http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/faculty/wasserman/glossary/punishment.html
Positive punishment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_232OsC4gE&feature=related
Negative punishment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv2qKhzgu2w
After reading sections 2.3 and 2.4, I really enjoyed the part about spontaneous recovery. Spontaneous Recovery is the return of an emitted behavior after it has been previously extinguished. Why this occurs is usually the contexts of past reinforcement conditions may cause the organism to emit the target behavior that has been extinguished. Like the example used in the text where a person drives by a restaurant which they used to go to but is closed now, I find myself doing this all the time. I will randomly take a route when I’m back in my home town to go by my old house. It feels normal since I’ve done it so many times in the past. So I decided to look up on the internet and see if there were other examples of spontaneous recovery.
A lot of the examples used by people involve using animals. A lot of troubles people have with animals are that they will have a spontaneous recovery of an unwanted behavior that was previously extinguished. An example of this is a dog randomly jumping on the couch again or using the house as their bathroom. The best way to extinguish this behavior again is to use positive reinforcement and reward them for going outside until the spontaneous behaviors have been extinguished again. Another example I came across was shocking a cat inside a box. The cat would eventually become afraid of boxes because of the shock, but there is a way of getting a cat to not be afraid of the box. If you feed the cat inside the box and keep reinforcing it for going inside it, you’re masking the anxiety response until it’s not longer there or extinguished. This form of changing behavior is called desensitization which is designed to eliminate fears and phobias.
People can also be shown to have spontaneous recovery as well. In an example I came across, a teacher demonstrates spontaneous recovery in his classroom. The teacher in front of the class pulls a start pistol and says now without pulling the trigger. Much of the class emits a jumping response and he continues to do these actions until no one jumps to the raising of the gun and saying now. Extinction has occurred to the behavior of jumping. Now after lecturing on a new topic for awhile, the teacher raises his hand and says “now” without having the starter gun in his hand. As a response to this action, most of the class jumped again. He has just demonstrated to the class spontaneous recovery.
I find it very interesting that behaviors that we have previously extinguished can come back. After reading more into the topic, now understand why I randomly might drive by my old house. I also think it’s very important to make sure that spontaneous reinforcement is corrected especially in situations where it could be aversive (dog using house as the bathroom.
http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.cfm?term=Spontaneous%20Recovery
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05_conditioning/extinction_and_spontaneous_recovery.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-spontaneous-recovery.htm
For my topic I have chosen to focus on negative punishment. This can be defined as the removal of a desirable stimulus. This has been the type of punishment my family has mostly practiced. For example, I have two little brothers. If my 10 year old brother were to talk back to my step mom a common consequence for his behavior would be his DS getting taken away for the day or for a few days. The DS is something pleasurable and positive to my brother, so he is often very upset when this occurs, thus decreasing the likelihood of him back talking.
If this punishment became too severe, my brother may expand his behavior of not talking back to other situations. This may be a negative consequence in the long run if he, for instance, was getting bullied and didn't stand up for himself because he was punished for this behavior in the past. This is why negative punishment should be used on rare occasions.
Another example of negative punishment would be getting a ticket. This is a consequence that is not used unless in extreme situations such as stealing, speeding, or breaking the law. This is a very abrupt procedure and can be more/less intense depending on the situation.
As stated in the reading, punishment is most effective if it is done right after the unwanted behavior occurs. The video of the teacher smashing the student's phone, for example. He didn't smash it until after it had rang a few times. If he had used reinforcement on her and said thank you when she stopped the noise, maybe it wouldn't have gone off again, but she let it keep going. It also could have been more effective if he had removed the phone from her immediately or made her do some kind of undesirable behavior (positive punishment) like standing in front of the entire class for the rest of the period.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgnu1INeRnI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHZMoPV1rog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KaDCB1wSeQ
I decided to do my topical blog on superstitious behaviors. Superstitious behaviors are behaviors that are emitted that don't directly lead to reinforcement. People generalize one behavior so it fits in with another target behavior. For example, if you wear a pair of socks and your team wins the basketball game, he/she may correlate the socks to being 'lucky' thus causing the teammate to wear the socks every game. Some people are extremely superstitious while others think it's all a hoax. In this section, I found Skinners pigeon superstitions to be quite comical, because it shows that even species other than humans can develop superstitions.
Some of the research I found questioned is it really superstitious behavior, or is it a psychological problem (such as OCD or anxiety). I have never thought of superstitious behaviors in this way so I found it rather interesting and it got me thinking. We typically make fun of/call people crazy for engaging in extreme superstitious rituals, however what if the person is suffering from an actual psychological disorder? Hmmmm! Here are a few sources that I found interesting relating to the topic of superstitious behaviors:
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=46749
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100902131736.htm
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=superstitious-behavior-makes-evolut-08-09-18
Terms: target behavior, superstitious behavior, emitted, reinforcement, generalize
The topic I would like to explore is negative punishment, the removal of a desirable stimulus. In the movie Freaky Friday, Linsday Lohan's dramatic teenage character Anna is constantly arguing with her mother Tessa (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) and fighting with her younger brother Jake. Anna will scream at the top of her lungs and eventually run to her room and slam her door. Her mother eventually gets fed up with the door slamming and removes Anna's door telling her she will get the door back when she can no longer slam it. Another negative punishment Tessa uses is when Anna's band practice runs over the time limit. Instead of going into the garage to yell at Anna, she simple shuts off the power in hopes to teach her time management.
That movie is a great example of negative punishment. Seeing as I am recently out of my teen years, I still recall the feeling of having items/privileges of mine taken away. Heck, I'm 22 years old and my mom still threatens to take items away from me. There are plenty of websites that give examples of how to punish children. A small, but important rule I read said "If there is no balance or reason behind being grounded it becomes a useless tool." It lists total loss of privileges meaning you basically sit in your room with nothing on, zero fun. From the websites I have read, the most common desirable item removed during negative punishment is an electronic device, my 16yr old cousin has her phone taken away weekly. The argument that could arise with negative punishment and a technically native generation is the effectiveness. When my cousin loses privileges to her phone, she shrugs it off knowing that she will get it back in a day. It leaves me to wonder, was Skinner right by saying reinforcement is the better behavior modification? Or has the future society developed past mediocre punishment?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZsccLmfoIA&feature=related
http://www.ehow.com/how_5878150_ground-children-effectively.html
http://drphil.com/articles/article/249
For this blog I decided to write on the idea of superstitious behaviors. I wanted to write on superstitious behaviors because I find the concept interesting and sometimes notice myself being a bit superstitious at times.
Athletes are well known for practicing rituals before batting or before going out on the field for the game. I had a kid I went to high school with that would wear the same pair of boxers and same tiedye shirt to every wrestling match. He once had his mom bring the boxers to the locker room just before weigh-ins because he couldn't win without those boxers. He was emitting superstitious behaviors.
I sometimes find myself getting caught up in such beliefs or actions. I have recently been placed on the "on-call" list for work (at UPS) and every time I see a UPS truck (the big brown trucks) throughout my regular day it seems like I get called in to work. When I don't see the UPS trucks during my normal day I don't seem to get called in. This is superstitious because I am taking to completely unrelated things and associating them with each other to try and have happened to find what seems to be a correlation but what is clearly not. In actuality, no matter if I see a UPS truck or not doesn't determine whether I am called into work. Even though I know this is true I tend to stay off busy streets and avoid areas where I may see a UPS truck because I don't want to get called in. However stupid it may sound...that is my superstitious behavior.
Many people with OCD participate in superstitious behaviors such as touching something a certian number of times before entering a room in order to prevent something aversive from happening. Although the behaviors are correlated with the behavior they play no part in receiving the reinforcement. B.F. Skinner found this with his pigeons in his operant chamber. The pigeons would emit a variety of behaviors until they received their reinforcements then they will draw associations and repeat the previous behavior until the reinforcement is given again. The pigeon doesn't know that the reinforcement is being given on a interval schedule of reinforcement.
Terms: Superstitious Behaviors, emitting, aversive, reinforcement, operant chamber, interval schedule of reinforcement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbH78wscGw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uPmeWiFTIw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHgh2QRgmmA