After making your mind map for the article, briefly discuss the article. Here are some questions that might help you formulate your response. You pretty much have the freedom to respond how you see fit. However please write with some authority over the topic (Let me know if this doesn't make sense).
What did you find interesting? What were some of the main points? Why did the authors write the article? How does the text and your reader handle the related material if any? What do think the impact of this article was / is? How does it relate to the other articles we have read so far
http://psych.hanover.edu/classes/Learning/papers/Skinner%20Superstion%20(1948%20orig).pdf
The article was focused on aspects of superstitious behavior. It examined contingencies and conditioning related to behaviors in pigeons. For starters the pigeons were made to be relatively hungry and were then left in a cage. At given 15 second intervals food would be given to the birds regardless of their behaviors. As past history would have predicted, however, the pigeons began to associate certain parts of their behavior with reinforcement. The article mentioned the fact that by reinforcing every 15 seconds they greatly limited the variablility in possible behaviors. For this reason many developed the same behaviors. Another finding is that even though it was not purposeful teaching, conditioning does take place. Superstition is still included in operant conditioning. The birds learned to behave a certain way as a result of what they took as "reinforcement" or "no reinforcement". Finally a point that I found to be very interesting is the relationship that lies between the animal and the consequence. As the put it, the reinforcement is in no way affected by the animal involved. No matter what they do, or don't do, the same consequence will follow. The interesting part is how the animal is affected by the consequence. An animal may carry on with a behavior even why they are not getting reinforced regualarly. They are reinforced on a ratio or variable schedule and this allows the behavior to actually be strengthened instead of weakened. This means extinction doesn't always take place when it reasonably would otherwise. The book didn't talk much about superstition itself but it did discuss some ways of lessening it or ending the operant behavior. One of these is adding a 'critical contingency'. This, according to the text, is differential reinforcement of the other behavior. This means that you reinforce anything that isnt the current operant behavior. This will lead to a hastened extinction of the behavior and allow you to condition it to give an alternative response. I have to say that I partially understand what the article was trying to say about contingency and extinction, but I failed to grasp all of it. It was very short and so I think in ways it was a bit too vague.
Skinner’s article focused on superstitions and how they can be developed and maintained. For his experiment he used pigeons and described how they naturally developed unconditioned behaviors. Every 15 seconds the pigeons received a reinforcement although there was no act that needed to be performed by the pigeon. Skinner noticed that, during the fifteen seconds, the pigeons began to develop various behaviors, conditioned to the reinforcement. They would peck, turn their heads, take certain steps, etc. None of this behavior was necessary to receive the reinforcement but, the pigeons continued to execute the behavior in perfect sequence every fifteen seconds. This shows that the pigeons were developing their own superstitious behavior, believing that their acts are what brought about the reinforcement. As the article says, we can relate this to our own lives and all of our own superstitions that we maintain, believing that they bring about our desired outcome when they truly have no effect whatsoever. The article uses the example of the bowler. We often see a bowler release a ball and then sway to the right or left, hoping that our movements will move the ball in the direction we desire. Obviously, this cannot possibly influence the ball but do they keep doing it? Of course.
The book talked little about superstitious behavior. One example it gave was of students trying to condition birds to peck at a red light and stop pecking at a green light. Each time it pecked at the red light, it was reinforced. When a group of students failed to condition their bird to stop pecking at the green light, they were able to conclude that the bird had developed its own superstition that was overriding their conditioning. It believed that by pecking during the green light, it caused the red light to turn on and the red light brought about the reinforcement.
As said before, we all have our own little superstitions that we continue to perform. Regardless of our knowledge that our behavior cannot possibly influence the outcome, we always continue to perform on cue. Athletes are the most known for their superstitious behaviors. How often do we see an athlete perform the same number of dribbles before shooting a free throw or listen to the same song before each game? Its common sense that these actions have no impact on their performance, but that doesn’t matter to the athlete. And when a behavior becomes “unlucky”, they always find a new superstitious behavior that seems to be more effective.
Skinner’s article, “’Superstition” in the Pigeon” definitely had some good data, and I believe, was more applicable than the taste aversion reading by Kalat and Rozin. I believe that his pigeon research does show the man and brute similarities. When conditioning, some things can be conditioned on accident. There are effective intervals that depend on the rate of conditioning and the rate of extinction, and will vary with the drive between species. The rate of reinforcement is a big part of conditioning. The sooner a second reinforcement occurs, the more likely the behavior will be like the first. Also, the operant conditioning can take place even with fixed interval schedules. However, if the interval is too close, extinction may take place. These ideas highly coincide with superstitious behaviors. These superstitious behaviors correspond with rituals. Rituals can be caused by accidental connections, such as someone doing a ritual and then receiving a favorable outcome or consequence. I enjoyed the superstitious behaviors the birds were doing in Skinner’s study. One bird was turning counter-clockwise, one was putting his head into the corners of the cage, and one was ‘tossing’ his head. In sports we can see certain behaviors or choices being made due to a ritual that has had favorable consequences come afterwards. I believe the impact and reasonings for writing this article are to show that superstitious behaviors do take place in animals and humans.
This article was a little hard to follow. It talked about superstition in Pigeons. The researchers gave the pigeons food every 15 seconds not depending on thier behavior and they found that the pigeons developed superstitious behavior because they thought that they were being reinforced. Some of them developed a pendulum swing with their heads and others started dipping thier heads as though there was an invisible bar. The researchers ended up shaping the behavior without even trying to. They related this to humans in that people do these same ritual behaviors before an important sporting event or before gambling if they had previously won a lot of money after doing these same behaviors. The suggest that everyone has ritualistic behaviors that they do. The book didn't talk to much about superstition the only thing that it gave was an example of some kids who tried to get pigeons to peck at a red light but they concluded that thier superstitious behavior was overriding the conditioning. I think that this article can be important in the exploration of all behavior modification. It can also be something that can be taken into consideration when we talk about species temperment. I like the material this article was about but I felt like it was a little too short for what it was trying to get at. It was kind of vague and I was left with a lot of confusion after reading it.
This article was titled Superstitious Pigeons, yet they only mention superstition twice in the article.
I found it interesting of what behaviors the pigeons showed when the food hopper was present. It was actually entertaining to think about what it would look like. There were some pigeons who did a pendulum swing with their head and bodies, some who showed incomplete pecking, some dancing, and some with no obvious behavior. They related this article with the real world because we tend to show these behaviors ourselves. We think we are getting reinforced for doing a certain behavior, but in reality we are not getting reinforced for it. I went bowling this weekend for my friends birthday and it was funny to see Erik do a little dance before he would bowl. He thought he would get a strike every time he did it. It worked about 20% of the time. This was not the case for the pigeon experiment, because most repeated that behavior when the food was present. In Erik's case, he would do a behavior to get a certain outcome. We all have our own superstitions. Regardless of the amount of knowledge we know about superstitions and how it cannot influence an outcome, we continue to perform these superstitions. I thought this article was too short for what it was trying to get at. It should have explained the superstitions more with the pigeons.
After reading the Skinner article once I didn’t understand what the point of the study was. I went back and read it again and understood it a bit better but it was still a little hard to follow. I did find it interesting that every bird had its own superstitious behavior. There weren’t any that had a similar behavior. It does mention there were two birds that didn’t have a repeated pattern of behavior. One of the main points covered was the amount of time between reinforcements and how that affected the superstitious behavior. The article says that shorter intervals are more effective because longer intervals allow for a greater number of intervening responses without reinforcement. They took pictures of the birds after 2 seconds and the birds were in the same are of the cage. Then after 10 seconds they were in different areas. They found that a 15 second interval gave them consistent results. I believe the authors wrote this article to prove that when a reinforcement is on a fixed interval a consistent or superstitious behavior will appear. The birds will produce a behavior they think is being reinforced. The text covers superstition in chapter eight with stimulus control. The text gives the example of a pigeon pecking a key and then being reinforced. In fact the reinforcement comes when the key is green and not red. The pigeon only related pecking with being reinforced and not the color that needed to be presented. Therefore the pecking behavior that the pigeon emitted was a superstitious one. The reader covers superstitious behaviors in chapter one. It explains superstitious behavior as accidental reinforcement. The reader gives the example of a hawk catching a mouse under a certain bush one day. That hawk will check out that bush everyday that week looking for another mouse. If it gets another one it will continue to return. If it doesn’t catch another the behavior will be extinguished. I think this article related to the Breland article in that these superstitions could be related to instincts. Like the hawk going to the same bush to look for food. They have the instinct to look there because they were reinforced previously.
In the article Skinner describes how he was able to create a superstition in pigeons. He describes how by giving pigeons food at specific intervals, regardless of what they are doing, he can operant condition them. After just a few tries, the birds started to exhibit very specific behaviors thinking that it would result in them getting food. According to the text the difference between superstitions and operant conditioning is if the behavior has an influence on the outcome. Therefore, since the behavior had no effect on the outcome, it makes it a superstitious behavior, not operant conditioning. Skinner talks about how many people have superstitions; one of the more obvious ones is the way that people move when bowling. After the ball has left your hand, you have no control over which way it will go. However many people still move and twist their bodies in the direction that they want the ball to go. My personal superstition is when playing a card game, not to touch my hand of cards until the dealer finishes dealing and touches their hand of cards. I got this from a specific card game that you actually get punished if you touch your cards before the dealer. Therefore, you are reinforced not to touch your cards. The next card game that I played, I accidentally waited until the dealer picked up his cards, and I won that round. The accidental reinforcement of winning made the behavior of waiting a conditioned behavior. However since waiting has no effect on the cards that will be in my hand, the behavior is a superstition. I took this accidental reinforcement and spread it to all card games that I play. Accidental reinforcement can turn into superstitious behaviors. In the text they had an example of a bird that kept hitting the green button instead of the red one. Turns out this bird had accidentally gotten reinforced for hitting the green light. The bird then thought it had to hit the green light for the red light to come on so it could get the food.
In the “Superstition in the Pigeon” article Skinner writes that conditioning takes place whenever an organism has a drive and an appropriate reinforcer is presented. This happened even when they paid no attention to the Pigeon’s behavior when the presentation was made. This showed that in some situations any behavior may be conditioned. And that behavior may not have any causal connection to the presentation of the reinforcer.
He showed this using pigeons in a classic hunger experiment. The food was presented “with no reference whatsoever to the bird’s behavior.” In six out of eight cases pigeons were conditioned to perform unusual behaviors that in no way caused the presentation of the food. The birds became conditioned to perform whatever movements they were making at the first few presentations of food.
The conditioning was more likely to happen when there was a shorter time between presentations. The author noted that these shorter intervals prevented extinction from taking place. He then notes that this conditioning process resulted in a strongly conditioned response. In one case, a bird made more than 10,000 unreinforced responses before its behavior-hopping side to side- was effectively extinguished.
Skinner concluded that the birds learned a sort of superstitious behavior. This is because the actions that were reinforced could not cause presentation of the food. Simply put, the action of the bird at the moment the food is presented, whatever it was, became conditioned. The researchers presented the food with no regard for the bird’s behavior so the reinforced actions were an accident. Skinner calls this accident of action and reinforcement superstitions. In other words the bird acts as if its movements were producing the food.
Skinner relates this to the human bowler who performs a ritual movement after releasing the ball. Her “lucky” dance has been reinforced often enough to resist extinction. This is not a perfect analogy because the bower is self-aware and is in control of the ball until it leaves her hand, which has a causal connection to the outcome. Logically, the bowler may know that there is no connection between the movements after release and the path of the ball, but it may influence her confidence, help her relax, etc. in such a way that the next time she throws the ball her performance may increase because of her mindset, and this throw until release is what has a causal connection to the outcome. In contrast the pigeon’s behavior is purely superstitious because no part of its behavior has a connection to the outcome.
Terms: condition, extinction, reinforce, superstition
I found this article extremely interesting to read after reading and discussing the Breland and Breland article. In the Breland and Breland article, the authors reference Skinner’s superstition paradigm. We discussed how before this article, often the behaviors exhibited would be categorized as superstitious behavior rather than going against behaviorists common beliefs and ‘breaking the norm.’
After discussing the problems with the superstition paradigm and how all behavior that doesn’t fit in the normal behaviorist theories used to be categorized as learning by becoming superstitious behavior, it was great to read Skinner’s article about superstitious behaviors. I took the article with a grain of salt, after our previous discussion. It was nice, though, to read about the paradigm from Skinner and understand his explanation of the paradigm.
In this article Skinner discussed how superstitions develop after a subject is reinforced with no reference to their behavior. The behavior, however is then linked to the reinforcement. Skinner also explained that the sooner one reinforces when reinforcing randomly, the more likely the same behavior will be reinforced twice and thus become a superstitious behavior. Skinner also discussed how these behaviors link with extinction, but will start once again if reinforced.
The text had information about the topic, however, much of the information seemed the same, and thus never made it on to my mind map in it’s own color. I did appreciate the books explanation that superstitious behaviors are behaviors that are accidentally reinforced and then continue. That explanation helped the concept make more sense.
Superstition, reinforcement, extinction