1. SKINNER’S “THEORY” OF INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING
Two-term contingency: R  SR
Nature of reinforcer can vary: R  S [SR, Sr, S-R, S-r].
3-term contingency (Discriminative operant)
SD : R  SR (light: bar press  food)
S : R  SR (no light: bar press  food)
Chaining of discriminative operants:
Nature of discriminative stimulus can vary: [exteroceptive, interoceptive, proprioceptive].

2. SKINNER’S “THEORY” (con’t.)
Contingency of reinforcement can vary: Rn/t  SR
Schedule of reinforcement can vary: R  SR
subject must emit n responses within a particular time frame t.
Verbal Behavior. Behavior that is reinforced by a member of one’s verbal community.
Private events. Discriminative responding to proprioceptive or interoceptive stimuli (stimuli under our skin, Sd : r  Sr)

4. Behaviorist Approach
All learned behavior (human and animal) can be explained by the principles of classical and instrumental learning theory (2-factor learning theory).
Classical conditioning:
assumes that CS’s and US’s can be paired arbitrarily.
assumes that temporal contiguity of CS and US is necessary and sufficient for establishing CR.
Instrumental conditioning:
assumes that responses selected for reinforcement are arbitrary.
No need to postulate mental processes.

5. EVIDENCE THAT QUESTIONED BEHAVIORISTS’ ASSUMPTIONS
“Misbehavior” of organisms
Garcia’s experiment on taste aversion
Autoshaping and omission training
Blocking
Rescorla’s experiment on predictiveness of US.
Experiments on animal cognition
Hunter’s definition of representation
Radial maze
Matching-to-sample

6. GARCIA EXPERIMENT ON TASTE AVERSION
Rats signalled about two types of noxious stimuli (nausea and shock) by two types of CS (taste and sound).
taste: liquid sweetened with saccharine
nausea: induced by lithium chloride
Group I: Compound CS [taste & sound]  Shock
Group II: Compound CS [taste & sound]  Nausea
Effect of CS evaluated in 2-bottle choice test:
Bottle 1: saccharine flavored water
Bottle 2: water
Group I: preferred sweet drink (natural preference)
Group II: preferred water (avoid natural preference)

8. Blocking experiment (Kamin)
Training: CS1  Shock:
CS1 + CS2  Shock
Test: CS1  fear
CS2  no fear

9. Predictable and Unpredictable Occurrences of Food
_______ p ( F o o d /K ey Li gh t
) > p ( F o o d /K ey Li gh t ) P re d ic t a b le : Ke y L i g h t F oo d C S : U S :
_______ p ( F o o d /K ey Li gh t
) = p ( F o o d /K ey Li gh t ) U n p re di
cta bl e: C S : Ke y L i g h t F oo d U S :

11. Omission Training S D
(Ke y l ig h t) : R ( Pe c k ) : S R
(Fo o d) :

12. EVIDENCE THAT QUESTIONED BEHAVIORISTS’ ASSUMPTIONS
“Misbehavior” of organisms
Garcia’s experiment on taste aversion
Autoshaping and omission training
Blocking
Rescorla’s experiment on predictiveness of US.
Experiments on animal cognition
Hunter’s definition of representation
Radial maze
Matching-to-sample

13. HUNTER ON “REPRESENTATIONS”
...If comparative psychology is to postulate a representative fact, ...it is necessary that the stimulus represented be absent at the moment of the response. If it is not absent, the reaction may be stated in sensory-motor term (Hunter, , p. 21).

15. MATCHING-TO-SAMPLE
A. Matching-to-Sample
Peck

17. RADIAL MAZE