Psychology Learning Reinforcement

When analyzing the psychology of learning, reinforcement always comes up as a central concept. The principle of reinforcement is a psychological intervention that is designed to change behaviours. It is essentially any consequence that increases the chances of getting a specific response from the subject. While reinforcement appears as a relatively straightforward subject, the study of it is actually quite extensive. There are many components within reinforcement, tailored to fit the specific study or response desired. In this essay, many key aspects of reinforcement will be explored, such as positive and negative reinforcement, B.F. Skinner’s involvement and study of reinforcement, and Thorndike’s exploration of reinforcement through …show more content…
Positive reinforcement is adding something or presenting something as a reinforcer after a learner responds in the tester’s desired way. Positive reinforcers can be anything from food and water when finding the way out of a maze, to stickers or toys as a reward for reading a book or cleaning your room. Positive reinforcement is very popular among teachers when they are trying to teach their students new skills, such as reading, writing, behaving in class, etc. For example, a teacher may put a sticker on the test of each student who earns a B or better . This positive reinforcement encourages the students who receive a sticker to keep up the good work and the students who did not get a sticker to work hard to improve their test scores so that they may receive a sticker the next time. Studies have also shown there may be a slight correlation between positive reinforcement and dopamine levels in the brain. In a study done with monkeys, scientists found that reinforcement with food or water would trigger an increase in dopamine levels in their brain. However, when the reinforcement was preceded by some sort of flash of light or tone, the dopamine levels did not appear to spike . This is a study that is still relatively confusing and needs further research, but there is some speculation that such rewards affect levels of …show more content…
After graduating Weslyan University, he went to Harvard for a period of time. However, he did not finish there and instead transferred to Columbia University. During his time in school at Columbia, Thorndike began working on “puzzle boxes”. His original subjects were chicks, but he eventually switched to cats and dogs. In his study, he would place animals into the maze boxes and they could only escape if they made a specific response. By doing this, its was hoped that they would learn this specific response. This type of reinforcement is called instrumental conditioning. What Thorndike found in this experiment is that when he placed a food deprived cat into a puzzle box, it would try to escape and find food by trial and error. After successive attempts, the haphazard trial and error behavior began to decrease and the cat would be found to escape quicker each time. He used many cats in his study, and while he did not notice a rapid improvement and learning curve, he did notice that each of the cats eventually learned what they had to do to escape and be reinforced and the learning was firmly ‘stamped’ into their memory . It was a slow process of conditioning, but it was effective and practical in the long