Content Area 3: Principles, Processes, And Concepts

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Behavior

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The activity of living organisms; human behavior includes everything that humans do.
"that portion of an organism's interaction with its environment that is characterized by detectable displacement in space through time of some part of the organism and that results in a measurable change in at least one aspect of teh environment."

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Response

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A single instance r occurence of a specific cclass or type of behavior.
"an action of an organisms effector (an organ at the end of an efferent nerve fiber that is specialized for altering its environment mechanically, chemically, or in terms of other energy changes."

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Response Class

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A group of responses varying in topography, all of which produce the same effect on the environment.

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Stimulus

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An energy change that affects an organism through its receptor cells - any condition, event or change in the physical world.

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Stimulus Class

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A grou pof stimuli that share specified common elements along formal (e.g. size, color), temporal (e.g. antecedant or consequent), and/or functional (e.g. discriminative stimulus) dimensions.

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Positive Reinforcement

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Occurs when a behavior is followed by the presentation of a stimulus that increases the future frequency of the behavior in similar conditions.

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Negative Reinforcement

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Occurs when a behavior is followed by the termination or reduction in intensity of a stimulus that increases the future frequency of the behavior in similar conditions.

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Conditioned Reinforcement

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Occurs when a stimulus change functions as a reinforcer because of prior pairing with one or more other reinforcers (i.e. secondary or learned reinforcer)

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Unconditioned Reinforcement

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Occurs when a stimulus change increases the frequency of any behavior that immediatley precedes it irrespective of the organism's learning history with the stimulus. Unconditioned reinforcers are the product of the evolutionary development of the species. (i.e. primary or unlearned)

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Positive Punishment

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A behavior is followed immediately by the presentation of a stimulus that decreases the future frequency of the behavior. (i.e. Type I)

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Negative Punishment

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A response behavior is followed by the removal of a stimulus (or a decrease in the intensity of the stimulus), that decreases the future frequency of similar responses under similar conditions. (i.e. Type II)

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Conditioned Punishment

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Occurs when a previously neutral stimulus change that functions as a punisher because of prior pairing with one ore more other punishers. (i.e. secondary or learned)

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Unconditioned Punishment

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Occurs when a stimulus change decreases the frequency of any behavior that immediately precedes it irrespective of the organism's learning history with the stimulus. Al members of a species are more or less susceptible to punishment by the presentation of unconditioned punishers. (i.e. primary or unlearned)

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Stimulus Control

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A situation in which the frequency, latency, amplitude, or duration of a behavior is altered by the presence or absence of an antecedant stimulus.

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Establishing Operations

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A motivating operation that establishes (increases) the effectiveness of some stimulus, object, or event as a reinforcer.
E.g. food deprivation establishes food as an effective reinforcer

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Behavioral Contingencies

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Dependent and/or temporal realtions between operant behavior and its controlling variables

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Functional Relation

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A verbal statement summarizing the results of an experiment that describes the phenomena under study as a functino of the operation of one or more specified and controlled variables in the experiment in which a specific change in the dependent variable can be produced by manipulating the independent variable, and that change in the DV was unlikely the result of other factors (confounding variables)
Expressed as b=f(x1), (x2) .... where b is the behavior and x1, x2, etc., are environmental variables of which the behavior is a function.

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Extinction

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The discontinuing of reinforcement of a previosuly reinforced behavior (i.e. responses no longer produce reinforcement); the primary effect is a decrease in the frequency of the behavior until it reaches a prereinforced level or ultimately ceases to occur.

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Extinction Burst

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An increase in the frequency of responding when an extinctino procedure is initially implemented.

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Generalization

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A generic term for a variety of behavioral processes and behavior change outcomes.

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Discrimination

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Stimuli with differences in dimensions are responded to differently.

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Respondent Conditioning Paradigm

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A stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure in which a neutral stimulus is presented with an unconditioned stimulus until the NS becomes a CS that elicits the conditional response. (i.e. classical or Pavlovian conditioning)

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Operant Conditioning Paradigm

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The process by which operant learning occurs; consequences (stimulus changes immediately following responses) result in an increased (reinforcement) or decreased (punishment) frequency of the same type of behavior under similar motivational and environmental conditions in the future.

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Echoics

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An elementary verbal operant involving a response that is evoked by a verbal discriminative stimulus that has point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity with the response.

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Imitation

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A behavior controlled by any physical movement that serves as a novel model excluding vocal-verbal behavior, hoas formal similarity with the model, immediately follows the occurence of the model (e.g. within seconds of the model presentation). An imitative behavior is a new behavior emitted following a novel antecedent event (i.e. the model).

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Mands

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An elementary verbal operant that is evoked by an MO and followed by a specific response.

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Tacts

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An elementary verbal operant evoked by a nonverbal discriminative stimulus and ofllowed by generalized conditioned reinforcement.

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Intraverbals

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An elementary verbal operant that is evoked by a verbal discriminative stimulus and that does not have point-to-point correspondence with that verbal stimulus.

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Contingency-shaped Behaviors

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A term used to indicate behavior selected and maintained by controlled, temporally close consequences.

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Rule-governed Behavior

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Behavior that is controlled by rule (i.e. a verbal statment of an antecedent-behavior-consequence contingency); enables human behavior to come under the indirect control of temporally remote of improbable but potentially significant consequences.
E.g. fastening a seta belt to avoid injury in an auto accident