Pavlovian/Classical

• Outcome occurs regardless of response
• Stimulus-Outcome (S-O) association
• Both have decelerating learning curve
• Both can undergo extinction

Operant

• Outcome contingent on response
• Response-Outcome (R-O) association

Law of Effect (Thorndike): Response with favorable outcomes increase, otherwise decrease

Discrete-Trials Paradigm: Operant conditioning paradigm which experimenter defines the beginning and end points of each trial (e.g. cat learns to escape a box)

Free-Operant Paradigm: The animal can operate the apparatus freely to obtain reinforcement (e.g. skinner box)

Discriminative Stimulus: Response (R) lead to outcome (O) only when stimulus $S^D$ is present (e.g. $S^D$ light on → R press lever → O food)

Contingency Learning

Stimulus-Outcome (S-O): Pavlovian/Classical conditioning

Response-Outcome (R-O): Goal-directed conditioning

Stimulus-Response (S-R): Habit

Test habits in lab:

1. Training - train rat to lever-press for reward
2. Devaluation - give enough reward to make the rat full, or condition a taste aversion
3. Test - put the rat back to see if it will push the lever, if it does, it’s habit rather than goal

• Demo

Contiguity: Longer delay between R and O → Slower and weaker learning.

Skinner’s Superstitious Pigeons - Random Reinforcement Schedule

• Gave reinforcements randomly
• Pigeons starts performing actions that they thought were linked with reinforcement (spins, head bobs, hopping on foot)
• They do the action more frequently, which lead to more reinforcements while doing that

Elements of Operant Conditioning