Pseudonymous Ramblings by Psychobunny

Psychobunny lectures: Studying and schedules of reinforcement

Please feel free to skip this post if you don't give a crap about human behavior. I do, however, so this is going up here.

Studying and schedules of reinforcement

First, some brief background information. I'm going to use nice little concise textbook definitions in order to avoid confusion. I've read many a textbook, and Paul Chance's Learning and Behavior is one of my all-time favorite books, not just textbooks. You should really read it if you have a chance; I have the third edition and it is very affordable.

Reinforcement is "the procedure of providing consequences for a behavior that increase or maintain the rate of that behavior" (Chance, 1999, p. 137). We shall call these consequences reinforcers. Reinforcers and therefore reinforcement can be either positive or negative. Positive reinforcement refers to adding something to the environment, whereas negative reinforcement refers to subtracting something from the environment (Chance, 1999). A schedule of reinforcement is "a rule describing the delivery of reinforcement" (Chance, 1999, p. 348). Graphically represented, it is a pattern of responses leading to the delivery of the reinforcer.

Four simple schedules of reinforcement are the fixed ratio schedule, the variable ratio schedule, the fixed interval schedule, and the variable interval schedule. Fixed ratio indicates that the reinforcer will be delivered after a certain fixed number of responses have been made (e.g., put together three chairs and we'll give you $50). Variable ratio indicates that the reinforcer will be delivered after a number of responses varying around a certain number have been made (e.g., instead of knowing that the number of chairs you have to put together is three, it might first be two, then five, then one, then four, etc. before you get the $50). Fixed interval indicates that the first response made after a certain fixed period of time will be reinforced (e.g., the first chair you put together after twenty minutes have passed since putting together the previous chair will earn you $50, but chairs put together during the 20-minute interval will earn you squat). Finally, variable interval indicates that the first response made after a period of time varying around a mean will be reinforced (e.g., instead of 20 minutes, you might first have to wait 29 minutes, then 40 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 1 minute, etc. before putting together another chair will again earn you $50, and any chairs put together before that time has passed earn you nothing).

The fixed schedules produce significant postreinforcement pausing; that is, following reinforcement, the organism stops responding for a while. This is less of a problem with variable schedules. (See horribly blurry Figure 1, the format of which is stolen shamelessly from Paul Chance.)

Now on to the main part of the post. What schedule does studying fall under?

Think about your classes and about how you study. Study behaviors are the responses with which we are concerned. And I'm willing to bet you anything that your study behaviors aren't consistently high. Rather, if you're anything like me, they probably start out low at the beginning of the semester, slowly and gradually increasing to a very high rate the night before the exam, followed by the complete ceasing of any studying behaviors relevant to that class for a while. :) (Which could help to explain why, after three exams last week, I'm writing this post right now.)

Here's what I think. The upcoming exam creates an aversive condition (the guilt and anxiety of procrastination) provided you do not study for it. Any studying response you make alleviates some of that guilt and anxiety, hence studying responses create negative reinforcers. The ultimate negative reinforcer is of course the exam itself, being the point at which you cannot make any further studying responses. Exam dates are typically known well in advance, hence the interval is fixed. Consequently, the chart of study responses looks much like Figure 2. (See badly-drawn Figure 2).

I love this stuff. :)

posted by Psychobunny at 10:54 AM