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Core Principles of the Behavioral Approach
Abnormal Psychology · Chapter 5: Behavioral and Learning Models of AbnormalitySection 5.1 · lesson 19 of 9712 min · free with a free account
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In this lesson
Classical and operant conditioning, and why negative reinforcement is not punishment.
- State the core assumptions of the behavioral model
- Label the components of classical conditioning in a scenario
- Classify the four operant contingencies without confusion
- Explain why fear-based problems do not extinguish on their own
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,563 words). Read along, or search it.
Behavioral and Learning Models of Abnormality
Core Principles of the Behavioral Approach
One term in this section is misunderstood more often than any other. Negative reinforcement is not punishment. It increases behavior. If you take nothing else from this section, take that. One note first. This material is educational, and is not a basis for diagnosis. Then classical conditioning: learning what predicts what. Then operant conditioning: learning from consequences. Then the four contingencies, and the schedules that make behavior persistent. And finally two-factor theory, which is the central clinical application of the chapter. It explains something that looks paradoxical. Why phobias do not fade on their own.
The Model
Three Assumptions, and One Consequence
The behavioral model holds that psychological difficulties are learned patterns of behavior. Acquired through the same processes that produce every other habit a person has. First, abnormal behavior is learned by the same processes as normal behavior. A phobia and a preference for one route to work come from the same machinery. Which is why this model treats the person as ordinary and the pattern as the problem. Second, observable behavior is the proper object of study. Third, the environment holds the explanation. Causes sit in what precedes the behavior and what follows it. Which changes the bedside question. Not what does this mean, but what is maintaining it. And one consequence deserves stating now, because it is the model's greatest contribution. If a pattern was learned, it can in principle be unlearned. That turns a symptom from a fact about a person into a process you can interrupt.
The Break
What Was Gained, and What Was Set Aside
Early psychology relied heavily on introspection. The behaviorist objection was methodological rather than philosophical. When two trained observers introspect on the same task, they report different contents. There is no way to decide between them, and a science like that does not accumulate. The objection to the psychodynamic tradition was the same one. Unconscious conflict is inferred from the behavior it is invoked to explain. The response was to restrict the science to what anyone could observe and count. What behaviorism gained was testability. Predictions that could fail. Procedures another laboratory could repeat, and an accumulating body of findings. What it set aside was thought, meaning, expectation, and emotion, as causes. That was a deliberate methodological decision, not a claim that inner life does not exist. And it did not hold. Five point three is where it first gives way.
Classical
Learning What Predicts What
Classical conditioning is learning about what predicts what. A stimulus that initially produces no particular response comes to produce one. Through being repeatedly paired with a stimulus that already does. One key to remembering them: their names describe the learning history, not the stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus produces a response with no learning at all. The unconditioned response is what it produces automatically. Salivation, a startle, a blink. The neutral stimulus produces no relevant response before conditioning. A tone, a color, a room. The conditioned stimulus is what that neutral stimulus becomes. Once it reliably predicts the unconditioned stimulus. And here is the point students most often miss. It is the same tone. Nothing about the tone changed. Only its effect did. The conditioned response is what the conditioned stimulus now produces on its own.
Acquisition
Three Stages, One Tone
The acquisition sequence runs in three stages. Before conditioning, the tone produces nothing, and the air puff produces a blink. During conditioning, the tone is presented and the puff follows. Repeatedly. With the tone reliably preceding the puff. Learning is much weaker if the tone follows the puff. It is also weaker if the tone predicts the puff only sometimes. After conditioning, the tone alone produces the blink. Look at the third stage carefully, because it carries the evidence. The air puff is absent altogether, and the blink still occurs. That absence is what shows something has been learned rather than merely triggered.
After Learning
Four Processes That Follow
Extinction is the weakening of that response. It happens when the conditioned stimulus keeps occurring without the unconditioned one. Present the tone enough times with no puff, and the blink fades. Spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of an extinguished response, after time without exposure. And this carries a lesson out of all proportion to its simplicity. If extinction were erasure, nothing would come back. That something does return means the original association was not deleted. It was overlaid by new learning. That finding eventually reshaped how exposure treatment is structured. Generalization is the spread of the response to similar stimuli. Discrimination is the complementary learning that some similar stimuli do not predict anything. Clinically, generalization is often how a narrow fear becomes a broad one.
Fear
Conditioned Emotional Response, and One Famous Study
A conditioned emotional response is fear acquired by association. On this account, a specific phobia is a conditioned emotional response. And the feared object is a conditioned stimulus that once predicted something aversive. The demonstration usually cited is the Little Albert study, from nineteen twenty. An infant who initially showed no fear of a white rat. The animal was paired with a loud noise, repeatedly. Afterward he showed distress at the animal, and reportedly at some similar objects. Three things must be said about it. It would be flatly unacceptable today. It caused distress to an infant who could not consent, for no benefit to him. The surviving record is also thin. A single child. No control condition. Outcomes assessed by the experimenters themselves. It shows that fear can be conditioned. Not how phobias generally arise.
Operant
Learning From Consequences
Operant conditioning is learning in which behavior is shaped by its consequences. Actions followed by favorable outcomes become more frequent; unfavorable ones, less frequent. Classical conditioning concerns what a stimulus predicts. Operant conditioning concerns what a behavior produces. The unit of analysis is the three-term contingency. Antecedent, behavior, consequence. The consequence determines what becomes more or less likely. Analyzing a problem behavior in those three terms is called functional analysis. Now, two questions define the four possibilities. Added or removed? Increase or decrease? Positive and negative mean added and removed. Not good and bad. Reinforcement and punishment answer only the second. So negative reinforcement removes something aversive, and the behavior increases. Which puts it in the same column as positive reinforcement.
The Hard Distinction
Negative Reinforcement Is Not Punishment
The confusion comes entirely from the word negative. In ordinary speech it means bad. Here it means removed. But the unpleasant thing is what ends. And its ending is what strengthens the behavior. Taking a painkiller ends a headache, so taking painkillers becomes more likely. Something aversive was removed, and the behavior increased. Negative reinforcement. Being fined for parking badly reduces bad parking. Something aversive was added, and the behavior decreased. Positive punishment. Leaving a crowded shop ends rising panic, so leaving increases. Negative reinforcement again. So here is the reliable test. Ask what happened to the behavior. If it became more likely, it was reinforcement, whatever it felt like. Then ask whether something was added or removed. That supplies the first word. And if a behavior is frequent, what reinforces it is often relief, not anything pleasant.
Schedules
The Fastest Learning Gives the Weakest Persistence
A schedule of reinforcement is the rule saying which instances get reinforced. Continuous reinforcement reinforces every instance. Intermittent reinforces only some. Continuous produces rapid learning, and steady responding while it continues. Variable ratio produces high, steady, persistent responding. And the highest resistance to extinction of any schedule. The schedule producing the fastest learning produces the weakest persistence. The reason is informational. Under continuous reinforcement, one missed outcome shows the rule changed. Under a variable schedule, a run of nothing is exactly what you have learned to expect. A behavior that pays off unpredictably will be far more persistent. Occasional reassurance. Intermittent attention. Relief that sometimes follows and sometimes does not. One more thing to expect. An extinction burst. When reinforcement stops, the behavior first increases. That is when people give in, making it worse.
Two-Factor Theory
Why Phobias Do Not Fade
Two-factor theory is the central clinical application of this chapter. Fear-based problems are acquired by classical conditioning. And maintained by operant conditioning. Extinction should erode a conditioned fear. Phobias frequently do the opposite. They persist for decades, and often intensify. Why? Because the person avoids. Avoidance produces immediate relief. Relief is the removal of something aversive, so avoidance is negatively reinforced. The avoidance strengthens, and the fear is never disconfirmed, because the situation is never entered. Notice where the maintenance point falls. At relief, not at fear. Which is why treatment targets the avoidance rather than the fear directly. And safety behaviors prevent learning, because any good outcome gets credited to them.
Composite Cases
Tomas, 29, and Daniel, 9
Two composite cases, constructed for instruction. Neither describes a real person. Tomas is twenty-nine and has avoided lifts entirely for four years. Four years ago he was trapped in a stopped lift for about forty minutes, alone. Name the learning events. The lift was neutral; being trapped was the unconditioned stimulus. After the pairing, the lift alone produces fear. Conditioned stimulus, conditioned response. Maintenance is operant. Taking the stairs drops his anxiety, which negatively reinforces the avoidance. So why did the fear grow? Extinction requires contact with the lift without being trapped. Second case. Daniel is nine, and highly distressed at school drop-off. It began after an illness, and he is now taken home on about one morning in four. Being taken home removes something aversive, contingent on distress. And because it happens on roughly one morning in four, it is a variable ratio schedule. Nobody has been unkind. A distressed child is comforted, and the contingency operates anyway. And note what this analysis does not do. It does not establish why the distress began.
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