Question

Troy would like to teach his dog to play a toy piano. Since the dog is unlikely to spontaneously begin playing the piano, Troy first rewards his dog for going near the piano, then for touching the piano, then for pressing on one of the keys of the piano, and so on until the dog is able to play a simple tune. This process is called:

a) Shaping
b) Chaining
c) Modeling
d) Instinctive Drift

Answer 1

Troy is using the process of shaping to teach his dog to play a toy piano, by reinforcing successive approximations of the desired behavior. This differs from Pavlov's classical conditioning as it rewards progress towards a behavior rather than pairing stimuli to elicit a conditioned response.

Step-by-step explanation:

The process Troy is using to teach his dog to play a toy piano is called shaping. Shaping is a technique where successive approximations of a desired behavior are rewarded. This technique is used extensively in operant conditioning, which is a different type of learning from classical conditioning exemplified by Pavlov's experiments.

Shaping is particularly useful because complex behaviors are unlikely to occur spontaneously. Skinner used this approach to successfully teach pigeons to peck a disk and even play ping pong by reinforcing incremental steps. Similarly, in human scenarios, such as teaching a child to clean their room, parents can reinforce progress by rewarding the completion of smaller tasks leading up to the overall objective.