Question

When Lydia got her new dog, she would pet the dog and give him treats for staying close during walks.Now Lydia's dog stays right at her side all the time, even when he is not on a leash. Based on what is known about operant conditioning, you should conclude that for Lydia's dog, petting and receiving treats acted as:___________ A) negative reinforcers for staying close B) positive reinforcers for staying close C) unconditioned stimuli for staying close D) a discriminative stimulus for staying close

Answer 1

B) positive reinforcers for staying close

Step-by-step explanation:

In psychology and operant conditioning, we learned based on reinforcements and punishments.

A reinforcement refers to an stimulus that makes the desired behavior more likely to appear, while punishment refers to an stimulus that makes the behavior less likely to appear.

When we talk about a positive reinforcement, we are talking about giving the subject something desirable in order to make the desired behavior more likely to appear.

In this example, Lydia would pet her new dog and give him treats for staying close during walks. Now, the dog stays by her side even when he is not on a leash. We can see that Lydia gave the dog something desirable (pets and treats) and this made the behavior of staying close to be learned by him. Thus, petting and receiving treats acted as positive reinforcers for staying close.

Answer 2

B) Positive reinforcers for staying close.

Step-by-step explanation:

Reinforcement in behavioral psychology is defined as the outcome applied that will strengthen an organism's future behavior whenever that behavior is preceded by a specific antecedent stimulus. This strengthening effect may be measured as a higher frequency of behavior (e.g., pulling a lever more frequently), longer duration (e.g., pulling a lever for longer periods of time), greater magnitude (e.g., pulling a lever with greater force), or shorter latency (e.g., pulling a lever more quickly following the antecedent stimulus). Positive reinforcement and Negative reinforcement are the two types of reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement is a situation where by a reward is offered on expression of the wanted behaviour while negative reinforcement is taking away an undesirable element in the persons environment whenever the desired behaviour is achieved.

The dog now stays close to Lydia even when not on leash because it knows that it might likely get a treat for staying close to her and this is likened to be Positive Reinforcers for staying close.