Differential reinforcement

Assessment | Biopsychology | Comparative | Cognitive | Developmental | Language | Individual differences | Personality | Philosophy | Social |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |

Cognitive Psychology: Attention · Decision making · Learning · Judgement · Memory · Motivation · Perception · Reasoning · Thinking  - Cognitive processes Cognition - Outline Index

---

Reinforcement

Reinforcement

Community reinforcement Contingent reinforcement Cumulative record Differential reinforcement Law of effect Mathematical principles Negative reinforcement Noncontingent reinforcement Nonverbal reinforcement Positive reinforcement Primary reinforcement Punishment Reinforcement amounts Reinforcement delay Reinforcement theory Rewards Reward system Schedules of reinforcement Secondary reinforcement Self reinforcement Social punishment Social reinforcement

Differential reinforcement is a paradigm in operant conditioning in whichreinforcement is contingent on more than one behavior. For example a rat in a skinner box may be reinforced for pressing a lever in response to one type of signal but not to another.

This is useful in establishing the ability of a subject to discriminate across a wide range of variables. So can pigeons distinguish between red and green? This is how we find out.

Further elaboration of the paradigm involves:

• Differential reinforcement of high response rates
• Differential reinforcement of low response rates
• Differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior
• Differential reinforcement of other responses
• Differential reinforcement of paced responses

---

See also

• Discrimination learning
• Omission training

Additional material

Papers

• Google Scholar