Skinner Chapter 4 - Cooper, Chow, Stewart

[Abi Cooper]

1. What is a “reflex?”

A reflex is made up of an external stimulus and a consequential
response--there is always the same reaction to the same stimulus,
otherwise the reaction is not a reflex. They are dictated by the
Central Nervous System. The majority of an organism’s actions are not
reflexes. Reflexes can sometimes be “fatigued” if it is elicited many
times in rapid succession.

2. What is the evolutionary value of reflexes? (p. 54)

A lot of the stimuli to which reflexes are responses could be damaging
to the organism if such a response did not exist. For example,
“Flexion Reflex” is what happens when an organism steps on something
painful--it quickly retracts its foot to prevent further harm. There
are also reflexes such as tear production to get dust out of the eye
and digestive reflexes that occur when certain foods are introduced to
the body. All of these help an organism survive and pass on its genes
to its offspring--this therefore makes it more likely that the
offspring will inherit the reflexes too and be better equipped to
survive.

3. Give two examples of irrational reflexes, as Skinner uses the
concept.

Irrational reflexes are when two stimuli are paired together but the
conditioned reflex is not useful. The conditioned stimulus may be the
same, but the unconditioned stimulus does not always come with the
conditioned stimulus, so the conditioned reflex that occurs is not
useful.

e.g. A child gets attacked by a dog and fears all dogs. But when the
child sees a friendly dog and gets scared, then the reflex is useless
because there is no need to be scared of the friendly dog.

e.g. When a child gets an allergic reaction to an apple, the child may
dislike all fruits because he/she may think they all cause allergic
reactions. Not all fruits cause the same reaction as the apple, so the
conditioned reflex to the apple is useless.

4. In a word or phrase, a conditioned stimulus is .

A neutral stimulus that acquires the power to elicit a conditioned
response.

5. What is extinction?

Once a conditioned stimulus does not elicit a conditioned response
because it is no longer reinforced. If someone wishes to stop a
conditioned response, but the response is very strong, the stimuli
first presented are only similar to the conditioned stimulus, and the
response undergoes extinction in gradated phases.