Results for “REINFORCEMENT (PSYCHOLOGY)” — Page 2

NASA NTRS1996

Respondents, Operants, and Emergents: Toward an Integrated Perspective on Behavior

A triarchic organization of behavior, building on Skinner's description of respondents and operants, is proposed by introducing a third class of behavior called 'emergents.' Emergents are new responses, never specifically reinforced, that require operations more complex than association. Some of these operations occur naturally only in animals above a minimum level of brain complexity, and are developed in an interaction between treatment and organismic variables. (Here complexity is defined in terms of relative levels of hierarchical integration made possible both by the amount of brain, afforded both by brain-body allometric relationships and by encephalization, and, also, the elaboration of dendritic and synaptic connections within the cortex and connections between various parts/regions of the brain.) Examples of emergents are discussed to advance this triarchic view, of behavior. The prime example is language. This triarchic view reflects both the common goals and the cumulative nature of psychological science.

Rumbaugh, Daune M.↗

NASA NTRS2003

Rapid motor learning in the translational vestibulo-ocular reflex

Motor learning was induced in the translational vestibulo-ocular reflex (TVOR) when monkeys were repeatedly subjected to a brief (0.5 sec) head translation while they tried to maintain binocular fixation on a visual target for juice rewards. If the target was world-fixed, the initial eye speed of the TVOR gradually increased; if the target was head-fixed, the initial eye speed of the TVOR gradually decreased. The rate of learning acquisition was very rapid, with a time constant of approximately 100 trials, which was equivalent to <1 min of accumulated stimulation. These learned changes were consolidated over >or=1 d without any reinforcement, indicating induction of long-term synaptic plasticity. Although the learning generalized to targets with different viewing distances and to head translations with different accelerations, it was highly specific for the particular combination of head motion and evoked eye movement associated with the training. For example, it was specific to the modality of the stimulus (translation vs rotation) and the direction of the evoked eye movement in the training. Furthermore, when one eye was aligned with the heading direction so that it remained motionless during training, learning was not expressed in this eye, but only in the other nonaligned eye. These specificities show that the learning sites are neither in the sensory nor the motor limb of the reflex but in the sensory-motor transformation stage of the reflex. The dependence of the learning on both head motion and evoked eye movement suggests that Hebbian learning may be one of the underlying cellular mechanisms.

Non-NASA Center↗