Learning in Action

Right after being tested on chapter 6 about Learning, I went home for Thanksgiving break. At home, I had the funniest experience that had to with the topics we have covered in class and provided some real-life examples. First, my cat ran outside at night on Thanksgiving. It was dark, and we did not know how to find her. We were looking outside for about 20 minutes when my mom had the idea to bring out her bag of cat food and shake it, in the hopes that my cat would come when she heard the food. Amazingly, this worked. Right after we started shaking the bag around my neighbor's yard, which was the direction we saw her run in, she darted out from where she was hiding and came right up to the bag. I realized that this might be a nice example of Operant Conditioning. We always shake her bag of food when we pour it into her bowl, which lets her know food is coming, and she runs to it. The reinforcer is that she gets food, so she keeps repeating the behavior. She responded the same way, even in a different environment! Skinner would be proud.
Another example of learning occurred with my brother. He used to get rewards for cleaning his room, but over time my mom stopped rewarding him. He realized that he wasn't getting anything in return for cleaning his room anymore, so he stopped. His behavior was not being reinforced, so it waned off. He used to be given a treat after every week that he cleaned his room (fixed interval.) That worked fairly well when he was getting reinforces, but as this slowly dwindled (every few weeks to whenever it was randomly checked) the set schedule faded and the behavior ceased to be repeated. This shaping only worked when he was getting reinforced on a set pattern, and without this structure it collapsed. Psychology at work!