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This stimulus may be a primary reinforcer or another conditioned reinforcer (such as money). When trying to distinguish primary and secondary reinforcers in human examples, use the "caveman test." If the stimulus is something that a caveman would naturally find desirable (e.g. candy) then it is a primary reinforcer.
The reward system (the mesocorticolimbic circuit) is a group of neural structures responsible for incentive salience (i.e., "wanting"; desire or craving for a reward and motivation), associative learning (primarily positive reinforcement and classical conditioning), and positively-valenced emotions, particularly ones involving pleasure as a core component (e.g., joy, euphoria and ecstasy).
Operant conditioning employs two kinds of reinforcement to instruct animals in performing behaviors: Primary reinforcement, which involves unconditioned rewards such as food, and secondary reinforcement, which includes learned rewards that teach reinforcing properties through their connection to primary reinforcers. Examples of secondary ...
Reinforcement is more likely to influence behavior if given shortly after the response is emitted. The longer people have to wait for a reward, the less effect and the less they will learn. This is the principle of delay discounting. Immediate token reinforcement can bridge later reinforcement. [7]
For example, shaping is a process by which successive approximations are rewarded until the desirable response topography is attained. [13] An animal trainer can use conditioned reinforcers, like clickers, to bridge the interval between response and positive reinforcement. [14]
Operant conditioning originated with Edward Thorndike, whose law of effect theorised that behaviors arise as a result of consequences as satisfying or discomforting. In the 20th century, operant conditioning was studied by behavioral psychologists, who believed that much of mind and behaviour is explained through environmental conditioning.
Primary drives are innate drives (e.g., thirst, hunger, and sex), whereas secondary drives are learned by conditioning (e.g., money). Doris Kraeling and Byron Campbell conducted experiments to determine if “reduction would be more effective as a reinforcer if the initial drive were low than if the initial drive were high.”
[9] [10] [12] As conditioned positive reinforcers of drug use, these previously neutral stimuli are assigned incentive salience (which manifests as a craving) – sometimes at pathologically high levels due to reward sensitization – which can transfer to the primary reinforcer (e.g., the use of an addictive drug) with which it was originally ...