So imprinting is a jargon thing. I did use it in a "wrong" way in psyche, admittedly. Some patterns are hardwired in the brain it would seem. This has been seen in hermit crabs as well whose very eyes see other hermit crabs better than other shapes.
Random reinforcement may cause neurotic breakdown, where sometimes you drop a food pellet, and sometimes you shock if the lever isn't pressed, when the light comes on.
Let me see, at the light you either drop a pellet, OR you shock if they don't press -- sometimes? And then you remove the shock AND the pellet too? That is double reinforcement.
What is a poor rat to do? They must press or get shocked. So they press. After a while, no pellet. No shock if they don't. Rat shits in the corner.
Light on, press, food pellet. Light on, press, shock. Now that will lead to few presses I will tell you.
So you establish that aversion leads to more repeated behaviour than reward. Logically why would this be?
Avoidance is a survival mechanism. But energy is in the equation here. If you do useless work that is feedback on the failure of return too. When the rat was pressing and not getting the pellet (s)he was getting negative feedback. But when (s)he was pressing and NOT getting shocked the positive feedback was continuous -- (how would he know otherwise?). So it is no wonder that he continued to press! I suppose you could say there were times the shock was not felt in some cases, but that is hard for the subject to calculate. Precautionary measures may be built into us. After all the equality of shock and food is hard to calculate too.
EC<:-} |
