Like most colleges and universities, my former university in Colorado had many faculty commit- tees. When I first joined the faculty as an assistant professor, I eagerly agreed to serve on commit- tees whenever I could, perceiving them to be a means of meeting other faculty members and having input into university decision making. But before long, I discovered that many faculty committees spend years chewing on the same issues without ever arriving at consensus or other- wise accomplishing very much. Having many other responsibilities on my plate (preparing for classes, grading papers, conducting research—not to mention raising three children), I was frus- trated by the amount of time I was wasting in such unproductive activities. The unpleasant feel- ings I experienced during meetings were aversive stimuli—they were punishing my go-to-a-meeting behavior. I soon found myself inventing excuses to leave meetings early (“I’m so
sorry, but I must take my son to the dentist”). In other words, I was acquiring escape behaviors that led to negative reinforcement. Eventually I stopped volunteering to join committees, ena- bling me to avoid these aversive events altogether.
In general, avoidance learning is the process of learning to stay away from an aversive stimulus— perhaps one that causes pain, anxiety, or frustration. For avoidance learning to occur, a learner must have some sort of pre-aversive stimulus , a cue signaling the advent of the aversive stimulus. For example, rats who hear a buzzer and are then given an electric shock quickly learn to jump a hurdle as soon as they hear the buzzer (a pre-aversive stimulus) and can thereby avoid the painful shock (Mowrer, 1938, 1939). Similarly, children quickly learn to pull a brass handle as soon as a light flashes so that they can avoid an unpleasantly loud noise (N. M. Robinson & Robinson, 1961). In my case, announce- ments of committee meetings and requests for new members were pre-aversive stimuli telling me that committee-avoiding behaviors were in order.
Avoidance learning can take either of two forms. In active avoidance learning , the learner must actively make a particular response to avoid an aversive event. Unfortunately, studying behavior is, for many folks, an instance of active avoidance learning. Ideally, studying should be an enjoyable activity in its own right (thereby providing intrinsic reinforcement), but many peo- ple don’t enjoy it in the least. (I, for one, would much rather read a mystery novel or watch a television game show.) By studying fairly regularly, most students are able to avoid an aversive stimulus—a failing grade. Consider how rarely studying behavior occurs when there’s no signal of possible impending doom (no pre-aversive stimulus), such as an assigned research report or an upcoming exam.
In passive avoidance learning , learners learn that not making a particular response allows
them to avoid an aversive event. For example, people who feel awkward and uncomfortable in social situations tend not to go to parties or other social events. Likewise, students who have trouble working with numbers rarely sign up for advanced math or statistics classes if they can help it.
From a behaviorist perspective, avoidance learning may sometimes be a two-step process that involves both classical conditioning and instrumental conditioning (Eelen & Vervliet, 2006; Katagiri, 1987; Mowrer, 1956). In the first step, because the pre-aversive stimulus and the aver- sive stimulus are presented close together in time, the learner learns to fear the pre-aversive stimulus through a process of classical conditioning, as alluded to in Chapter 3 and illustrated in Figure 4.7 . In the second step, an avoidance response leads to negative reinforcement (escape from the fear-inducing pre-aversive stimulus) and possibly also intrinsic positive reinforcement (feelings of relief about the escape).
Avoidance behaviors are difficult to extinguish: Even when a previously aversive situation has lost all sources of unpleasantness, people continue to avoid it and thus have no opportu- nity to learn that the situation is now a fairly comfortable one. For example, some students may regularly associate mathematics with frustration and failure and, through classical condi- tioning, acquire a fear of math. These students may avoid math classes indefinitely, even after they’ve developed the knowledge and skills they need for comprehending previously trouble- some concepts. If they never again enroll in a math class, they’ll never learn that they have nothing to fear!
Undoubtedly the best way to deal with avoidance behaviors in the classroom is to prevent
them from being learned in the first place—something that can best be accomplished by mini- mizing aversive classroom events (see Chapter 3 ). Another alternative is to extinguish any classi- cally conditioned fear responses to pre-aversive stimuli through systematic desensitization (again see Chapter 3 ). A third approach is less “warm and fuzzy”—that is, it may initially engender some hard feelings—but can sometimes work quite well. In particular, we simply prevent learn- ers from making unproductive avoidance responses, thereby enabling them to discover that they
have nothing to fear about a situation. For example, a school advisor or counselor might insist that a chronically math-anxious student enroll in a math class; once in class, the student might discover that mathematics can be a rewarding rather than frustrating experience. In some cir- cumstances, students don’t necessarily know what’s best for them.
NS (pre-aversive stimulus) UCS (aversive stimulus) UCR (fear) CS (pre-aversive stimulus) CR (fear) Figure 4.7
Learning to fear a pre-aversive stimulus through classical conditioning
Up to this point I’ve portrayed instrumental conditioning as involving associations between responses and the consequences (reinforcements or punishments) that come immediately after those responses. Yet humans and nonhumans alike learn to make different responses in different contexts. For instance, in our discussion of avoidance learning, we discovered that avoidance behaviors occur only when there’s a pre-aversive stimulus of some kind to signal an upcoming aversive situation. More generally, some stimuli and responses, known as antecedent stimuli and antecedent responses , set the stage for certain behaviors to follow and, perhaps, for other behaviors not to follow. Here we’ll look at several concepts—cueing, setting events, generaliza-
tion, and discrimination—that involve antecedent stimuli, as well as at one concept—behavioral momentum—that involves antecedent responses.
Cueing
In his theory of operant conditioning, Skinner acknowledged that organisms often learn that a particular response leads to reinforcement only when a certain stimulus—something he called a discriminative stimulus —is present. This antecedent stimulus doesn’t directly elicit the response as it does in classical conditioning. Rather, it increases the probability that the response will be followed by reinforcement; in Skinner’s words, it “sets the occasion” for the response to be rein- forced. We might diagram the relationship this way (we’ll use the symbol S+ to represent the discriminative stimulus):
(S+) R → S Rf
When an organism is more likely to make certain responses in the presence of certain stimuli, behaviorists say that the organism is under stimulus control .
In the classroom, the discriminative stimuli that set the occasions for certain desired behaviors aren’t always obvious ones; for example, the only naturally occurring stimulus that sets the occasion for cleaning up work materials and getting ready to go to lunch might be a clock on the wall that says 11:55. Under such circumstances, teachers can provide additional discriminative stimuli that let students know how to behave—a strategy often called cueing or prompting .
Sometimes cueing involves nonverbal signals that remind students about desired responses. For example, during a cooperative learning activity, a teacher might quickly flash the overhead light on and off a few times to remind students to talk quietly rather than loudly. In other situations, verbal cues are more helpful. For instance, an elementary teacher whose class is preparing to go to the lunchroom might cue students by saying “Walk quietly and in single file” and then allowing them to proceed only if they behave as instructed. A middle school science teacher who wants to give students a subtle reminder about the impor- tance of completing an in-class reading assignment might say, “After you’ve all finished read- ing the section about great apes on pages 69 through 72, I’ll tell you about tomorrow’s field trip to the zoo.”
Teachers can also use cueing to remind students about what responses are apt to lead to punishment. For example, a teacher could use body language (a scowl or furrowed brow), phys- ical proximity (moving close to a student), or a brief verbal comment (“Lucy, put the magazine
Effects of Antecedent Stimuli and Responses in
away”) to discourage disruptive or off-task behaviors (Emmer, 1987; Northup et al., 1995; Woolfolk & Brooks, 1985).
Simple cues can be effective in nonclassroom settings as well. For instance, when peo- ple leave grocery stores, restaurants, or community centers, employees or signs that tell them to “buckle up” increase the likelihood that they’ll fasten their seat belts as they drive away (e.g., J. Austin, Alvero, & Olson, 1998; Clayton & Helms, 2009; M. G. Cox & Geller, 2010).