Shaping- A childhood classic?
    I just started working in the rat lab last week, and we are training our rat to push down this cart off of a ramp. How are we planning to teach this, you may ask? Well, by reinforcing the little steps the rat takes leading up to his big feat of pushing the cart down the ramp. 

    It starts out with a look in the right direction- bam, reinforced with food. 

    Now, stepping in the right direction- kaching, food!

    Then, a paw on the first step- bang, reinforced.

   Paws on second step, third, fourth..... now all four paws on the steps- reinforced, reinforced, reinforced! He has finally gotten the hang of what we want him to do. 

   I would compare this to the "hot and cold" game that we played as children. We would get in a group and we would hide an object from one person, then they would have to find it. When the person was getting closer, we would clap (reinforcer). But if they started going in the wrong direction, we would stop clapping. Eventually, even if they were in the right direction, if they stopped making progress towards the object, we wouldn't clap. 
   
    For both scenarios, little progress in the right direction was reinforced, and the old behaviors that aren't getting close to the ultimate end behavior, were extinct. This is shaping! Reinforcing little milestones to make it to the ultimate target goal. A principle from a childhood favorite is now being applied to a little rat (we call him George...)

Intermittent Reinforcement 

Recently in Psychology, we learned about different kinds of reinforcement, and how when you intermittently reinforce a behavior, the behavior will take longer to become extincted...

I always thought that if you sporadically reinforce a person's behavior, they would just stop that behavior and get the message. 

But that is not so. It actually INCREASES behavior.

This new discovery was relevant for a few reasons, but  mainly this one- I have been e-mailing this guy who is in the friend zone (but we all know how guys will do anything they can do get out of it...), and I wanted to make it known that we were only friends, and nothing more. So what did I do? I would sporadically send him e-mails, but he would still constantly write me! It made zero sense at first. If someone only gave you spontaneous attention, why would you keep trying? Why, because of the intermittent reinforcement principle, of course!

One of my favorite ways Psychology, and more specifically, Operant and Classical conditioning, have been exposed in today's society, is through TV shows like "The Big Bang Theory", and "The Office". It's so fun to see how they humorously apply this basic conditioning knowledge in their shows! 

The Big Bang Theory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euINCrDbbD4&feature=BFa&list=PL7D1E971356139EB8

The Office:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE8pFWP5QDM