Introduction This report discusses an experiment to study operant conditioning, extinction and renewal. The objective of the experiment was to shape (also known as operant conditioning) the subject to press the bar, then perform extinction (forgetting the operant conditioning), and renewal (the recovery of acquisition performance when the contextual cues that were presented during extinction were changed). The study role of context similarity in ABA, ABC, and AAB renewal paradigms: Implications for theories of renewal and for treating human phobias conducted by Ayres at al in 2003 hypothesized that acquisition and extension would be similar because text contexts made it harder for fear to be renewed in testing sessions after extinction. The …show more content…
A two tailed t-test revealed that it was significant (t(10)= .000, p< .05, see figure 1). In trial two (ABA) subject made less bar presses on extinction (6.25 ± 6.65) than during renewal (19.17 ± 2.23). A two tailed t-test revealed that it was significant (t(11)= .001, p< .05, see figure 1). In trial three (AAA) subject made less bar presses on extinction (10.75 ± 2.20) than during baseline (47.67 ± 5.18). A two tailed t-test revealed that it was significant (t(11)= .000, p< .05, see figure 1). In trial four (AAA) subject made less bar presses on extinction (10.70 ± 2.20) than during renewal (11.67 ± 2.40). A two tailed t-test revealed that it was not significant (t(11)= .727, p> .05, see figure 1). In trial five (ABA vs AAA) subjects made less bar presses during same(AAA) trial (11.67 ± 2.40) than during different (ABA) trial (19.17 ± 2.23). A two tailed t-test revealed that it was significant (t(22)= .032, p< .05, see figure 1). Discussion The objective of this experiment was to view if an animal is conditioned in one context and extinguished in another, will result in the conditioned behavior when placed back into its original context (or renewal). Operant conditioning also known as instrumental conditioning is a type of learning where behavior is controlled by consequences (shown in our experiment when the subject pressed the lever, it is reinforced with a food; positive reinforcement). Extinction occurs when operant conditioning did not result in their expected outcome (subject pressed the lever and no food was rewarded) this will result in subject reducing or eliminating the conditioned behavior. Sometimes an occurrence called spontaneous recovery can occur, when after some time the subject may begin rapidly responding to its initial conditioned behavior. The results showed that the hypothesis was correct. Results were similar