The behavioral shaping procedure relies on which of the following mechanisms?
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Answer: D. differential reinforcement
Explanation
Behavioral shaping uses differential reinforcement, rewarding successive approximations toward the target behavior. By reinforcing only behaviors that closely resemble the desired goal, trainers guide subjects along a precise behavioral pathway. Differential reinforcement ensures that earlier, simpler responses are eventually extinguished as more advanced approximations emerge. Shaping is an operant conditioning technique developed to establish complex behaviors that animals would never spontaneously perform. Successive approximations are intermediate behavioral steps that progressively resemble the ultimate target action required by the experimenter. This method bypasses the need to wait for a complex behavior to occur entirely by chance in a subject.
Positive reinforcement alone lacks the progressive step-by-step guidance needed to build complex novel behaviors from scratch. Neutral acknowledgment fails to provide the motivational consequence required to alter or guide ongoing behavioral patterns effectively. Negative reinforcement removes an aversive stimulus but does not provide the gradual approximation mechanism required for shaping.
- Subject
- Psychology
- Category
- Psychology
- Topic
- —
- Difficulty
- medium
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