"The successive approximations reinforced are increasingly accurate approximations of a response desired by a trainer. As training progresses the trainer stops reinforcing the less accurate approximations. For example, in training a rat to press a lever, the following successive approximations might be reinforced:
- simply turning toward the lever will be reinforced
- only stepping toward the lever will be reinforced
- only moving to within a specified distance from the lever will be reinforced
- only touching the lever with any part of the body, such as the nose, will be reinforced
- only touching the lever with a specified paw will be reinforced
- only depressing the lever partially with the specified paw will be reinforced
- only depressing the lever completely with the specified paw will be reinforced
The culmination of the process is that the strength of the response (measured here as the frequency of lever-pressing) increases. In the beginning, there is little probability that the rat would depress the lever, the only possibility being that it would depress the lever by accident. Through training the rat can be brought to depress the lever frequently."
Just a thought, but I imagine there are ways manic behaviour may develop from this sort of testing. Imagine the lab rat if the rewards were immense or even addictive. I imagine it'd begin to depress the lever repeatedly and incessantly, thinking more would come, in greater amount, for a hyperactive display of this behaviour.
Then imagine we condition the rat not to press so rapidly, by denying reward when it displays the abovementioned behaviour. If the rat bore sufficient cognitive abilities: its reinforced belief that frequent depression brings more rewards--and its conscious knowledge that pressing too frequently will deny it its reward--must begin to frustrate it eventually. Because it must press to be rewarded, but patiently, and not manically.
If I were the rat that'd drive me quite mad. I'd begin to hate my world and have delusions about reality and myself. But that is how the real world works; we aren't caged, and there is no "outside"--just as the rat, surely, believes.
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I really do wonder if I have Intermittent Explosive Disorder. (Capitalisation makes it look so much more disease-like.)
I feel as if the symptoms described are the exact ones I suffer. This damaging of property and causing harm to myself and others, on impulse. This unreasonable anger that is completely disproportionate to the provocation. The way it seizes me at random, and suddenly, and stirs the most violent of desires in me...
