behaviorism Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent (behavioral psychology), antecedent stimuli in the environment, o ...

, rate of reinforcement is number of

reinforcement In behavioral psychology, reinforcement is a consequence applied that will strengthen an organism's future behavior whenever that behavior is preceded by a specific antecedent stimulus. This strengthening effect may be measured as a higher freq ...

s per time, usually per minute. Symbol of this rate is usually ''Rf''. Its first major exponent was

B.F. Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. ...

(1939). It is used in the

Matching Law In operant conditioning, the matching law is a quantitative relationship that holds between the relative rates of response and the relative rates of reinforcement in concurrent schedules of reinforcement. For example, if two response alternatives A ...

. ''Rf'' = ''# of reinforcements/unit of time'' = ''S^R+''/''t''

References

* Herrnstein, R.J. (1961). Relative and absolute strength of responses as a function of frequency of reinforcement. ''Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour'', 4, 267–272. * Herrnstein, R.J. (1970). On the law of effect. ''Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior'', 13, 243–266. * Skinner, B.F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis. , . Behaviorism Quantitative analysis of behavior

Reinforcement In behavioral psychology, reinforcement is a consequence applied that will strengthen an organism's future behavior whenever that behavior is preceded by a specific antecedent stimulus. This strengthening effect may be measured as a higher freq ...

{{psych-stub

See also

References