Will extinction be any different when the behavior is previously reinforced on an intermittent schedule, compared to a continuous schedule (CRF)? Why or why not?
Intermittent schedule of reinforcement takes a much longer time to be extinct than continuous reinforcement. In continuous reinforcement, the behaviour can be extinct after less than fifty trials, whereas in intermittent reinforcement it can take upto thousand trials for the behaviour to get extinct. The reason for this is that in CR, the person immediately knows that the behaviour is not being reinforced, but in IR, the person may be expecting the reinforcement and it takes longer time to realise. Another reason is that in CR, the person learns to associate reward with every trial, but in IR, the person keeps patients and keep trying despite non reinforcements.
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