Everything about Reinforcement
Consequence affecting an organism's future behavior
In behavioral psychology, reinforcement refers to consequences that increase the likelihood of an organism's future behavior, typically in the presence of a particular antecedent stimulus. For example, a rat can be trained to push a lever to receive food whenever a light is turned on; in this example, the light is the antecedent stimulus, the lever pushing is the operant behavior, and the food is the reinforcer. Likewise, a student that receives attention and praise when answering a teacher's question will be more likely to answer future questions in class; the teacher's question is the antecedent, the student's response is the behavior, and the praise and attention are the reinforcements. Punishment is the inverse to reinforcement, referring to any behavior that decreases the likelihood that a response will occur. In operant conditioning terms, punishment does not need to involve any type of pain, fear, or physical actions; even a brief spoken expression of disapproval is a type of punishment. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: ReinforcementA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving: A SurveyInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: Design of reinforced concreteThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: Human-level control through deep reinforcement learningCited 25,310 times
- Go sideways: Operant conditioningA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Self-administrationA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun The act, process, or state of reinforcing or being reinforced.
Noun A thing that reinforces.
Noun Additional troops or materiel sent to support a military action.
Noun The process whereby a behavior with desirable consequences comes to be repeated.
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning
Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement.
Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction
Reinforcement Learning: A Survey
Deep Reinforcement Learning with Double Q-Learning
Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Brief Survey
The neural basis of human error processing: Reinforcement learning, dopamine, and the error-related negativity.
Simple statistical gradient-following algorithms for connectionist reinforcement learning
🆕 Influential since 2022
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving: A Survey
DeepSeek-R1 incentivizes reasoning in LLMs through reinforcement learning
Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Survey
Safe Learning in Robotics: From Learning-Based Control to Safe Reinforcement Learning
Champion-level drone racing using deep reinforcement learning
📚 Books worth reading
Design of reinforced concreteJack C. McCormac · 1978
Codependent No MoreMelody Beattie · 1986
Reinforced concreteJames G. MacGregor, James K. Wight · 1988
LearningFred Simmons Keller · 1954
Beyond CodependencyMelody Beattie · 1989
Reinforced concrete constructionGeorge Albert Hool · 1912
Reinforced ConcreteEdward G. Nawy · 1985
Reinforced concrete designer's handbookCharles E. Reynolds · 1948
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
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- B. F. Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor, and social philosopher. He was the Edgar…
- Operant conditioning chamber An operant conditioning chamber (also known as a Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior. The operant conditioning chamber…
- Punishment (psychology) Punishment is any change in a human or animal's surroundings which, occurring after a given behavior or response, reduces the likelihood of that behavior…