Q.Explain why a slot machine, which pays out unpredictably, produces gambling behaviour that is extremely resistant to extinction, using the concept of reinforcement schedules.

A slot machine reinforces on a partial/intermittent schedule, which is precisely the schedule known to produce the strongest resistance to extinction. …

The extreme resistance to extinction seen in slot-machine gambling behaviour is a textbook illustration of the partial reinforcement effect. Reinforcement schedules can broadly be continuous, where a response is reinforced every single time it occurs, or partial (intermittent), where only some occurrences of the response are reinforced. A slot machine is a clear real-world example of partial reinforcement: pulling the lever (the operant response) is reinforced (a payout) only occasionally and unpredictably, not on every single pull.

Continuous reinforcement produces a high rate of responding while it is in effect, but such responses extinguish very quickly once reinforcement is withdrawn, because the organism can easily detect that a previously constant reward has now completely stopped. Partial reinforcement behaves very differently: because reinforcement is already absent on the great majority of trials as a normal part of this schedule, it becomes genuinely difficult for the gambler to tell whether a current losing streak represents reinforcement having stopped for good, or is simply another ordinary stretch of non-payout within the normal pattern of the schedule, after which a payout is 'due' again as usual. This uncertainty is precisely why responses built up under partial reinforcement are markedly more resistant to extinction than responses built up under continuous reinforcement — a gambler will typically keep pulling the lever through long losing streaks, because nothing about a losing streak feels categorically different from the normal experience of playing the machine, unlike a hypothetical machine that had reliably paid out every single time and then abruptly stopped altogether, where the change would be immediately obvious. …