Operant Conditioning is based on the idea that an individual's response to external stimuli can be modified, or changed, depending upon the consequences of that individual's response. Formulated by famed psychologist B.F. Skinner, operant conditioning deals mainly with voluntary behavior, or operant behavior. While classical conditioning deals mainly with involuntary, or reflex, behaviors, Skinner's theory maintains a system of consequences for reactions which are called punishment and reinforcement. Punishment is a consequence that makes a person not want to perform the specific response. While reinforcement is a consequence that causes a person's response to happen more often. For instance, rewarding someone for a particular response to stimuli can make that person repeat that response more often. There is also a third consequence, extinction, in which there is no consequence what so ever for a particular behavior. ("Operant Conditioning B.F. Skinner")
On one hand is punishment, which can also be divided into positive and negative. Positive punishment is when a response is followed by an adverse stimuli, such as a subject being shocked with electricity. Negative punishment happens when a pleasing stimuli is removed in response to a behavior, such as removing something the subject enjoys. (Operant Conditioning Basics")
Reinforcement can also be divided into two parts: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement happens when a subject performs behavior and...
Then, on seeing that the rearing has become a little bit familiar to him, sniffy is therefore, reinforced when he rears at a point with the bar. After several attempts of the previous steps, sniffy was encouraged to rear up nearer to the bar as possible. During the regular training observation, incase sniffy rears so close to the bar this increases the likelihood that sniffy will press on the bar.
This technique is called shaping, as the teacher starts with information students already know and then new information is broken into small pieces. In teaching vocabulary, the teacher is more likely to suggest or work with the textbook, and the setting of a democratic environment based on common agreement is not such an important fact as in the humanistic approach. The lesson starts with a revision and review of the information
My reasoning is based not only upon the behavior itself, but also upon the relationship between the organism and the trainer. An organism that most receives negative reinforcement associates such reinforcement not only with the undesirable behavior, but also with the trainer. The relationship between the trainer and organism is damaged, and trust is undermined. Trust is important to effective training. A better way to discourage undesirable behavior is perhaps
Operant Conditioning/Behavior Modification The idea of operant conditioning for humans was first developed by Burrhus Frederick Skinner, who looked at work using operant conditioning with animals. He concluded that using operant conditioning, or behavior modification, with humans was possible, and that all if all external factors were controlled, internal mental processes would not be a significant factor. He believed that all human behavior was shaped by the principles of operant conditioning:
The rate of such behavior was considered to be significant as a measure of responsive strength (Skinner 1938, 1966, 1986; Killeen & Hall 2001). True or not, the emphasis on response rate has resulted in a scarcity of investigational work by operant conditioners on non-recurrent behavior such as movement in space. Operant conditioning differs from other type of learning study in one important aspect. The focus has been more or
The manager of a manufacturing organization could offer the rewards when the amount of items produced increases by a constant number. Say for instance a worker produces 5 parts a day; if he produces 6 during one day, he will not receive a rewards, but if he produces 6 parts every day, throughout a whole month, he would receive a reward. This way, the objective of increasing the productivity would
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