Operant Conditioning And Its Effect On Behavior

1. Operant conditioning is a type of behavioral learning developed by made famous by psychoanalysis B.F. Skinner in the late 1930’s. Operant conditioning is the act of learned behavior through consequences. Types of operant conditioning are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.

Operant conditioning is a theory that was pioneered by Skinner, and it is a theory that is based on the type of consequence that is given following a particular behaviour. Skinner divided the consequences of actions into three groups, positive rein forcers, negative reinforcers and punishers. Skinner looked at what would happen to behaviour if giving positive reinforcers at different intervals. Most professionals and practitioners will use this theory in one way or another such as giving rewards for good behaviour or sanctions for bad behaviour so the theory is well used in today’s frameworks and practices.

Behaviorist B.F. Skinner, which is why you may occasionally hear it referred to as Skinnerian conditioning coined operant conditioning. As a behaviorist, Skinner believed that internal thoughts and motivations could not be used to explain behavior. Instead, he suggested, we should look only at the external, observable causes of human behavior.

Just as Freud is known as the father of Psychoanalysis, B.F. Skinner is often referred to ask the “the father of operant conditioning.” B.F. Skinner is also known for major contributions to the field of psychology (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). Skinner was a prolific author, publishing nearly 200 articles and more than 20 books. Skinner was most known for his work in behavior psychology. Behavioral psychology is the psychological practice that focuses on learning new behaviors and how to modify our existing behavior and how that takes place (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). One of his major contributions was his theory of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning means roughly, the changing of behavior by the use of reinforcement, either positive or negative, and which these reinforcements are given after the desired response (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). Skinner identified three types of responses or operant that can follow behavior.

B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around the world, doing what it does. During this “operating,” the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant - which is the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is operant

As humans grow and develop, certain behaviors are added to the daily routines and form of living. The stage in which humans start associating and behaving according to their needs and environment is at their youngest age. Here different behavior patterns can be witnessed and corrected as well. Within these behavior patterns, classical and operant conditions can be identified.

A fundamental tenet of Skinner's radical behaviorism is that the probability of a behavior is related directly to the nature of the environmental consequences that follow performance of that behavior. From this basic tenet he derived a set of procedures for modifying behavior by a method called operant conditioning. Specifically, behavior is strengthened, or increased in frequency, when followed by either a positive consequence (positive reinforcement) or removal of a negative consequence (negative reinforcement). Behavior is weakened, or decreased

The situation that I wish to change is my brother chooses to play video games from as soon as he gets home to when he goes to bed and staying up late to do so. This causes him to fall behind on assignments as well as not get enough sleep to where it is difficult for him to get up in the morning. As well as missing classes when he oversleeps. This behavior has been going on for a couple years and has gotten worse within the past couple months. The operant behavior in this situation would be playing video games all night.

picked up the wallet and ran away, then Kevin is likely to see this as

Skinner’s theory observes individuals from the point of view of the behavior that they demonstrate. The key weakness of this theory is its attempt to explain the behaviors of an individual solely through visible phenomena. Critics sometimes accuse behaviorists of denying that ideas and thoughts exist (Jensen & Burgess, 1997). The major opposition that behaviorists face is that behavior of a person cannot be understood without including the mental activity of the individual. Critics have accused behaviorists of focusing only on behavior and ignoring the role of physiology, neuroscience, and genetics (Weiss & Rosales-Ruiz, 2014). Sometimes the reactions that people demonstrate have are not related their experience and therefore they have another

Operant conditioning is a type of learning which occurs through either receiving reinforcement or punishment for a behavior. This type of learning creates an association between a behavior and consequence for that behavior. The four types of operant conditioning are positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative reinforcement, and negative punishment. If operant conditioning was used properly it could be used to solve a variety of social and resource dilemmas; especially in the case of the cattle ranchers and overgrazing.

Operant conditioning is considered the second learning principle. This type of learning occurs due to the cause-and-effect relationship between a behavior and its consequences. Operant conditioning has a common sense element. When we reward a behavior, it increases. When we punish a behavior, it decreases (Horvath et.al. 2013). Individuals who dislike particular substances have little risk for developing an addiction to those substances. Such dislikes to certain drugs or substances are not uncommon. Some people do not enjoy certain substances so therefore this protects them from developing an addiction simply because those substances are not enjoyable so therefore they are not rewarding (Horvath et. al. 2013), because addiction is considered

Operant conditioning, is defined as an organism developing a link between its behaviors and consequences that follow those behaviors. The goal of operant conditioning is to develop a desired behavior in response to a given stimulus. When teaching a dog to roll over, the trainer wants the dog to rollover in response to his command. In this way the dog rolling onto its back is the

Skinner’s reinforcement experiments conducted on rats showed the principles of operant conditioning. While working with rats, Skinner would place them in a Skinner box with a lever attached to a feeding tube. After multiple trials, rats learned the connection between the lever and food, and started to spend more time in the box procuring food than performing any other action. He used positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement to produce or inhibit specific target behaviors. Therefore, if a specific behavior is reinforced then the probability of that behavior occurring again is increased. Based on Skinner’s view, this theory can be applied to learning because learning is nothing more than a change in behavior. Operant conditioning encourages positive reinforcement, which can be applied in the classroom environment to get the good behavior you want and need from students. One of the ways of reinforcing a student’s behavior is through praise. Also teachers can build operant conditioning techniques into their lesson plans to teach children possible skills as well as good behaviors. For example: to give a smiley face, or motivational stamps to encourage children to perform correctly and encourage them to repeat such action again.

Operant conditioning developed by Skinner is one of the learning methods according to which the likelihood of behavior is increased or decreased by the use of reinforcement or punishment. In case of positive reinforcement a certain behavior becomes stronger by the effect of experiencing some positive condition. In case of negative reinforcement a certain behavior becomes stronger by the outcome of stopping or staying away from some negative condition. In case of extinction a certain behavior is becomes weaker by the outcome of avoiding to experiencing some positive condition or stopping some negative condition.