Operant Conditioning Operaant Behavior

Operant conditioning (sometimes referred to as instrumental conditioning) is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior.

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.

The behaviourist approach is a classical conditioning and an example of this would be in a hospital. An individual who has a phobia of being in the dark but this can be helped as they can be shown that they are able to overcome it and they are shown techniques to control it. For operant conditioning a child at the doctors who need an injection, I the child lets the nurse or doctor give the injection they are normally rewarded with a sticker and even balloons. Another example would be within the health and social care setting such as a school for behavioural problems with the operant conditioning of the behaviourist approach can be used. When the child behaves they can be given a reward then this will lead to being conditioned to behaving in a certain manner as they know they will receive good out of it.

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

When I was in my psychology class in high school, we spent a month talking about classical conditioning and we did many interesting experiments involving it. We also touched on operant conditioning and social learning, so I have some background knowledge in this subject. Classical and operant conditioning, along with social learning, are all ways to teach animals or humans how to behave. These theories developed because psychologists wanted to understand why people behave the way they do and many famous experiments have been conducted to answer this question. It was very interesting to learn more about these theories and how they work, and relating them to my own personal experiences.

Determining the best way to raise and teach children is a topic that has been discussed and debated for a long time. As psychology has developed, so has our understanding of how organisms learn and how we can apply that to our lives. One method of teaching is operant conditioning, giving either rewards or punishments after a certain behavior to promote or discourage it. This method could be used to teach children; for example, teaching children to say please when asking for items.

Skinner and his colleagues (Gass & Larry, 2008), learning or a change of behaviour on the part of the learner, is brought about by a process known as 'operant conditioning' which is the result of repeated training. Operant means 'voluntary behaviour' which is the result of learner's own free-will and is not forced by any outsider or thing (Ortega, 2009). The learner will demonstrate the new behaviour first as a response to a system of a reward or punishment, and finally it will become an automatic response.

Personal happiness can be dependent upon another person or organism's behavior. This theory most definitely applies to me. I have a part-time job working at a daycare. One of my responsibilities is to help the afterschool kids with their homework. One child in particular, Sally, requires a lot of bribing and nagging to get her to start on her homework. I would be significantly happier at work if Sally would get out her homework after being asked only once, without being bribed. Using the operant conditioning and shaping method, I plan to get Sally to meet the goal, which is to start her homework after being asked only once without being bribed.The first day I started my operant conditioning plan, I asked Sally very nicely to get out her homework. Sally responded by whining saying that she wanted to do it at home. I then asked her a few more times only to be met with the same response. Seeing that I was getting nowhere, I then told her that if she started on her homework now, in fifteen minutes I would let her stop and play with Barbies. It was only then with the bribe that she got out her homework. After Sally

Classical conditioning can be explained through humans best kept secret; urinating in the shower. Though many deny, the sound of running water typically elicits the natural response to urinate. After awhile, it is common to become conditioned to associate a shower (without the water on) with the urge to urinate. Thus, classical conditioning is a learned association between a stimulus (any sight, smell, sound, taste, or touch (like the sound of running water)), and a neutral stimulus (like the shower) that triggers the same response (the urge to urinate).

To change his behavior, I will provide a negative punishment each time he throws a temper tantrum. When an individual receives a negative punishment, something is taken away from him or her in order to decrease the frequency of his or her behavior. I would take 5 minutes away from my student’s recess and or free choice time. Because I am taking away something this student enjoys he is more likely to complete his homework so he can still participate in his free time. To promote an alternate (or better) behavior, I will give the student a positive reinforcement. With a positive reinforcement, something is added to increase an individual’s behavior. I will give the student one sticker each time he successfully completes an assignment; once the student completes five assignments he will receive a piece of candy. Since I am rewarding the student after he completes a certain number of assignments I am applying a fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement to the student. A schedule of reinforcement defines the patterns that outline how often a desired response will be reinforced. My student will learn that his behavior is linked with consequences and that if he wants a positive consequence he will stop throwing temper

A target behavior, TB, is defined as a behavior in which one would like to modify. A target behavior can be increased or decreased using operant conditioning (Militenberg, 2012). Operant conditioning is the use of punishment and reinforcement to increase or decrease a target behavior(Skinner, 1998). Whether something is a punisher or a reinforcer depends on the effect it has on the target behavior. When a punisher is used the target behavior will decrease, but when a reinforcer is used the target behavior will increase. This can be seen in Thorndike’s Law of effect which states that a behavior that produces a favorable effect on the environment will be more likely to be repeated in the future(Militenberg,2012). All of these factors come into

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

Example of Operant conditioning, is when you decided to snooze the alarm in the morning after partying all night long. Finally you decide to get up to go to work you are running 15 min late. And decide to step on gas pedal. You are now driving 50 mph on a 35 mph road. You think you are fine and won 't get caught because everyone else is driving fast also. All of sudden a cop is hidden in between the trees and bushes. You try to brake, in order to slow down a bit, but it 's too late…. The cop has turn on the lights and tail-gating you already. You pull over and you try to convince him that you had a “tough night”… even though it 's a lie, and to let you off with a warning. The cop tells you he doesn 't care and you should know better. Therefore he gives you a speeding ticket of about two hundred dollars and a court date if you decide to fight it. In order to go to court you will have to miss work, which means you won 't get paid. Then you have to pay for all the additional court fees if you want to go to clear your record; your insurance will go up, have to pay for driving school and miss more work also. You will have to go through all this trouble, time and money. Just for being too lazy and “tired” to get up on time.

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.

As a dog owner, I know how important it is to teach your pets how to behave. Yet, it is important to understand how learning works so that you can develop a strategy to properly and quickly teach your dog. The example of training a dog to roll over is a great model for analysing the aspects of learning involved with this process. Understanding how operant conditioning works and how to reinforce a desired response to that stimuli will help trainers effectively teach dogs. Psychologists, such as Myers (2013), define learning as the process of acquiring new knowledge and behaviors. In this case we are specifically discussing the acquisition of a certain response to a stimulus. The stimulus is the trainer’s command and the desired behavior is the dog to roll over onto his back. These ideas all are based on Edward L. Thorndike’s principle called the law of effect, wherein he stated that behaviors followed by a positive outcomes are more likely to increase in probability. These are all important components of the learning process, especially on the level of training a dog or instilling a simple behavior.