Operant Conditioning Punishment

In chapter six in the General Psychology course, we learned about “Learning”. We learned the types of conditions that help people learn. One of the conditions is “Operant Conditioning” where learning is controlled by the organism’s behavior. During the lecture one thing that stood out to me was that in the operant condition, there is a term called positive punishment which is used to decrease bad behavior. It is used usually by parents to discipline their children when they misbehave in order to break that bad habit.

Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning which occurs when two stimuli are paired together repetitively and therefore become associated with each other eventually producing the same response. Classical conditioning was developed from the findings of Ivan Pavlov to account for associations between neutral stimuli and reflexive behavior such as salivation. Pavlov (1927) accidently discovered that dogs began to salivate before they had tasted their food. To support his theory, he carried out experiments using dogs which involved measuring the amount of saliva they produced. In his experiments, food started off as an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) which produced salivation, an unconditioned response (UCR). They are both unconditioned as they occur naturally without being learned. The dogs were presented with a bell (NS), this provided no salivation. The bell and food were presented together and after many trails an

Classical conditioning is a form of learning that is taught to us through experiences we encounter in our lives. It involves outside stimuli to trigger the condition we have learned to expect. For example, the sound of a lunch bell would trigger our stomach to start growling soon after hearing the bell ring. The expectation of food to come soon after hearing the bell and satisfy our hunger is what makes our stomach growl. This is something learned over time. Expectations can be both good and bad. Sometimes these negative experiences cause us to have certain behaviors when we are reminded of such an event.

The theory of Classical Conditioning is one based on the idea that an individual can learn a new form of behavior simply from the process of association. Or simply put according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Classical Conditioning occurs when two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response” (“Classical,” 2015, para.2). In order to better understand Classical Conditioning, it is important to first define several key terms. A stimulus is any feature of the environment that affects behavior. A response is the behavior elicited by the stimulus (“Stimulus,” 2015, para.1).

Mr. Higginbotham uses the idea of operant conditioning and continuous reinforcement throughout his classroom. Operant conditioning is the behavior in which voluntary behavior are strengthened or weakened by consequences, while continuous reinforcement deals with giving a reinforcer after every response. These reinforcers can be either positive or negative, strengthening or weakening the behavior that occurred. Positive reinforcements are there to increase the opportunity of a specific behavior reoccurring and negative reinforcement is strengthening behavior that results in a negative action. (Woolfolk, 2014, pgs. 277-278). An example in Mr. Higginbotham’s class of positive reinforcement would be during the point in time when he decides to announce that his progress checks can each be earned towards bonus points on their project and once ten complete progress checks have occurred the children can also receive a homework pass. Another positive reinforcement is the three highest scoring students will receive twenty-five dollars to their class trip fund for their senior year. A negative reinforcement is demonstrated in Mr. Higginbotham’s class when Susan shows disrespectful behavior and earns four detentions. These four detentions equal a day of indoor, in-school suspension. So even when students do not want to do their homework the progress report check will help the students work towards that one homework pass. Both positive and negative reinforcement as continuous

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.

Although classical conditioning is something that most people experience in a daily basis, it may also be the first thing someone remembers in a day. According to Olson and Hergenhahn (2009) classical conditioning is defined as a type of learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally brings about that response. In this paper the subject is to describe the theory of classical conditioning as well as describing a scenario in which one could apply classical conditioning theory to, and bring forth the scenario by showing illustrations of how this could be used

Standard poodles are considered to be one of the top smartest and trainable breed of dogs. Therefore, I decided to train my dog to perform the shake maneuver. My pet is currently little over a year, and has previously been train certain commands that are helpful to his learning experience. For instance, the commands “No” and “Good boy”. This goal will enable me to work experience an example of operant conditioning using consequences and rewards for a desired response. He currently is very stubborn and tends to command me to give him the treat when learning new tricks. My ultimate objective is for him to successfully perform a simple shake when desired. Therefore, I will be using operant conditioning, which will be composed of using rewards and consequences to achieve this goal. This is an efficient conditioning operation to train behavior where a set of operations will yield for the desired results. This operate conditioning will create a routine that the subject will not initially inhabit but acquire through the process.

Classical conditioning involves automatic or reflexive responses. The automatic responses are naturally or involuntarily made by the person that is being conditioned (Goldman, 2016). For example, children have been classically conditioned to the bell and the music of the ice cream truck. Whenever the truck comes around the neighborhood playing the children’s music and ringing the bell (neutral stimulus), the children immediately associate with ice cream (UCS) and run towards the truck because they are salivating (UCR) with thirst. When the neutral stimulus (music and bell) is paired with the unconditional stimulus (ice cream) it becomes a conditional stimulus (CS). The result of conditional stimulus is the conditional response (CR). If the response was not conditioned the children would not associate the bell and the music with ice cream. They would only respond or start salivating when they see the actual ice cream.

In his experiments with dogs, Pavlov implanted tubes inside of dogs cheeks to measure how much saliva the dogs produced in response to various foods. Over a period of time, he began to notice that the dogs began to salivate at the sight of food, empty food bowl, and at the sound of the laboratory assistants footsteps. Since salivating to food in the mouth is a reflexive and salivating at the sight of an empty food bowl is not this intrigued Pavlov. He conducted a lot of controlled experiments and he was then able to train the dogs to salivate to things that had nothing to do with food, like the sound of the bell. He came to the conclusion that organisms had two types of responses to its environment: unconditioned responses and conditioned responses. In Pavlov’s experiments, everytime meat powder was presented to the dogs they would salivate. The meat powder was an unconditioned stimulus, which is an event that draws out a reflexive response in an organism. The dog's salivation was an unconditioned response, which is a natural reaction to an event. Next Pavlov would sound a tone and then give the dogs the meat powder. The tone was a neutral stimulus, which is something that does not usually draw out a response. The dogs would not salivate to the sound of the tone. But when Pavlov would pair the tone with the meat powder repeatedly, the tone began to draw out salivation from the dogs. So the neutral stimulus became the conditioned stimulus an event that causes a response being repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus. And then later on the dogs began to salivate to the sound of the tone

In Operant Conditioning there is something called reinforcements and something called a punishment. A reinforcer is “Any stimulus or event that functions to increase the likelihood of the behavior that led to it.” (Schacter, pg.218) An example of a reinforcer would be, giving a puppy a treat every time they shake your hand when you look at them and say “paw” with your hand sticking out. The treat is the reinforcer, because the treat is what’s increasing the likelihood of the puppy shake your hand after you demand it to “paw.” A Punisher in operant conditioning is, ‘’ any stimulus or event that functions to decrease the likelihood of the behavior that led to it.” (Schacter, pg.218) An example of a punisher while trying to teach a puppy a new

Classical conditioning takes place in people's day-to-day life. For example, listening to a certain song can recall feelings or thoughts that individual would experience listening to it in the past. For instance, the sense of security and relaxation originally conditioned by sunbathing (UCS) could be

Over time the students will associate their classroom as a secure and comfortable place to learn. Operant conditioning is the theoretical perspective in which learning has a cause and effect (Duchesne, 2012). This implies that environment influences behaviour and that peoples behaviours are a result of their interaction with the environment. This means that people become moulded, to respond in certain ways due to praise and or rewards (Cherry, 2016). B. F. Skinner researched in this area and believed that behaviours were more affected by consequence than by prior stimuli. (Gray& McBlain, 29-42). Operant conditioning can be useful in the classroom to manage behaviour and create positive and desirable behaviour. For instance, if a student performs well in their class work and the teacher responds positively with either praise or reward then it is presumed that the student is more likely to continue to engage and perform well in their further learning. Teachers can also use operational conditioning as a consequence to discourage and reduce undesirable behaviour (Cherry, 2013). An example of this could be, having the class remain back after school for a period of time due to misbehaving

     Classical conditioning is a process of learning associations between stimuli used by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist. In

Classical conditioning is a psychological process that associates two items together to create a reaction. Classical conditioning was first discovered by Ivan Pavlov in 1902 (Wortley, R. 2011), he performed an experiment which lead to the discovery. He noticed that dogs would salivate at the sound of