The Behavior Of Operant Conditioning

In this booklet you will find an overview of all the different approaches to psychology. This will consist of the key assumptions, examples of the relevant psychologists and examples of their work, as well as an exploration into the advantages and disadvantages that some of these approaches possess.

There are two learning processes that are used, classical condition and operant conditioning. One learning process used is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a learning process in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a meaningful stimulus and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response. I found two TV commercials that are excellent examples for classical conditioning. The first commercial I found is an Old Spice commercial. The ad starts off with an attractive man in a bathroom telling women to compare the men in their lives to him, stating that if men would stop using girl body wash they could be like him. The ad then moves to a boat where the man in the commercial offers the women in the audience two tickets to something they would enjoy and diamonds and then states that anything is possible if men used Old Spice as a body wash to smell like a man, not a lady. The second commercial I chose is a Nike advertisement. Throughout the advertisement there are young, attractive, fit, and famous people working hard to succeed.

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

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 good option to modify my third graders behavior. Operant conditioning is a form of learning where an association is formed between a behavior and its consequence. My son’s behavior is very frequent, he acts out when asked to clean

And through this new friendship they might pick up new things or different ways to commit a crime, which is also known as the social learning theory. “Social learning theory is designed to explain how people learn criminal behavior using the psychological principles of operant conditioning” (Walsh, 2015, p. 130). As stated above, the new attachment that a criminal has with his new friends, who are also criminals, will learn new things from these friends. For instance, a burglar that has been sent to prison and after being released he joins a street gang. Upon entering the street gang, the burglar might learn different offenses and how to avoid to get caught by the police. If the criminals do not get caught by the police, then they are going to have better and strong connections with the street gang members (Anderson, 2016).

Of the five perspectives covered in chapter 2, the Learning perspective would be the most beneficial to a mother trying to teach her child to say “please.” While other perspectives might give more insight into the how and why a child develops in a certain fashion, changing a child’s behavior is best accomplished through operant conditioning.

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.

Forms of Conditioning The two types of conditioning, classical and operant, are both rooted in the basic principle, learning by association, but share many key differences. Classical conditioning works by taking something that invokes a natural response and pairing it with something that does not cause any reaction. In the case of Pavlov’s dog this would be the food and the bell. The food is considered the unconditional stimulus because it causes the action to occur without any training and the bell is the conditioned stimulus because the organism must be conditioned to react to it.

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.

To expand upon the concepts of the two forms of conditioning listed above, three additional principals not previously listed for the sake of convenience are present in both forms of conditioning; these three principals-extinction, spontaneous recovery, and stimulus discrimination-are among the number of basic principals of conditioning that are found in most forms of conditioning.

The very time I first ran was in a local gym near me back in 2013. I would find myself on the treadmill running at least one mile before starting my workout. After a few months I started moving running from the treadmill to asphalt and sometimes trails. To make that time worthwhile I started running a little farther. That is when I signed up for my first 5K. I still felt that I could do better, not only with distance, but also with my pace. After I completed my first 5K I started testing my abilities and realized on a good day I could knock out 2-3 miles in a reasonable time. Once I signed up for my first 10k that is when I started developing a technique that would help me get through my runs feeling much better and happier about my results. Operant conditioning is what I believe the technique consisted of.

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.

Instrumental conditioning, otherwise known as operant conditioning is a theory that B.F Skinner came up with and is defined as a learning process by which the consequence of an operant response affects the likelihood of the response recurring in the future. Basically, operant conditioning is a stimulus response prototype that when reinforced, conditions individuals' or organisms' response to a desired behavior (Huitt, W., & Hummel, J., 1997) Our behaviors are shaped to be desirable or undesirable through reinforcements, punishment and extermination. Overall, operant conditioning is seen to be voluntary reaction that precedes the stimulus and the reinforcement. Classical conditioning is one of the techniques used in behavioral training. The process of classical conditioning works with the introduction of neutral stimuli before the original stimulus and the same reaction is elicited from the organism even without the presence of the original stimulus. The Pavlov dog salivated with every sight of food as the original stimulus for the salivation. When a neutral stimulus was introduced like a bell that was rang each time before it was fed, the dog started salivating at the ringing of the bell even before the food was availed.