Classical Conditioning And Operant Conditioning

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Why does someone study hard for a test? The answer to the question is to receive an A on a test, in hopes to raise their grade point average. If someone raises their grade point average it might give them better opportunities in the future once they search for a job. The reason behind people doing certain things may be because of their environment but it also deals with positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. Everyone has operant behaviors which means that their behaviors operate on or manipulates the environment around them. Operant conditioning is a simple form of learning in which an organism learns to engage in certain behaviors because of the effects of that behavior (Rathus, 2016).
History
Classical conditioning focuses on …show more content…

Edward L. Thorndike first used stray cats as experiments to understand how an organism learns from positive rewards or negative punishment while learning. He would place the stray cats in a “puzzle box”, to see if the cat would learn to pull a string allowing them to escape the box to get food. Thorndike learned that with repetition, it took less time for the cats to realize their way out of the box. Thorndike then explained the results as law of effect, which means that with positive reinforcement meant positive responses and negative reinforcement meant negative responses. Another major achievement for understanding how organisms learn was discovered during World War II. B.F. Skinner a psychologist used pigeons to guide missiles toward military targets. The project was called “Project Pigeon”, Skinner trained pigeons to guide missiles toward targets by being reinforced with food pellets for pecking at the targets being projected onto a screen (Rathus, 2016). This project shows how positive reinforcement works. When the pigeons would peck at the targets they would be given food pellets if they did not peck at the target the food pellets would …show more content…

Penny picked up Sheldon’s dinner plate and took it to the sink and with positive reinforcement Sheldon gave Penny a piece of chocolate for her good behavior. The second time Penny did a good deed for Sheldon Penny got another piece of chocolate. Positive reinforcement was repeated in the episode to fix undesired behaviors, the problem with the episode was that Sheldon misrepresented negative reinforcement. Punishment is mistakenly identified as negative reinforcement, negative reinforcement is not punishment. Reinforcement increases behavior, punishment decreases behavior. Positive reinforcement adds a desirable stimulus reward to increase behavior. Negative reinforcement removes an undesirable stimulus (e.g. stops pain) to also increase the behavior (e.g. taking a pain pill). Punishment is a consequence that causes the behavior to decrease, not increase. Punishment is not negative reinforcement. When Sheldon says he could use electric shock to punish Penny that it would be negative reinforcement and that statement is misleading. If Sheldon would have said I can take something away from Penny that is high value to her and reinforce her behavior into good behavior then give that high valued possession back to Penny than that would have been considered negative reinforcement. Negative and positive reinforcement aims at increasing the likelihood that a

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