Influence Of Operant Conditioning

The first systematic study regarding operant conditioning was taken place in the 1800’s by the Psychologist, Thorndike. Thorndike formally defined operant conditioning as a type of learning that is controlled by the consequences of an organism’s behavior. However according to lecture, operant conditioning can be simply thought as performing an action in order to receive a reward. Operant conditioning can be useful when trying to deal with procrastination, increase efficacy of teaching, or to improve motivation. Therefore, operant conditioning can be used as a behavioral modification program to devise a more specific weight loss program to increase the roommate’s chances of making it on the football team. The program will include the following

Reinforcement is the outcome or influence of a behavior that strengthens the probability of the behavior. Regarding the roommate’s behavioral modification program, there will be a positive and negative reinforcement utilized. Negative reinforcement is the removal of a stimulus that strengthens the probability of behavior, and positive reinforcement is the addition of stimuli that also strengthens the probability of behavior. Because the roommate is trying to lose weight with the removal of unhealthy food and addition of healthy food, the positive reinforcement will be unhealthy food, and the negative reinforcement will be the healthy

Alternately, a reinforcement schedule is a pattern of provided reinforcement to an organism following a specified amount of time between receiving reinforcement. For example, a mouse with a fixed ratio schedule will receive a piece of cheese for every time the mouse performs a trick. Similarly, the roommate will be rewarded with a single choice of an unhealthy meal once a week for every successful week he only eats healthy food. The reward for the roommate is the reinforcement; the once a week opportunity to receive the reward is the pattern, as well as the specified amount of time between receiving reinforcement; and lastly the target behavior is the response. However, when comparing and contrasting the roommate and mouse, it is important to understand the roommate’s pattern of reinforcement is considered a fixed interval schedule, and the mouse’s is a fixed ratio schedule. This is because there 's a finite amount of time between when the roommate can receive the reward, whereas the mouse can perform as many responses in order to receive an equal amount of