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The important concepts of operant conditioning
Basic features of operant conditioning
Effect of operant conditioning
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Joshua Klein was at a cocktail party with his friends when one was complaining about the crows in their yard. Joshua mentioned that they should train them to do something useful, and the friend responded that it was impossible. This is what brought Klein to his idea of making a vending machine for crows. Klein studied crows and found that they adapt a lot to live in our world. He figured he would make something useful and beneficial for both the birds and us. After spending years reading about crows, Klein made his vending machine.
Klein shows several example videos of birds adapting to their environments to show how these birds adjust to living in our lives. One example is a bird living in Japan and learning how to crack open a nut by dropping it in the street, letting a car run over it, waiting for the light to change, then retrieve their food. They learned this by other crows doing the same thing in Tokyo years before. Klein has learned that crows are now really smart as well as they
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teach and learn from each other. Joshua Klein’s vending machine uses training to shape the crows behaviors over four stages. Klein put this vending machine in a field where many crows lived and put coins and peanuts around the machine and on the feeding tray of the machine. The first stage is the birds coming to the machine, getting used to it being there and eating all the peanuts. When the birds leave the machine gives out more coins and peanuts so the birds can come back and continue eating. The second stage deals with the birds digging through the coins for peanuts. In the third stage, the vending machine only gives them a coin. They use their knowledge of digging and looking for things, they use their beak to push the coin around to look for the peanuts. When the crow pushes the coin down the slot, they get a peanut. This now becomes the regular action the crows have to do to get a peanut. In the final stage, the bird shows up to the machine and doesn’t get anything, no coin or peanut. The crow then figures out that there are coins on the ground from the first stage. The crow then uses that coin from the ground to put in the machine to receive his peanut. The rest of the other crows learn this because the birds learn from each other. Now that Klein has proved his friend wrong and shows that it is possible for crows to be trained, he begins to think of other ways to train to the crows, such as pick up garbage.
Joshua Klein’s experiment relates to the topic of operant conditioning that we learned in our class. According to Behavior Analysis and Learning, Operant conditioning is an increase or decrease in operant response as a function of the consequences that have followed the response. In Klein’s case, we want the behavior of picking up coins and putting it in the vending machine to increase. He uses the peanuts as reinforcement for the operant response.
In the experiment, operant conditioning occurs when the crow retrieves a coin, puts in the vending machine slot and gets his food. The vending machine, the SD, sets the occasion for picking up the coins after operant conditioning is complete. The result of the coins being put into the vending machine provides the bird with the peanut, which becomes the
SR.
When Antonio was seven years old, he had a very bad flu and was hospitalized. He was able to recover without complications, but he noticed that whenever he drove by the hospital he was treated at that he would start to feel sick to his stomach.Unconditioned stimulus in Antonio's case was initially the hospital. The unconditioned response to being at the hospital was he didn't feel well. Then the Hospital became the conditioned response by making Antonio feel sick when he had to visit or drive by the hospital. It is because he associated the hospital (CS) with feeling ill. The hospital where he was treated for the sickness is the conditioned stimulus (CS), causing him to remember what occurred and inducing his stomach to hurt (CR) which is an conditioned response. This is an example of classical
“Operant 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” (Cherry). Positive reinforcement which is praising a person for doing something good verses negative reinforcement which is an unpleasant remark a punishment. B.F. Skinner did an experiment on a rat, the rat was taught to push two buttons, one to receive food and the other was a light electric shock. The rat tried both buttons and realized which button was good and which one was bad. This experiment goes to show that upon the rewards and punishment system one can learn their rights from their wrongs through a series of lessons. Kincaid and Hemingway both use operant conditioning to show human behavior under stimulus control.
Operant conditioning is changing behavior through the use of reinforcement after the desired action is given; a behavior that is rewarded positively is more likely to continue and a behavior that is rewarded negatively would likely stop occurring (Santrock,2014). In addition to reinforcement, Skinner also talks about punishment. Reinforcement increases the probability an action or behavior will be repeated, while punishment is intended to decrease a behavior (McLeod, 2015). When Laurie was younger, she thought she was being sent to school every day to socialize with her friends and that learning was a secondary, unintentional happenstance. In third grade, compared to the other students in her class, she was falling short in reading and math.
Skinner argues that ‘learning is accelerated by reinforcement: a stimulus that increases the probability of a response’ called ‘operant conditioning’ and it is not reliant on what triggered the response but...
Hence, in his experiment, Skinner placed rats in the Skinner box and observed its’ behaviors. Initially, these rats would be randomly moving around exploring, and would usually press the bar accidently. At this point, a food pellet would drop into the tray. He observed that if a hungry rat receives a pellet of food when it presses a lever after, maybe 2 minutes have elapsed since the last pellet, then its response rate increases with the passage of time. In other words, after the first incident of the food pellet dropping into the tray, the rate of the rats pressing the bar rises dramatically and remains high until the rats hunger were satisfied. Thus, this study showed a clear association made between the behavior and the consequence of that behavior. In this case, the consequence of a behavior encouraged the repetition of that behavior also known as positive reinforcement.
Joey 's program will be based in Applied Behavior Analysis which was first introduced in 1913, when John Watson started a movement towards behaviorism with his article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” (Miltenberger, 2012). Based on Pavlov 's observations of classical conditioning, Watson suggested that human behavior could also be explained by the same means and that the process of classical conditioning was proper subject matter for psychology. He believed all human behavior were responses to external stimuli and environmental events (Miltenberger, 2012). B. F. Skinner took Watson 's theory of classical conditioning further to include operant conditioning. The highlight of Skinner 's theory is identifying what a behavior achieves through observing the behavior. It is only after the function of behavior is identified that we can alter the consequences to increase the probability of the desired behavior 's occurrence (Miltenberger, 2012). In operant conditioning behavior is changed through the manipulation of contingencies or the use of reinforcement or punishment after the desired or undesired response occurs (Miltenberger, 2012). Skinner was able to prove through his
At Harvard, B.F. Skinner looked for a more objective and restrained way to study behavior. Most of his theories were based on self-observation, which influenced him to become a enthusiast for behaviorism. Much of his “self-observed” theories stemmed from Thorndike’s Puzzle Box, a direct antecedent to Skinner’s Box. He developed an “operant conditioning apparatus” to do this, which is also known as the Skinner box. The Skinner box also had a device that recorded each response provided by the animal as well as the unique schedule of reinforcement that the animal was assigned. The design of Skinner boxes can vary ...
Operant conditioning is a kind of conditioning, which examines how often a behavior will or occur depending on the effects of the behavior (King, 2016, pg. ). The words positive and negative are used to apply more significance to the words reinforcement or punishment. Positive is adding to the stimulus, while negative is removing from the stimulus (King, 2016). For instance, with positive reinforcement, there is the addition of a factor to increase the number of times that the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive reinforcement is when a child is given an allowance for completing their household chores. The positive reinforcement is the allowance which helps to increase the behavior of doing chores at home. In contrast with negative
Since the arrival of our twins undesirable behavior has manifested in one of our 11 yr. old. While initially very conscienscious in helping attend to the infants & her ordinary duties, she has become accustomed to playing with them mostly now. This play in itself is great, except they no longer get the changing & feeding expected. Furthermore she uses them as an excuse now to put off doing the minimal domestic maintenance formerly performed. She is generally unresponsive to negative reinforcement options. Past experience shows she responds best to tactile & humanistic behaviorist techniques, backed up by specific instruction from our sacred texts observed in our household.
The ability for an animal to reason and have rational thought has been highly represented by researching crows. Crows have shown on numerous occasions through many experiments that they maintain the ability to access experiences and choose their actions based on said experiences. For example, in the documentary, A Murder of Crows, it was shown that crows had the ability to recognize faces of those who had captured them, and then would go on to inform their fellow crows of the very person who committed such an atrocity. They showed that they had rational control of their actions by swooping in and intimidatingly cawing when they saw someone who had offended them. They accessed a sense, in this case, a memory, and reasoned that it was best that they attempt to persuade the intruder to leave. The ability for a crow to reason was also demonstrated by its ability to determine which object to choose to get a reward. The crows were shown two sets of images. One picture would result in them earning a treat, while the other would give nothing. The crows could reason
Skinner believed that all behavior is determined and operant behavior is the idea that operant behavior is the idea that we expect something because we preformed a certain behavior. Skinner also believed that operant conditioning’s purpose was to bring a change positive or or negative to any behavior.
Behavior modification is based on the principles of operant conditioning, which were developed by American behaviorist B.F. Skinner. In his research, he put a rat in a cage later known as the Skinner Box, in which the rat could receive a food pellet by pressing on a bar. The food reward acted as a reinforcement by strengthening the rat's bar-pressing behavior. Skinner studied how the rat's behavior changed in response to differing patterns of reinforcement. By studying the way the rats operated on their environment, Skinner formulated the concept of operant conditioning, through which behavior could be shaped by reinforcement or lack of it. Skinner considered his discovery applicable to a wide range of both human and animal behaviors(“Behavior,” 2001).
Skinner designed an experiment to test operant conditioning, known as a ‘Skinner box’ (Gross 2005). In the box, animals, such as rats, would be conditioned into certain behaviour. For example, by pressing a lever to receive food (Gross 2005).
Marzluff, J., Angell, T. & Elliot, B. (2013, May. - Jun.). Birds: Brains over brawn. Audubon, 115(3), 40-41.
Learning through operant conditioning allows a conditioned behaviour to increase or decrease in the presence of reinforcement or punishment. However, this process can be affected by instinctive behaviours that would disrupt the conditioned behaviour. According to a study conducted by Breland and Breland (1961) they tried to condition a raccoon to pick up coins and drop them into a container. The raccoon however spent time rubbing the coins together and rubbing the coin on the inside of the container before finally dropping it in and receiving its food reinforcement. Even after conditioning, the raccoon’s need to rub the coins together became worse as he spent more and more time just rubbing the coins. This is known as instinctive drift where the raccoon’s instinctive behaviours limited its ability to perform the conditioned response. Therefore the raccoon failed to learn due to its innate tendencies that acted as a biological constraint and operant conditioning failed in teaching the raccoon through reinforcement.