Definition of operant conditioning Operant conditioning, which is called instrumental conditioning; similar to ontogenetic selection (B.F. Skinner), is a type of learning to obtain an achieved behavior as goal-oriented; strengthens behavior through rewards or punishments. These rewards and punishments that control behaviors are antecedents (discriminative stimuli) signaling those consequences. All life forms strive for goal-oriented conditioning The bacterium finds its way, somewhat inefficiently, up a chemical gradient; the dog begs for a bone; the politician reads the polls to guide his campaign (Wikipedia). The examples given are known as ontogenetic selection that is guided by consequences through a lifeform 's life.
Positive/negative
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Reinforcements (antecedents) affect one’s behavior by enhancing or suppressing it. Positive reinforcements (Rewards) such as a prized or fulfillment of joy may be given the occurrence of a wanted stimulus, following a response, that acts to increase the frequency of that response (Milhollan & Forisha, 1972); a kindness award given to a student for displaying kindness to other students. A negative reinforce - The termination of an aversive stimulus, following a response, that acts to increase the frequency of that response (Milhollan & Forisha, 1972). Negative reinforcement can best be seen through a child and a messy room, the child suffers being nagged until the specified behavior has been achieved (cleaning his/her room); the nagging decreases as the child increasingly continues to clean his room more. Through the prior example, a significant term has risen, learning; continued praise will result in a learned behavior from operant conditioning. Negative reinforcement may be considered a learned behavior. The negativity from a wrong doing will push a learned behavior that the continued behavior away from a specified behavior equals to more unnecessary …show more content…
In general, a consequence is called a reinforce if it strengthens the behavior that led to it, and it is a punisher if it weakens that behavior. The use of punishment has several negative side effects including the risk of causing serious physical harm, inducing fear or hostility (the child might develop a fear of all dogs after being bitten), and the failure to learn the correct response in the particular situation (Carlson & Buskist, 1997). A form of punishment to consider is removal of an important stimulus such as the removal of social media. Removing a teen from interactive activity is considered the punishment.
Behavior Shaping
Shaping is reinforcing successive action of a desired behavior. Chaining is one response to the continuous of another response. Most behaviors occur in chains. Saying the letters of the alphabet is an example. The letter A acts as the discriminative stimulus to produce the next response, saying the letter B, and so on (Milhollan & Forisha, 1972).
Token
In second grade I was apart of a wild classroom. Their was a lot of chaos from all the young children. My teacher struggled to get everyone on task and to complete our work. After some time my teacher decided to make up a reward system (positive reinforcement). The children in the classroom were able to earn tickets for doing their homework, being respectful, and many other things. We were able to save these tickets and cash them in on fridays for treats, toys, or even sometimes extra recess. The teacher had a separate system for when we misbehaved. There were 3 colors you could earn everyday. If you weren’t on task, out of your seat, or just being disruptive she would change your color from green to yellow. If it happened again you got a red card and lost your tickets you earned for that day. This is a perfect example of positive punishment. It gave each child an opportunity to earn tickets for good behavior, and a warning system with the cards that possibly would lead to losing your earned tickets. Our teacher was using operant conditioning to produce a change in our
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.
“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.
Positive punishment again adds to the factor influencing the behavior, but this time it is meant to decrease the number of times the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive punishment is yelling at a puppy for peeing on the carpet. The positive punishment in this situation is the addition of yelling at the puppy, resulting in a decrease of the puppy’s peeing behavior. Negative punishment is the taking away of a certain aspect from the factor influencing the behavior to decrease how often a behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of negative punishment would be taking away bathroom privileges from students who use the bathroom as an excuse to wander around the school. This shows a privilege is being taken away (negative punishment) to decrease the behavior of skipping
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.
Classical conditioning and operant conditioning play a huge role with the future use of a drug. First, just like in the theory of Pavlov, classical conditioning with the role of substance and addiction can start to form much similar. For example, if an individual sits in traffic after getting off work every day and pulls out marijuana to smoke in the car, the car will then start to become the conditioned stimulus to the substance, the individual will pair sitting in traffic now as its time for the daily joint. Since the car is now the conditioned stimulus to the individual, the person will now start to experience those cravings every time they are sitting in the car. Most of the time, the individual will experience relapse, since the body is now fully conditioned to
If a behavior is desirable, consequences called reinforcers are used to encourage the behavior in the future, via the process of reinforcement. Reinforcement can be positive (presenting reinforcing stimulus) or negative (removing a negative stimulus). However, if a behavior is undesired, a negative consequence can be used to discourage the behavior, through the process of either positive or negative punishment. In positive punishment, a negative consequence is presented after the undesired behavior occurs. When negative punishment it used the idea is the same “to discourage future display of undesired behavior,” but instead of presenting a negative stimulus, a desired stimulus is removed following the behavior.
Operant conditioning is a type of learning where a person is taught that specific actions are related to specific consequences. The main goal of using this type of conditioning is to encourage the individual to change his or her behavior in some way. Specifically, the individual can be encouraged to perform a desired behavior more often through use of positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, and he or she can also be encouraged to perform an undesired behavior less often through use of positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive reinforcement is basically a type of operant conditioning in which an addition or reward is given to the individual when he or she has displayed the desired behavior, and as a result, the behavior
Skinner developed the concept of positive reinforcement which showed how placing a hungry rat in a box. The rat learned to pull the lever so food would be knocked down. Therefore receiving food would prompt them to repeat the action of knocking over the lever. Positive reinforcement strengthens a behavior by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding. For example, if your mom gives you candy or reward each time you complete your homework it will be more likely to for this behavior to be repeated in the future, therefore strengthening the behavior of completing your homework.
Operant conditioning is something that is learned as a response by being rewarded and by having consequences. Operant conditioning was first created by Edward L. Thorndike (Bernstein, 2016). Thorndike studied how people and animals have the ability to solve problems, behavior, and intelligence. Thorndike would place a cat in a maze and watch it learn how to get out. It was a slow process but the cat eventually learned and continued to do the same thing to exit the maze, which psychologist now call law of effect. A few decades later another man by the name of B. F. Skinner extended Thorndike’s ideas. Skinner tested his ideas and thoughts on rats. Much like Thorndike’s cat, Skinner would put his rats in a box and watch as the rats tried to solve how to get to a prize at the end. As Thorndike used a maze, Skinner’s rats had to pull a lever to be able to reach the treat. Together these two psychologists explained how we learn with operant conditioning and through experiences. An example of operant conditioning would be what we all have heard from either our parents or grandparents, “If your do not eat all of your food then you do not get any dessert”. While we were young we hated this rule and thought that maybe our parents would forget about this rule later that night and we would get a dessert anyways. It took a couple of times for us to learn that, unfortunately was not the case. This is operant conditioning
Anything that weakens a response is considered punishment. For example, a kid who writes on the wall in permanent magic market and then gets yelled out and put into time-out is being punished. During modeling and observation, an individual watches somebody perform a behavior and then repeats the behavior. Children learn in this way. For example, a 3-year old who has watched his mother answer the phone and then starts picks it up while it is ringing one day and says “hello” has learned by modeling and observation. In order for an individual to model somebody, they have to be paying attention, remember what they saw, and be motivated to repeat the behavior.
Operant Conditioning- Another type of learning when voluntary responses are controlled by their outcome or consequence. So whatever you do in a scenario is already determined by the known outcome. An example would be a kid clowns around in class because he knows he will get attention and it is making him more popular. Another example would be that the parents of a kid give in to buying him a new toy, so he stops crying and complaining. Operant conditioning is pretty much why most people do things. You know if you go to work and do your job you will get paid and not fired. The reason why students go to school is because they know the outcome will be better grades and that leads to a degree. This is how most people think they know if they do something or don’t do something that they get a specific outcome. The way social situations work is with operant conditioning. Some people may act horribly to others because they know that their friend group likes it. This term controls your everyday thinking and
According to Charlie S (2016), positive reinforcement has been seen to be a more viable procedure than punishment. Actually, it can make children to concentrate on the positives and encouraging them is a valuable approach to guarantee good behavior.
Classical conditioning and operant conditioning both played a key role in the history of the study of learning, but, as argued by B.F Skinner, there are key differences to be noted between the two (Gleitman, Gross, Reisberg, 2011).
This way the child would gradually learn to speak and use language. The child would respond to the smiles and approval of the parents. Skinner explained this as operant conditioning; the reinforcement of a random response by a reward. By trial and error the child would learn to communicate. The child would repeat verbal behaviour that was rewarded and drop sounds or speech that did not work in terms of getting a pleasurable response.