Operant Conditioning

A man named Edward Thorndike spent many years observing and analyse animals and their demeanour. In one experiment he used something he called puzzle-boxes, and would continuously view cats trying and success intacty escaping the boxes (Wikipedia.com, 2006). He find that at first the cats took a while to escape, but as the number of attempts increased the frequency of a successful escapes were great (Wikipedia.com, 2006). From this he put together the law of effect, theorizing that the consequence of the behavior will determine whether the same behavior is strengthened or weakened (Wood, Wood, Boyd, 2006).

        B. F. Skinner was the one who took and built upon Thorndikes theories and create the theory of operant conditioning, which focuses on reinforcement and penalization (Wikipedia.com, 2006).

        operant conditioning (sometimes referred to as instrumental conditioning) is a method         of acquisition that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant         conditioning, an association is made mingled with a behavior and a consequence for that         behavior (psychology.about.com, 2006).

When a behavior or perform is rewarded it strengthens the desire to respond in the same way again in the future. When the behavior or action is punished the frequency of the behavior or action will decline (tip.psychology.org, 2005).



Reinforcement and punishment argon at the heart of operant conditioning and can be confused down into positive and negative reinforcement, and positive and negative punishment (psychology.about.com, 2006).

        According to psychology.about.com, Positive reinforcers are favorable instances or outcomes that are presented after the behavior. Negative reinforcers involve the removal of an unfavorable events or outcomes after the display of a behavior. Positive punishment involves the presentation of an unfavorable event or outcome in launch to weaken the response it follows. Negative punishment occurs when an favorable event or outcome is removed after a behavior occurs.         Operant is simply a...

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