Operant Conditioning Essay

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OPERANT CONDITIONING Name: Institution: OPERANT CONDITIONING Abstract The psychological effects in a human being relate to the exposure received from the environment. Throughout child hood to adult hood, we exhibit a change in behavior. It is through this that operant conditioning is used in observing and punishing a given behavior. This paper gives a detailed explanation on what operation condition is all about, examples presented to learn from operant conditioning and the types of operant conditioning prevailing in the psychology world. The aim is to link responses and consequences that arise from the human behavior, how these behaviors relate directly to the environment that a human being is immediately placed. Applications of operant conditioning will be analyzed to bring to sense the main idea behind the theory. Introduction Operant conditioning, also referred to instrumental conditioning refers to a learning method through punishment and appraisal for a behavior. Operant conditioning enables an individual to be associated with a behavior and the consequences that come with the behavior. B.F. Skinner is the coiner of operational conditioning, this being the reason why it’s occasionally referred to as Skinnerian conditioning. According to Skinner (2009), the behavior of a person cannot be explained through internal thoughts and motivations but by the external and observable causes of human behavior. Skinner uses the term “operant” to mean a behavior undertaken by someone who is likely to generate consequences (Rainey, 2009, p. 56). This theory explains how human beings acquire behaviors through the environment there are in on a daily basis. Response to a given behavior is divided into two categories, continuous and intermittent. Continuous means that the undertaken behavior is followed by a consequence on each happening. As the behavior

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