Operant Conditioning Essay

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Operant conditioning & Skinner Preeti Psy390 June 62013 Robert Yancy Operant conditioning & Skinner Operant conditioning was introduced and coined by Famed psychologist B.F Skinner(1904 --- 1990) and it is also known as Skinnerian Conditioning. Skinner used the term Operant to say that any Active behavior operates upon the environment to generate consequences.(1953).In other words he tries to explain how people got to know learned behaviors that we see every day. In this paper we are going to discuss the theory of operant Conditioning, compare and contrast positive and negative reinforcement and which reinforcement is most effective and also discuss in which scenario would you apply operant conditioning. Skinner accepted the classical conditioning theory that was put forth by Pavlov, but was further elaborated by Watson & Guthrie, though notion of reinforcement was introduced by Thorndike but Skinner developed this idea much further. Reinforcement, behavior which is reinforced tends to be repeated then gets strengthened and behavior which is not reinforced tends to die. Operant conditioning means roughly changing of behavior by the use of reinforcement which is given after the desired response. Skinner introduced Three Types of response1.Neutral operants: response from the environment that will not increase nor decrease the probability of behavior being repeated.2. Reinforcers.:Responses from the environment that increase the probability of the behavior being repeated ,the reinforces can be positive or negative.3.Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease the likelihood of a behavior being repeated. Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his skinner box, the box contained a lever in the side and as the rat moved round the box it would accidently knock the lever as soon as it hit the lever a food
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