1. Learning: Operant Conditioning

2. Operant Conditioning  Suppose your dog is wandering around the neighborhood, sniffing trees, checking out garbage cans, looking for a squirrel to chase. A kind neighbor sees the dog and tosses a bone out the kitchen door to it. The next day, the dog is likely to stop at the same door on its rounds, if not go to it directly. Your neighbor produces another bone, and another the next day. Your dog becomes a regular visitor.

3. Operant Conditioning  Suppose you have a younger brother who is unhappy because you seem to be capturing your mother’s attention. He begins to pout and act aggressively toward you. Right away your mother stops attending to you to reprimand him. Even though your mother’s attention is negative, your brother seems to like it. A short time later, he is back harassing you and earning another reprimand from your mother.

4. Operant Conditioning  Operant Conditioning – learning from the consequences of behavior.  The term operant is used because the subject operates on or causes some change in the environment. This produces a result that influences whether they will operate or responds the same way in the future.  Depending on the effect of the operant behaviors, the learner will repeat or eliminate these behaviors – to get the rewards or avoid punishment.

5. E.L.Thorndike  E.L. Thorndike was the first person to study how behavior is shaped by consequences.

6. E.L. Thorndike  He placed a hungry cat in a puzzle box with food outside.  On the first few trials the cat engages in several behaviors: scratching, meowing, sniffing, grooming, and pulling a string.  Pulling at the string enables the cat to escape and access food.  Over a series of trials, the time taken for the cat to escape decreases.

7. E.L. Thorndike  Law of Effect – behaviors followed by positive consequences are strengthened, while behaviors followed by negative consequences are weakened.  Thorndike’s findings were significant because they suggested that the law of effect was a basic law of learning and provided an objective procedure to study it.

8. B.F. Skinner  B.F. Skinner is the psychologist most closely associated with operant conditioning.  He coined the term operant conditioning.

9. B.F. Skinner  He developed the “Skinner Box.”  The box is empty except for a bar and an empty cup below.  He places a hungry rat in the box.  If the rat presses the bar and it is followed by food, the consequence increases the chance the rat will press the bar again.  The box measures the number of bar presses over a certain period of time

10. Skinner Box

11. Principles and Procedures  With the Skinner Box, the rat will learn to press the bar to get food. This is a type of reinforcement.  Reinforcement – a consequence that occurs after a behavior and increases the chance that the behavior will occur again.  Examples of consequences that people respond to are social approval, money, and extra privileges.  A procedure in which an experimenter successively reinforces behaviors that lead up to the desired behavior is known as shaping.

12. Principles and Procedures Two Basic Classes of Reinforcement  1. Reinforcement Procedures – always leads to an increase in response.  Positive Reinforcement – a reward stimulus that increases the probability that a behavior will occur again.  Negative Reinforcement – an aversive stimulus whose removal increases the likelihood that the preceding response will occur again.

13. Principles and Procedures  Besides positive and negative reinforcers, there are also primary and secondary reinforcers.  Primary reinforcer – a stimulus, such as food, water, or sex, that is innately satisfying and requires no learning to become pleasurable.  Secondary reinforcer – any stimulus that has acquired its reinforcing power through learning.

14. Principles and Procedures  2. Punishment Procedures – always leads to a decrease in response.  Positive punishment – when you perform a behavior then something bad happens.  Negative punishment – when you perform a behavior then something good is taken away.  Although somewhat confusing, remember that positive and negative punishment decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring again, while positive and negative reinforcement increase the likelihood of a behavior occurring again.