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The experimental analysis of behavior is a science that studies the behavior of individuals across a variety of species. A key early scientist was B. F. Skinner who discovered operant behavior, reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, contingencies of reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, intermittent schedules, discrimination, and generalization.
Skinner summarized this relationship by saying that a discriminative stimulus (e.g. light or sound) sets the occasion for the reinforcement (food) of the operant (lever-press). This three-term contingency (stimulus-response-reinforcer) is one of Skinner's most important concepts, and sets his theory apart from theories that use only pair-wise ...
Skinner's basic theory was advanced in recognizing two different types of conditioning, but he didn't recognize their interrelatedness, or the importance of classical conditioning, both very central for explaining human behavior and human nature. Staats' basic theory specifies the two types of conditioning and the principles of their relationship.
The three-term contingency (also known as the ABC contingency) is a psychological model describing operant conditioning in three terms consisting of a behavior, its consequence, and the environmental context, as applied in contingency management. The three-term contingency was first defined by B. F. Skinner in the early 1950s. [1]
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understand the behavior of humans and other animals. [1] [2] It assumes that behavior is either a reflex elicited by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and ...
Shaping sometimes fails. An oft-cited example is an attempt by Marian and Keller Breland (students of B.F. Skinner) to shape a pig and a raccoon to deposit a coin in a piggy bank, using food as the reinforcer. Instead of learning to deposit the coin, the pig began to root it into the ground, and the raccoon "washed" and rubbed the coins together.
Courtesy of MyKayla Skinner/Instagram Olympic gymnast MyKayla Skinner and husband Jonas Harmer’s relationship has been going strong since college. The pair met when Skinner was a student at the ...
Animal models of behavior, molecular biology, and brain imaging techniques have provided some insight into human personality, especially trait theories. Much of the current understanding of personality from a neurobiological perspective places an emphasis on the biochemistry of the behavioral systems of reward, motivation, and punishment.