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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.
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.
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition (or removal) of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior may increase through reinforcement or decrease through punishment or extinction .
The air crib was a controversial invention. It was popularly characterized as a cruel pen, and it was often compared to Skinner's operant conditioning chamber (or "Skinner box"). Skinner's article in Ladies Home Journal, titled "Baby in a Box", caught the eye of many and contributed to skepticism about the device (Bjork, 1997). [43]
Skinner's theory of operant conditioning played a key role in helping psychologists understand how behavior is learned. It explains why reinforcement can be used so effectively in the learning process, and how schedules of reinforcement can affect the outcome of conditioning.
The psychology of learning refers to theories and research on how individuals learn. There are many theories of learning. Some take on a more behaviorist approach which focuses on inputs and reinforcements. [1] [2] [3] Other approaches, such as neuroscience and social cognition, focus more on how the brain's organization and structure influence ...
[1] [2] Instinctive drift was coined by Keller and Marian Breland, former students of B.F. Skinner at the University of Minnesota, describing the phenomenon as "a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory." [3] B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist and father of operant conditioning (or instrumental conditioning), which is a learning ...
[6] [7] [8] More recently, models explicitly analogous to gene mutation and selection by reinforcement have been applied to operant conditioning phenomena. [ 9 ] [ 10 ] Skinner’s idea of "emitted behavior" is an example of a parallel between evolution and behaviorism: once a behavior varies, a variant that results in reward is strengthened ...