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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 operant conditioning chamber was created by B. F. Skinner while he was a graduate student at Harvard University. The chamber can be used to study both operant conditioning and classical conditioning. [1] [2] Skinner created the operant conditioning chamber as a variation of the puzzle box originally created by Edward Thorndike. [3]
[1] Skinner would later use an updated version of Thorndike's puzzle box, called the operant chamber, or Skinner box, which has contributed immensely to our perception and understanding of the law of effect in modern society and how it relates to operant conditioning. It has allowed a researcher to study the behavior of small organisms in a ...
Skinner was one of these behaviorists. He thought that in order to understand behavior we needed to look at the causes of an action and its consequences. He called this operant conditioning. Skinner is referred to as the father of operant conditioning but his theory stems from the works presented by Edward Thorndike. [24]
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]
Staats, however, notes that food was used by Pavlov to elicit a positive emotional response in his classical conditioning and Thorndike Edward Thorndike used food as the reward (reinforcer) that strengthened a motor response in what came to be called operant conditioning, thus emotion-eliciting stimuli are also reinforcing stimuli. [6]
A central method was the [1] examination of functional relations between environment and behavior, as opposed to hypothetico-deductive learning theory [2] that had grown up in the comparative psychology of the 1920–1950 period. Skinner's approach was characterized by observation of measurable behavior which could be predicted and controlled.
Edwin Ray Guthrie (/ ˈ ɡ ʌ θ r i /; January 9, 1886 – April 23, 1959) was a behavioral psychologist who began his career in mathematics and philosophy.He spent most of his career at the University of Washington, where he became a full professor and then an emeritus professor in psychology.