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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 .
An operant conditioning chamber (also known as a Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior. 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]
To study operant conditioning, he invented the operant conditioning chamber (aka the Skinner box), [8] and to measure rate he invented the cumulative recorder. Using these tools, he and Charles Ferster produced Skinner's most influential experimental work, outlined in their 1957 book Schedules of Reinforcement. [9] [10]
Operant conditioning is a way in which behavior can be shaped or modified according to the desires of the trainer or head individual. Operant conditioning uses the thought that living things seek pleasure and avoid pain, and that an animal or human can learn through receiving either reward or punishment at a specific time called trace conditioning.
Central to operant conditioning is the use of a Three-Term Contingency (Discriminative Stimulus, Response, Reinforcing Stimulus) to describe functional relationships in the control of behavior. Discriminative stimulus (S D) is a cue or stimulus context that sets the occasion for a response. For example, food on a plate sets the occasion for eating.
Two important processes for learning associations, and thus forming associative memories, are operant conditioning and classical conditioning. Operant conditioning refers to a type of learning where behavior is controlled by environmental factors that influence the behavior of the subject in subsequent instances of the stimuli. In contrast ...
Operant conditioning employs two kinds of reinforcement to instruct animals in performing behaviors: Primary reinforcement, which involves unconditioned rewards such as food, and secondary reinforcement, which includes learned rewards that teach reinforcing properties through their connection to primary reinforcers.
The controlling effects of stimuli are seen in quite diverse situations and in many aspects of behavior. For example, a stimulus presented at one time may control responses emitted immediately or at a later time; two stimuli may control the same behavior; a single stimulus may trigger behavior A at one time and behavior B at another; a stimulus may control behavior only in the presence of ...