LRG - Operant Conditioning Lesson

Operant Conditioning

Our lives are dominated by operant conditioning. Any time you receive a reward or a punishment as a consequence for your actions, you've experienced operant conditioning. If you're late to class, you get a detention, and that makes you want to stop being late. If you clean your room, you get your allowance, and that makes you want to clean your room. If you're sweet to your mom, she makes you some cookies, and that makes you want to be sweet. If you use all the gas in the car, your mom nags you until you go get some more.

All of these examples are different than classical conditioning because the learner is making a choice to do a behavior. In classical conditioning, the learner couldn't choose to drool or jump in fear. In operant conditioning, the consequence of the learner's actions makes them want to continue or stop their behavior.

Thorndike's Law of Effect says that rewarded behavior is likely to increase and punished behavior is likely to decrease.

Operant conditioning is based on the Law of Effect, an idea created by Edward Thorndike after working with cats for some time. Thorndike gave the cats treats if they performed certain behaviors. As soon as the cats realized they could get a treat for a certain behavior, the cats started to do that behavior over and over again. Thorndike's Law of Effect says that rewarded behavior is likely to increase and punished behavior is likely to decrease.

Thorndike's Law of Effect explained - the first time the animal is presented with stimuli inside a puzzle box, they spend most of their time on futile activities before pressing the lever, which gives them the stimuli. After many trials, the animal goes straight to pressing the lever, because they now know that it provides the reward they want.

The size of the red arrow in the graphic represents the likelihood of that response. As the graphic shows, at first cats were likely to do typical cat behaviors like scratching or digging. But once the cats realized that they would be rewarded for pressing the lever, they almost exclusively spent their time pressing the lever. Rewards changed their behavior, thus showing the Law of Effect in action.

Skinner uses reinforcement. A reinforcer is anything that increases a behavior. There are two types of reinforcers: positive reinforcers and negative reinforcers. In Operant Conditioning, behavior can also be changed with punishment. A punisher is anything that decreases a behavior. There are two types of punishment: positive punishment and negative punishment.

BF Skinner took this idea and ran with it. He created a Skinner Box, also known as an operant conditioning chamber. A Skinner Box is big enough for a cat or a rat to move around in comfortably. It has a little door through which a treat can drop, a few levers or bars that the animal can press, a light that can flash on, and sometimes a shocking mechanism.

In Skinner's experiments, the rats could earn a treat by pressing the bar. At first they accidentally pressed the bar and were surprised by the treat, but after a few repetitions of accidentally pressing the bar and receiving a treat, the rats began to press it again and again to get a treat. They'd been conditioned, and acquisition had occurred.

Skinnner Box - his experiment with a rat in a box with a lever that dispenses food.

In this case, Skinner was using reinforcement. A reinforcer is anything that increases a behavior. There are two types of reinforcers: positive reinforcers and negative reinforcers.

In Operant Conditioning, behavior can also be changed with punishment. A punisher is anything that decreases a behavior. There are two types of punishment: positive punishment and negative punishment.

Operant Conditioning diagram

Complete the reinforcement and punishment activity below:

Learn more about reinforcement and punishment examples below:

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