operant conditioning

SKINNER’S OPERANT CONDITIONING

 

Burrhus Frederic skinner more commonly known as B.F.Skinner. He was born on march20, 1904,in Susquehanna Pennsylvania. He was very active man, doing research and guiding hundreds of doctoral candidates as well as writing many books. Skinner an American psychologist, also a behavioural psychologist and also a author inventor, and social philosopher. August 18, 1990 B.F.Skinner died of leukemia after becoming perhaps most celebrated psychologist since Sigmund Freud. He also influenced the Pavlov’s classical conditioning and Thorndike’s Law of Effect. He was student of Thorndike. He was an anti-theorist and also a practical psychologist. He conducted many experimental studies.

Operant conditioning

Skinner is known as father of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is a theory of behaviourism that focus on change in an individual’s observable behavior.

The term ‘operant’ stresses that behavior operates upon the environment to generate its own consequences.an operant is a set of acts which conditions an organism in doing something. Skinner believed that best way to understand the behavior is to look at the cause of an action and its consequences.

Conditioning is the modification of natural response.

Skinner defined operant conditioning as “behavior is shaped and maintained by it’s consequences.it is operated by the organism and maintained by it’s results”.

Skinner studied operant conditioning by conducting experiments using animals which he placed in a ‘skinner box’ which was similar to Thorndike’s puzzle box.

Skinner box or operant conditioning chamber

A skinner box typically is a cage like structure that has a light, a lever, a food tray, a food releaser and sometime and electric grid.

Skinner placed hungry rat in the box and the rat would wander over the bar from time time and push the bar down. A food pellet would fall into the tray. The rat learned this task of pressing the lever frequently when the food pellet reinforced the behavior. Skinner modified the procedure: food pellets would be supplied under certain conditions.

Most S.R.Theorists have assumed the existence of a stimulus as a prerequisite for evoking a response. In the absence of any external stimulus they have assumed some internal stimuli for evoking the response. Skinner was against this. He believed that most of the responses could not be attributed to know stimuli. He defined two kinds of responses

1.    The elicited response (known stimuli) which he called as respondent or reflexive behavior.

2.    The Emitted response(unknown stimuli)which he called as operant behavior.

Respondent behavior is learnt according to Pavlovian model of conditioning.it is concerned with stimuli, it is known as S type conditioning.

Skinner attaches greater importance to operant behavior which is primarily concerned with response rather than stimuli, it is known as R type conditioning. Skinner changed the usual S-R FORMULA Into an R-S formula.

Operations involved in operant conditioning

They are:

1.    Shaping

2.    Extinction

3.    Spontaneous recovery

4.    Reinforcement

5.    Punishment

 

 

 

1.   Shaping

Shaping is the most important mechanism used in operant conditioning.it refers to the judicious use of selective reinforcement to bring certain desirable changes in the behavior of organism. The experimenter shapes or moulds the behavior of the organism as clay is molded by a potter in a definite form of a pot.

Principlies involved in shaping:-

There are three important psychological principles involved in the process of successful shaping of behavior. They are as follows :

1.    Generalization

2.    Habit competition

3.    Changing :- each segment must be linked to the other

2. Extinction

It is permitting of a behavior to dies out by not reinforcing it. This is known as external approach to motivation.

3. Spontaneous recovery

Extinction of a responses must take place due to nonreinforcement or interference by incompatible responses but recovery can be spontaneous recovery of the responses which means extinction and not forgetting.

 

4.   Reinforcement

A reinforcer is the stimulus whose presentation or removal increases the proability of a response. Skinner thinks of two kinds of reinforcers-positive and negative.

A positive reinforce or reinforcement is any stimulus the presentation of which strengthens the probability of a response.

A negative reinforce or reinforcement is any stimulus the withdrawal of which strengthens the probability of a response or it refers to the removal of the unpleasant stimulus results in an increased probability of response.

Schedules of reinforcement

a)    Continuous reinforcement

Reinforcement occurs after each response

b)   Fixed interval schedule

Reinforcement occurs following the first response after a fixed time has elapsed after the previous reinforcement.

c)    Fixed ratio schedule

Reinforcement occurs after a fixed number of responses have been emitted since the previous reinforcement.

d)   Variable interval schedule

Reinforcement occurs following the first response after a variable time has elapsed from the previous reinforcement.

e)    Variable ratio schedule

Reinforcement occurs after a variable no of responses have been emitted since the previous reinforcement.

5.   Punishment

Unlike the various forms of reinforcement, which increases the probability of an operant response, punishment is a process that decreases the probability of an operant response. Punishment may be either positive and negative.

Positive punishment is the application of an unpleasant stimulus such as shock or loud noise, which in a decrease in that behavior.

Negative punishment also sometimes called a penalty. It is the removal of a pleasant stimulus. For ex: rat scratches at a door, door was electrified.

Negative Punishment can be used in operant conditioning, termed Aversive conditioning. Aversive conditioning may leads to avoidance learning, where by an individual learn to refrain from a particular stimulus. For ex:-rat can learn to avoid a particular behavior by being aversively conditioned to avoid that behavior-scratching at door latch through shocks.

Operant conditioning through the use of  Punishment leads to the behavioral outcome of avoidance, and the classical conditioning that may accompany it leads to an emotional and psychological response of fear. Thus the two forms of learning [operant and classical conditioning] may interact complementarily to strengthen the outcome.

Skinner model of operant conditioning simply says that when a response regardless of the condition that leads to its emission, is followed by a reinforcement, the result will be an increase in the likelihood that the response will occur again under similar circumstances. Operant conditioning utilizes the Thorndike’s; Law of effect. He believes that our actions are shaped by our experience of reward and punishment.

 

 

Typical problems in learning

1.    Capacity

Differences in capacity that varies from species to species.

2.    Practice

He accepts the law of exercise. Repeated reinforcement as the protection against extinction.

3.    Motivation

Reward increases the operant strength, while punishment has no corresponding weakening influence.

4.    Understanding

5.    Transfer

Generalization which skinner calls induction is the basis of transfer.

6.    Forgetting

There is no special theory proposed by skinner for forgetting. Extinction of a response may take place due to non-reinforcement or interference by incompatible responses, but there can be spontaneous recovery of the response also, which means that extinction is not forgetting. True forgetting is a slow process of decay with time.

Limitations

1.    It is doubtful. If the results derived from controlled experimental studies on animals would yield the same results on human beings in the social learning situations.

2.    It is argued that skinner has ignored the structural and hereditary factors which are very important in the development of psychological process of language.

3.    The operant reinforcement system does not adequately face into account the elements of creativity, curiosity and spontaneity in the human beings.

4.    Skinner argues that all human behavior is acquired during the life time of the individual. Thus it gives no place to the importance of genetic inheritance.

5.    Skinner theory of learning dehumanizes. The learning process on account of its emphasis on the mechanization of the mental process.

 

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

 

1. Learning objective should be defined very specifically in terms of behaviors

 2. objectives should be arranged in a simple to complex order

3. For developing motivation in the student class room work, reinforces   like praise, blames, grades etc should be used

4. In the classroom the principle of  learning focus attention on the individual’s pace of learning. Teaching machines and the programmed learning system have been devised on the basis of the theory of learning founded by skinner.

 

5. The development of human personality can be successfully manipulated  through operant  conditioning.

6. The teacher has to define the task and reinforce the child’s correct response the possibility of its recurrence.