We can all think of examples of how our own behavior has been affected by reinforcers and punishers. As a child you probably tried out a number of behaviors and learned from their consequences.
For example, if when you were younger you tried smoking at school, and the chief consequence was that you got in with the crowd you always wanted to hang out with, you would have been positively reinforced i.
If, however, the main consequence was that you were caught, caned, suspended from school and your parents became involved you would most certainly have been punished, and you would consequently be much less likely to smoke now. Positive reinforcement is a term described by B. Skinner in his theory of operant conditioning. In positive reinforcement, a response or behavior is strengthened by rewards, leading to the repetition of desired behavior.
The reward is a reinforcing stimulus. Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his Skinner box. The box contained a lever on the side, and as the rat moved about the box, it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so a food pellet would drop into a container next to the lever. The rats quickly learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box. The consequence of receiving food if they pressed the lever ensured that they would repeat the action again and again.
Positive reinforcement strengthens a behavior by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding. Negative reinforcement is the termination of an unpleasant state following a response. Negative reinforcement strengthens behavior because it stops or removes an unpleasant experience. Skinner showed how negative reinforcement worked by placing a rat in his Skinner box and then subjecting it to an unpleasant electric current which caused it some discomfort.
As the rat moved about the box it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so the electric current would be switched off. The consequence of escaping the electric current ensured that they would repeat the action again and again. In fact Skinner even taught the rats to avoid the electric current by turning on a light just before the electric current came on.
The rats soon learned to press the lever when the light came on because they knew that this would stop the electric current being switched on. These two learned responses are known as Escape Learning and Avoidance Learning. Punishment is defined as the opposite of reinforcement since it is designed to weaken or eliminate a response rather than increase it.
It is an aversive event that decreases the behavior that it follows. The behavior has been extinguished. Behaviorists discovered that different patterns or schedules of reinforcement had different effects on the speed of learning and extinction. Ferster and Skinner devised different ways of delivering reinforcement and found that this had effects on.
The Response Rate - The rate at which the rat pressed the lever i. The Extinction Rate - The rate at which lever pressing dies out i. Skinner found that the type of reinforcement which produces the slowest rate of extinction i. The type of reinforcement which has the quickest rate of extinction is continuous reinforcement.
Behavior is reinforced only after the behavior occurs a specified number of times. For example, a child receives a star for every five words spelled correctly. One reinforcement is given after a fixed time interval providing at least one correct response has been made. These theoretical treatments of operant learning are interested in the question: What associative structure underlies the box-opening sequence performed by the cat in Figure 1?
One option, espoused by Thorndike and Skinner , is that the cat has learned to associate this particular box with this sequence of actions. A different option, advocated by Tolman and later demonstrated by Dickinson and colleagues , is that the cat has learned that this sequence of actions leads to the opening of the door, that is, an action-outcome A-O association.
The critical difference between these two views is the role of the reinforcer: in the former it only has a role in learning, but once learned, the behavior is rather independent of the outcome or its value; in the latter the outcome is directly represented in the association controlling behavior, and thus behavior should be sensitive to changes in the value of the outcome.
For instance, if a dog is waiting outside the box, such that opening the door is no longer a desirable outcome to the cat, according the S-R theory the cat will nevertheless perform the sequence of actions that will lead to the door opening, while A-O theory deems that the cat will refrain from this behavior.
Research in the last two decades has convincingly shown that both types of control structures exist. In fact, operant behavior can be subdivided into two sub-classes, goal directed and habitual behavior, based exactly on this distinction. If it was me, what did I do? Historically, interest in assignment of credit arrived rather late on the scene.
But there is a growing realization that assignment of credit is the question an operant conditioning process must answer. There are now a few theories of credit assignment notably, those from the field of reinforcement learning.
Most assume a set of pre-defined competing, emitted operant responses that compete in winner-take-all fashion. Most generally, current theories of operant learning can be divided into three main types -- those that attempt to accurately describe behavior descriptive theories , those that are concerned with how the operant learning is realized in the brain biologically inspired theories , and those that ask what is the optimal way to solve problems like that of assigning credit to actions, and whether such optimal solutions are indeed similar to what is seen in animal behavior normative theories.
Many of the theories in recent years are computational theories, in that they are accompanied by rigorous definitions in terms of equations for acquisition and response, and can make quantitative predictions.
The computational field of reinforcement learning has provided a normative framework within which both Pavlovian and operant conditioned behavior can be understood. In this, optimal action selection is based on predictions of long-run future consequences, such that decision making is aimed at maximizing rewards and minimizing punishment. Neuroscientific evidence from lesion studies, pharmacological manipulations and electrophysiological recordings in behaving animals have further provided tentative links to neural structures underlying key computational constructs in these models.
Most notably, much evidence suggests that the neuromodulator dopamine provides basal ganglia target structures with a reward prediction error that can influence learning and action selection, particularly in stimulus-driven instrumental behavior. In all these theories, however, nothing is said about the shaping of the response itself, or response topography. Yet a pigeon pecking a response key on a ratio schedule soon develops a different topography than the one it shows on VI.
Solving this problem requires a theory the elements of which are neural or hypothetically linked to overt behavior. Different topographies then correspond to different patterns of such elements.
The patterns in turn are selected by reinforcement. A few such theories have recently emerged. Finally, it is Interesting in this respect that even very simple animals show some kind of operant and classical conditioning. A recent study purported to show discrimination learning in the protist Paramecium for example; and certainly a simple kind of operant behavior, if not discrimination learning, occurs even in bacteria. Thus, the essentials of operant conditioning need not depend on specific neural structures.
On other hand, neural networks are powerful computing devices and some neurally based theories now embrace a wide range of experimental data, matching rat behavior well and rat neurophysiology, at least at a gross-anatomy level, reasonably well. Classical conditioning , Reward , Reward signals.
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Staddon Contributors:. Joshua Pritchard. Tobias Denninger. Andrew Whitford. Sponsored by: Eugene M. Categories : Conditioning Multiple Curators. Namespaces Page Discussion. Views Read View source View history. Izhikevich , Editor-in-Chief of Scholarpedia, the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia. Reviewed by : Anonymous.
Accepted on: GMT. Operant conditioning has been widely applied in clinical settings i. Parenthetically, it should be noted that Skinner rejected the idea of theories of learning see Skinner, By way of example, consider the implications of reinforcement theory as applied to the development of programmed instruction Markle, ; Skinner, Skinner Foundation.
Application Operant conditioning has been widely applied in clinical settings i. Example By way of example, consider the implications of reinforcement theory as applied to the development of programmed instruction Markle, ; Skinner, Practice should take the form of question stimulus — answer response frames which expose the student to the subject in gradual steps Require that the learner make a response for every frame and receive immediate feedback Try to arrange the difficulty of the questions so the response is always correct and hence a positive reinforcement Ensure that good performance in the lesson is paired with secondary reinforcers such as verbal praise, prizes and good grades.
Good Frames and Bad 2nd Ed. New York: Wiley. While behaviorism may have lost much of the dominance it held during the early part of the 20th century, operant conditioning remains an important and often used tool in the learning and behavior modification process. Sometimes natural consequences lead to changes in our behavior. In other instances, rewards and punishments may be consciously doled out in order to create a change.
Operant conditioning is something you may immediately recognize in your own life, whether it is in your approach to teaching your children good behavior or in training the family dog.
Remember that any type of learning takes time. Consider the type of reinforcement or punishment that may work best for your unique situation and assess which type of reinforcement schedule might lead to the best results.
Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Operant conditioning. Annu Rev Psychol.
Rilling M. How the challenge of explaining learning influenced the origins and development of John B. Watson's behaviorism. Am J Psychol. Evidence for a neural law of effect. Progressive ratio schedules of reinforcement. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page.
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I Accept Show Purposes. Table of Contents View All. Table of Contents. Behavior Types. Reinforcement in Conditioning Behavior. Punishment and its Influence on Behavior.
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