The only factors Skinner looked at were the functional aspects of behavior that an outside observer could actually monitor and manipulate. In simplest terms, this meant offering a child ice cream as a reward for cleaning their room, or not allowing them to have it if they refused to.
Although, just as he stated, this was absolutely a radical approach, it freed Skinner up to experiment and observe the effects of reinforcement without being distracted by any unobservable factors. Skinner started his work on proving these theories with pigeons, training them to perform various actions or peck at certain levers to access food. Skinner caught a lot of flack for his initial focus on punishment as reinforcement. To test his theories on birds and other small animals he developed the now-famous Skinner Box: a chamber in which an animal could be isolated and discrete stimuli be applied without external interference.
The box included a light, speaker, a food dispenser, and a lever that could be pressed by the occupant. It also had an electrified floor grid through which shocks could be administered. In time, his work with birds became successful enough that he proposed to the Navy that they create pigeon-guided missiles during World War II — a one-way trip for the pigeon, obviously. Information Body. Skinner researched continuous actions to see what determined their frequency.
With rate as a measure of probability, he discovered that control over actions lay in their consequences. Unlike respondent conditioning where Pavlov demonstrated control by antecedent events, Skinner showed that for all other behavior control lies in postcedent events. He initiated the procedure of shaping, demonstrated the effects of schedules of reinforcement, and extended his analysis to verbal behavior.
Thousands of researchers and practitioners have expanded the science under the name of behavior analysis. Interest continues to increase in B.
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. An example is being paid by the hour. Another example would be every 15 minutes half hour, hour, etc. For examples gambling or fishing.
His work drew comparisons to Ivan Pavlov, but Skinner's work involved learned responses to an environment rather than involuntary responses to stimuli. This project was canceled, but he was able to teach them how to play ping pong. Skinner turned to a more domestic endeavor during the war. In , he built a new type of crib for his second daughter Deborah at his wife's request.
The couple already had a daughter named Julie. This clear box, called the "baby tender," was heated so that the baby didn't need blankets. There were no slats in the sides either, which also prevented possible injury. In , Skinner became the chair of the psychology department at Indiana University. But he left two years later to return to Harvard as a lecturer.
Skinner received a professorship there in where he remained for the rest of his career. As his children grew, he became interested in education. Skinner developed a teaching machine to study learning in children.
He later wrote The Technology of Teaching Skinner presented a fictional interpretation of some of his views in the novel Walden Two , which proposed a type of utopian society. The people in the society were led to be good citizens through behavior modification—a system of rewards and punishments.
The novel seemed to undermine Skinner's credibility with some of his academic colleagues. Others questioned his focus on scientific approaches to the exclusion of less tangible aspects of human existence.
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