In psychology, there are countless approaches to how a subject could learn something; in this paper, however, we are going to talk about the classical conditioning, operant condition and also the application of it in the reality. First of all, we are going to discuss the differences between classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is when unconditioned stimulus gets paired with conditioned stimulus so that the subject could learn it. However, the learners have to have neutral mindset about the conditioned stimulus in order to for it to be considered as classical conditioning. This type of conditioning has reflex responses, which means it reacts involuntary to a stimulus; salivation could be an example to that.
There are 2 different types of reinforcement and punishment in the operant conditioning. Positive reinforcement is a type, which additional reward is added in order to increase behavior whereas negative reinforcement is when the reward is taken away to increase the behavior. Basically, reinforcement is the act to increase behavior while punishment is the act to decrease behavior. Positive punishment is when additional punishment is required to decrease behavior while negative punishment works vice versa. However, for it to be successfully effective, it has to be relevant to organism and shall be equal to crime or transgression.
Operant conditioning should have voluntary responses rather than reflex responses, which means that after the subjects learn, they should be responding to the stimulus voluntary rather than getting acted on. It has contingency since there must be rewards or punishments in the learning process in order to get the subjects to learn something. Skeleton muscle is where the influence of this learning type comes from, which makes it voluntary response rather than reflex
For example, the pursuit of good grade in class; it could be said that there are many reasons why students want to get good grade. The good grade is the reward that the learners get after executing what is supposed to be done (good class performance). This is an example of positive reinforcement, where the better the performance in the class is, the better grade the students have. B. F. Skinner experiment known as Skinner box also uses positive reinforcement; the rat in the experiment was put in a box where he would get food from the dispenser when he pressed the bar (Liliendfeld, 2014). However, the rat would not always get the food since the time of food dispensed was varied. This is an example, which shows how the rat would get the food as the reward; it acts as the reinforcement for the rat to press the bar more.
However, if we look in the case that if we are a life coach and working with a client who wants to stop biting her fingernails. Operant conditioning could be a solution to her problem; one way to how we resolve it out could be to adopt the positive punishment. Every time she tries to bite her fingernails, we oblige her to put a pair of glove on her hands; thus she could not bite her nail again, and after times of trying to reach her fingernails she would ended up having the pressure to carry multilayers of
If a behavior is desirable, consequences called reinforcers are used to encourage the behavior in the future, via the process of reinforcement. Reinforcement can be positive (presenting reinforcing stimulus) or negative (removing a negative stimulus). However, if a behavior is undesired, a negative consequence can be used to discourage the behavior, through the process of either positive or negative punishment. In positive punishment, a negative consequence is presented after the undesired behavior occurs. When negative punishment it used the idea is the same “to discourage future display of undesired behavior,” but instead of presenting a negative stimulus, a desired stimulus is removed following the behavior.
“Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior” (Cherry). Positive reinforcement which is praising a person for doing something good verses negative reinforcement which is an unpleasant remark a punishment. B.F. Skinner did an experiment on a rat, the rat was taught to push two buttons, one to receive food and the other was a light electric shock. The rat tried both buttons and realized which button was good and which one was bad. This experiment goes to show that upon the rewards and punishment system one can learn their rights from their wrongs through a series of lessons. Kincaid and Hemingway both use operant conditioning to show human behavior under stimulus control.
Positive reinforcement works by presenting something positive to the person after a desired behavior is exhibited, making the behavior more likely to happen in the future (McAdams, 2009). An example of this could be when a child helps their mother with the dishes and the mothers rewards the child with ice cream. Negative reinforcement, is when a behavior is strengthened by stopping, removing or avoiding a negative outcome or aversive stimulus (McAdams, 2009). An example of this could be when the light goes green at a traffic light, the car in front of a person does not move. The person hates when this happens and from experience knows that honking the car’s horn gets cars that are in front of them to go
Operant conditioning explains that behaviors followed by positive outcomes are more likely to be repeated than behaviors followed by negative outcomes. Punishment, which is a part of operant conditioning, is something received or taken away from an individual decreasing the likihood that a behavior would be repeated. The best example from The Lion King of a punishment is when Nala ran away from Simba after he informed her that he was not returning to Pride Rock. Simba deeply loved Nala and he hoped she would agree with the Hakuna Matata philosopy that he was using to hide from his past. But she did not and ran from Simba after an argument. The fact that his true love did not want to be with him was a punishing blow to Simba, helping him rethink his worldview and preparing him for the meeting with
Operant conditioning is a type of learning where a person is taught that specific actions are related to specific consequences. The main goal of using this type of conditioning is to encourage the individual to change his or her behavior in some way. Specifically, the individual can be encouraged to perform a desired behavior more often through use of positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, and he or she can also be encouraged to perform an undesired behavior less often through use of positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive reinforcement is basically a type of operant conditioning in which an addition or reward is given to the individual when he or she has displayed the desired behavior, and as a result, the behavior
Operant conditioning is a kind of conditioning, which examines how often a behavior will or occur depending on the effects of the behavior (King, 2016, pg. ). The words positive and negative are used to apply more significance to the words reinforcement or punishment. Positive is adding to the stimulus, while negative is removing from the stimulus (King, 2016). For instance, with positive reinforcement, there is the addition of a factor to increase the number of times that the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive reinforcement is when a child is given an allowance for completing their household chores. The positive reinforcement is the allowance which helps to increase the behavior of doing chores at home. In contrast with negative
Learning in its most basic form is our minds associating one thing with another. Digging deeper reveals that there are trends in how human beings and animals learn by association, usually this is done by a brain connecting one event to another. The two different ways a brain tends to learn is through either classical conditioning or operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is learning to associate one stimulus with another stimulus, and Operant Conditioning is learning by associating a response or behavior with a consequence. Knowing how people and animals learn is an important piece of knowledge if one is to help benefit the greater good.
I. Introduction of classical conditioning Classical conditioning also called as Pavlovian conditioning or respondent conditioning. It is a kind of learning a new behavior through association that when a conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) and evokes a conditioned response (CR). It also is a learning process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus (Cherry, 2014). Classical conditioning has much strength such as can help to explain all aspects of human behavior and many of advertisers will use classical conditioning to advertise their produces, however it also have some weaknesses such as all classical conditioning responses must involve a reflex and classical conditioning is a completely physical process, learning is not important as reflected in scenario. This paper will talk about the strengths and the weaknesses of classical conditioning theory followed by a brief description of the scenario and the strengths and weaknesses of applying classical conditioning on it.
Operant conditioning is a system of learning that transpires through punishment and rewards for behaviors (Kalat, 2011). Through this, a connection linking a behavior and a consequence is made. For instance a kid could be told that she will not get recess privileges if she talks in class. This possibility of being punished leads to decrease in disruptive behaviors from her. The major components of operant condition are punishment and reinforcement (Kalat, 2011).
Reinforcement is a motivation which depends upon a performance and increases the chance of a performance being frequent. Positive reinforcement can increase the chance of not only necessary behavior but also unwanted behavior. For example, if a student complaints in order to get attention and is successful in getting it, the attention helps as positive reinforcement which increases the possibility that the student will remain to complain. Positive reinforcement is one of the important ideas in behavior inquiry and it is something like rewards, or things usually work to get (Fahimafridi, 2016).
Negative reinforcement is removing something that is not enjoyable as the result of the behavior that is acceptable example is in Skinners box experiment, a loud noise continuously rang until the rat did what Skinner wanted the rat to do (Cervone, Pervin, Cervone, & Professor of Psychology Lawrence A Pervin, 2013). Positive punishment is used to eliminate a certain behavior and is giving something unenjoyable after the behavior. Negative punishment is used to eliminate a behavior and eliminating something you enjoy after the
Learning is defined as a “process of change that occurs as a result of an individual’s experience” (Mazure, 2006). Researchers assume that the process of learning follows certain general principles, which were developed, into the general process learning theories. These include operant conditioning and classical conditioning which has been put forward by leading psychologists like Pavlov, B.F.Skinner and Thorndike. However, in learning, operant and classical conditoning are opposed by biological constraints that state that there are limitations to the theories. Some of these biological constraints on learning will be discussed below.
Classical conditioning and operant conditioning both played a key role in the history of the study of learning, but, as argued by B.F Skinner, there are key differences to be noted between the two (Gleitman, Gross, Reisberg, 2011).
“Punishment is one of the most used, but least understood and badly administered, aspects of learning” (Luthans, 1977, pp.300). As mentioned earlier, punishment is anything which weakens behaviour and tends to decrease it in subsequent frequency. Positive punishment is the method of administering negative consequences upon the occurrence of an action whereas Negative punishment involves the termination of positive consequences. In order to work, either case must weaken and decrease the behaviour which preceded the application or withdrawal of the stimuli. Skinner (1953) stipulated that we must defy the urge to label a form of stimuli as “desired” or “undesired” as a whole but rather to identify them by their effect on the observed subject.
In contrast to classical conditioning, operant conditioning, discovered by B.F Skinner, is a learning process that involves either an increase or decrease in some behavior as a result of consequences (Amabile, 1985). Operant conditioning attempts to elicit new behavior through use of reinforcers and punishments.