Essay On Operant Conditioning

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Recommended: Compare and contrast between classical conditioning and operant conditioning

Operant Conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behaviour. In other words, a response that is followed by a reinforcing stimulus has a larger chance to occur again. Operant conditioning has been studied by many behaviourists. B.F. Skinner is a well-known behaviourists that showed through animal experiments that consequences played a large role in their response behaviour. An famous example of his experiment is where a rat pulled a lever, it will receive food. As result, the rate will pull the lever more frequently. Before proceeding to the description of operant conditioning, it is important to become familiar with the terms reinforce and reinforcement. Reinforcer are the stimuli that increase the chance that the response behaviour will occur again. Different stimuli has effect on different individuals. Reinforcment is the act that is followed by a response with reinforcer.
Various categories exist for reinforcement, which will be described after differentiating operant conditioning and classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is paring a natural stimulus with a neutral stimulus. A famous example is the Ivan Pavlov dog experiment. Pavlov observed that anytime the dog sees food, it starts to salivate. Pavlov tried to pair the food with a bell. Before Pavlov shows the food, he rings with a bell. The dogs starts to relates these two items, which is the bell and food. After a while the dog even starts to salivate just by hearing the bell. Therefore, classical conditioning is not the same as operant conditioning. Thus, classical conditioning is when the individual’s act is passive while the response is involuntary. For operant conditioning, the individual’s act is active and the respo...

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...nt getting in trouble with the teacher next day. By eliminating undesirable outcome, this preventative behaviour is more likely to occur again. Thus both positive and negative reinforcement strengthen the behaviour, whereby positive reinforcement a stimulus is present and in negative reinforcement a stimulus is removed. Final reinforcement type is punishment. Punishment decreases the response. For example, a teacher gives a student homework for bad behaviour, which is giving unpleasant stimulus or, when removing the pleasant stimulus, a student loses privileges for certain days because of not finishing their homework. Among all of these types, punishment is less effective than positive and negative reinforcements. Therefore, positive and negative reinforcement should be used in the Security Scan process.
Now moving on to the last theory, which is Role Modelling.

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