Definition of operant conditioning Operant conditioning, which is called instrumental conditioning; similar to ontogenetic selection (B.F. Skinner), is a type of learning to obtain an achieved behavior as goal-oriented; strengthens behavior through rewards or punishments. These rewards and punishments that control behaviors are antecedents (discriminative stimuli) signaling those consequences. All life forms strive for goal-oriented conditioning The bacterium finds its way, somewhat inefficiently, up a chemical gradient; the dog begs for a bone; the politician reads the polls to guide his campaign (Wikipedia). The examples given are known as ontogenetic selection that is guided by consequences through a lifeform 's life. Positive/negative …show more content…
Reinforcements (antecedents) affect one’s behavior by enhancing or suppressing it. Positive reinforcements (Rewards) such as a prized or fulfillment of joy may be given the occurrence of a wanted stimulus, following a response, that acts to increase the frequency of that response (Milhollan & Forisha, 1972); a kindness award given to a student for displaying kindness to other students. A negative reinforce - The termination of an aversive stimulus, following a response, that acts to increase the frequency of that response (Milhollan & Forisha, 1972). Negative reinforcement can best be seen through a child and a messy room, the child suffers being nagged until the specified behavior has been achieved (cleaning his/her room); the nagging decreases as the child increasingly continues to clean his room more. Through the prior example, a significant term has risen, learning; continued praise will result in a learned behavior from operant conditioning. Negative reinforcement may be considered a learned behavior. The negativity from a wrong doing will push a learned behavior that the continued behavior away from a specified behavior equals to more unnecessary …show more content…
In general, a consequence is called a reinforce if it strengthens the behavior that led to it, and it is a punisher if it weakens that behavior. The use of punishment has several negative side effects including the risk of causing serious physical harm, inducing fear or hostility (the child might develop a fear of all dogs after being bitten), and the failure to learn the correct response in the particular situation (Carlson & Buskist, 1997). A form of punishment to consider is removal of an important stimulus such as the removal of social media. Removing a teen from interactive activity is considered the punishment. Behavior Shaping Shaping is reinforcing successive action of a desired behavior. Chaining is one response to the continuous of another response. Most behaviors occur in chains. Saying the letters of the alphabet is an example. The letter A acts as the discriminative stimulus to produce the next response, saying the letter B, and so on (Milhollan & Forisha, 1972). Token
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Show MorePositive punishment again adds to the factor influencing the behavior, but this time it is meant to decrease the number of times the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive punishment is yelling at a puppy for peeing on the carpet. The positive punishment in this situation is the addition of yelling at the puppy, resulting in a decrease of the puppy’s peeing behavior. Negative punishment is the taking away of a certain aspect from the factor influencing the behavior to decrease how often a behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of negative punishment would be taking away bathroom privileges from students who use the bathroom as an excuse to wander around the school. This shows a privilege is being taken away (negative punishment) to decrease the behavior of skipping
Since the arrival of our twins undesirable behavior has manifested in one of our 11 yr. old. While initially very conscienscious in helping attend to the infants & her ordinary duties, she has become accustomed to playing with them mostly now. This play in itself is great, except they no longer get the changing & feeding expected. Furthermore she uses them as an excuse now to put off doing the minimal domestic maintenance formerly performed. She is generally unresponsive to negative reinforcement options. Past experience shows she responds best to tactile & humanistic behaviorist techniques, backed up by specific instruction from our sacred texts observed in our household.
Reinforcement is the outcome or influence of a behavior that strengthens the probability of the behavior. Regarding the roommate’s behavioral modification program, there will be a positive and negative reinforcement utilized. Negative reinforcement is the removal of a stimulus that strengthens the probability of behavior, and positive reinforcement is the addition of stimuli that also strengthens the probability of behavior. Because the roommate is trying to lose weight with the removal of unhealthy food and addition of healthy food, the positive reinforcement will be unhealthy food, and the negative reinforcement will be the healthy
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.
Kinds of consequences are divided into number of categories. The first, positive reinforcement is the presentation of a desirable consequences so a specific behavior is strengthened (Goodman). Negative reinforcement is the removal of a desirable consequence or natural punishment (Goodman). Pre-correction is the idea that you can correct or warn a child before the behavior happens. Punishment is the presentation of an undesirable consequence (Goodman). Extinction is the process of withholding reinforcements to weaken a previously reinforced behavior (Goodman). Shaping is rewarding behaviors that gradually get closer to a desired or targeted behavior (cite).
In this week’s reading assignment we learned about the four types of reinforcement used in behavior modification. The four types are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, extinction, and punishment. Positive reinforcement involves the use of some type of positive consequence given after a desired behavior is displayed. Negative reinforcement involves removing something negative after a desired behavior is displayed. Extinction is designed to weaken a behavior by either giving no consequence when the behavior is displayed. Finally punishment involves weakening a behavior by establishing something negative after the unwanted behavior is displayed or by removing something positive (Knicki & Williams, 2013).
Similar to negative reinforcement, negative punishment also removes a factor in a situation, but rather than remove the negative aspect for a more favorable outcome, a positive aspect is removed, resulting in a negative outcome. The most common example of negative punishment is receiving a timeout when a child misbehaves. Another example of negative punishment could be two siblings fighting over a toy, so the toy is removed by a parent. Although negative punishment is a frequently used technique, it is usually unreliable. Negative punishment is unreliable because it is harder to consistently practice. An inconsistency in both negative reinforcement and negative punishment can cause resentment and confusion for the child. Because of the inconsistency, negative reinforcements are usually only effective in certain
2011, p281). Regardless of their differences or similarities however, both have played an important part in the study of learning. With operant conditioning allowing to condition more complex behaviours that can be done with classical conditioning, and with classical conditioning being what helped discover operant conditioning in the first place, it can be argued here that the two are complementary. Indeed, one cannot speak of operant conditioning without mentioning classical conditioning, and vice
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).
Reinforcements that include physical harm, mental harm, or encourage delinquent or harmful behaviors should never be implemented as the negative consequences of those reinforcements heavily outweigh the potential positive consequences. Physical harm includes spanking children or even beating them when they act undesirably. Mental harm can also occur from physical abuse, but constantly berating a child for undesirable behavior is likely to harm their self-esteem. Encouraging children to engage in addicting behaviors such as alcohol consumption or smoking to fit in, or encouraging dangerous behavior such as speeding when driving is likely to lead to hardships later in life or even death at a young age. The end goal of parenting should be to help children develop in healthy, well-adjusted, and ethical adults and using operant conditioning with their best interests in mind is the most effective way to ensure that goal is
In operant conditioning, there is an association between an individual’s behavior and its consequence. A consequence can either be reinforcement or punishment (233). Positive and negative reinforcements will increase the behavior. When an individual is reinforced, they will continue to repeat the behavior to receive the reinforcement again. Punishment, on the other hand, will decrease the behavior. If an individual is punished after a particular behavior, they will behave that way less often to avoid the punishment.
Operant Conditioning- Another type of learning when voluntary responses are controlled by their outcome or consequence. So whatever you do in a scenario is already determined by the known outcome. An example would be a kid clowns around in class because he knows he will get attention and it is making him more popular. Another example would be that the parents of a kid give in to buying him a new toy, so he stops crying and complaining. Operant conditioning is pretty much why most people do things. You know if you go to work and do your job you will get paid and not fired. The reason why students go to school is because they know the outcome will be better grades and that leads to a degree. This is how most people think they know if they do something or don’t do something that they get a specific outcome. The way social situations work is with operant conditioning. Some people may act horribly to others because they know that their friend group likes it. This term controls your everyday thinking and
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).
Anything that weakens a response is considered punishment. For example, a kid who writes on the wall in permanent magic market and then gets yelled out and put into time-out is being punished. During modeling and observation, an individual watches somebody perform a behavior and then repeats the behavior. Children learn in this way. For example, a 3-year old who has watched his mother answer the phone and then starts picks it up while it is ringing one day and says “hello” has learned by modeling and observation. In order for an individual to model somebody, they have to be paying attention, remember what they saw, and be motivated to repeat the behavior.
Punishment is a process through which “the consequence of a response decreases the likelihood that the response will recur” (Gray, 2002, pp.115). Further, punishment can be seen as an effort to decrease the response rate to stimuli by either removing a desired stimulus or presenting one which is undesired (Gray, 2002). Recent studies suggest that punishment can be an effective method of behaviour modification. However, as reported in Lerman and Vorndran (2002), there are a number of limitations to punishment as an intervention and subsequent negative side effects. For this reason, certain principles upon which the implementation of a successful punishment is dependent must be adhered to. In accordance to these findings, this essay will contend that whilst there are alternative means to operant conditioning, certain punishment techniques have been proven to be effectual and in some aspects advantageous.