Behavior Investigation And The Concept Of Reinforcement

Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner, an American behavioral psychologist, is best known for his experiments on changing behavior. With behavioral psychologists Pavlov and Watson as his inspiration, Skinner formulated his theory of operational conditioning. His idea of “shaping” behavior is prevalent in the parenting and teaching techniques of children and students.

B.F Skinner was an American Psychologist who invented the operant conditioning chamber. The chamber he set up had rats in it and a lever, once the rats pulled the lever they were given a piece of food. After this happened the rate of bar pressing would increase dramatically and remain high until the rat was no longer hungry. He was a firm believer of the idea that human free will was actually an illusion and any human

Skinner had gone on to receive his PhD from Harvard in 1931 after receiving it he was a researcher until 1936 in which he took an academic position at the University of Minnesota. Skinner was

The American psychologist B. F Skinner is considered the founding father of operant conditioning. He spent his whole career believing that consequences were the most powerful influences on behavior in regards to what happened right away after the behavior. According to behavioral psychologists, operant conditioning is a form of behavioral learning in which the consequences of behavior such as rewards and punishments influence the probability that the behavior will appear again.

B.F. Skinner was a pioneer in the field of Psychology; there will be three talking points made about his life. The research he founded on operant conditioning with humans and animals. His family life along with his wife and two daughters. The creation of his book Beyond Freedom & Dignity. Lastly, lastly a conclusion to this first paper.

There are many personal and historical events that shaped B. F. Skinner as a Behavioral Psychologist. Skinner got his Master’s in Psychology at Harvard University on May 1, 1930. While, studying psychology and behaviorism, he invented an operant conditioning chamber, also known as “the Skinner Box”. After one year, Skinner received his PhD in Psychology and on November 29, 1938, his first book was published called The Behavior of Organisms. The book is about an experimental analysis and studies on his theory behind operant conditioning and behavior. After having achieved a significant amount of success, he invented The Baby Tender under the influence of his wife, Yvonne who desired to have crib that was safe for a baby by keeping it from trapping it legs or suffocating itself under blankets or within bars. Furthermore, during World War II, Skinner trained pigeons to continuously peck at a target and this would allow the missile to hold in target. On November 29, 1948, he published a fictional book called Walden Two. In this

In the textbook operant conditioning can be defined as “the control of behavior through manipulation of rewards and punishments in the environment, particularly the laboratory environment” (Cervone & Pervin, 2013). B.F. skinner who created the operant conditioning procedure believed that all humans are controlled by the environments that they experience and that by changing the environment it is possible to reinforce a behavior that benefits everyone (Cervone & Pervin, 2013). Skinner also believed that the goal of such a procedure should be to benefit mankind. A major tool in operant conditioning is the use of a reinforcer, which is something that occurs after a response and increases the probability of that same response occurring in the future again (Cervone & Pervin, 2013). There are two different types of reinforcement: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement refers to the addition of something pleasant to increase a behavior whereas negative reinforcement is the removal of something unpleasant to increase a behavior (Cervone & Pervin, 2013). Skinner developed a tool called the Skinner box which was used to study the effects of reinforcers on behavior. The Skinner box would present the subject (usually a small animal such as a rat) with a reinforcer and see if the reinforcer influenced the frequency of a certain behavior such as pushing a lever that was followed by receiving food as a reinforcer (Cervone & Pervin, 2013). Skinner also

Skinner is one of the very first renowned behaviorists that came up with classical conditioning on organisms and on top of this, other experiments were also built like the operant conditioning experiments. The process of classical conditioning works with the introduction of neutral stimuli before the original stimulus and the same reaction is elicited from the organism even without the presence of the original stimulus. For instance in the instance of the Pavlov dog, it salivated with every sight of food as the original stimulus for the salivation. When a neutral stimulus was introduced like a bell that was rang each time before it was fed, the dog started salivating at the ringing of the bell even before the food was availed. Another famous experiment was of the Skinner box where caged animal detected that by pushing a given button or lever, food could roll into the cage. The voluntary action preceded the stimulus.

Within the early 19th Century, Edward Throne like conducted experiments on dogs and cats to determine the way these animals behave under certain conditions. These studies were conducted through replicating and standardizing the circumstances that the animals were in through a controlled environment. As such, this model demonstrated that animals had the nature to learn when they were presented with certain consequences. In 1938, Burrhus Friederich (B. F.) developed the core idea of the Operant Conditioning Skinner, which claims that operant conditioning, was brought about by the response from the operant under threat (Sakagami,&Lattal, 2016).

Skinner, or more properly, Burrhus Frederic Skinner, is one of the most widely known psychologists of the 20th century. Skinner’s in 1948 stated, in which learning was facilitated by applying his theory in daily life of humans. Reinforcement is simply defined as "the effect of a reinforcer" (Lefrancois, 2006). Some issues concerning the control of human behaviour on his research, studies and beliefs of learning. Skinner’s write, “science will increasing our power to be more influence, change, and control human behaviour” (p. 1057). Other than that, in the other article, Skinner wrote that “any list of values or things is a list of reinforcement in conditioned or unconditioned” (p. 1064). We can understand that values in our surrounding create behaviour that will affect the behaviour in terms of reinforcement. Based on (PsycINFO, Conger & John J, Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Vol 17, 1956, 296-305) reinforcement theory is explanation of rewards behaviour, even in the case of the man is apparently punished by such behaviour. Stated by Skinner’s, reinforces typically change the types of a respons and it can only be considered reinforces when it immediately connected to the behaviour. Skinner believed that we do have simply more productive to study observable behaviour that happened rather than internal behaviour events in such of mind. Skinner also believed that the best way to understand behaviour is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences based on the environment. Last but not least, reinforcement can then be broken down into positive and negative

The question of why people behave as they do was one that puzzled Skinner and one that consumed his professional career. He began his search for an answer by developing a series of ways to study behavior in people, starting with simply observing behavior and attempting to discover patterns or "organizing principles in the structure of behavior." ("About Behaviorism," Part 1) Once this was undertaken and the observation of behavior was scientifically developed, "a program of methodological behaviorism became plausible"¦" ("About Behaviorism," Part 1) This program discovered the importance of the environment in shaping behavior and would culminate in the development of "radical behaviorism," or the idea that behavior could be influenced through external reinforcement.

The principals of operant conditioning, teaches how having certain coping techniques can reward certain undesirable behaviors. Conditioning human behavior has been studied for many years, Psychologists Edward Thorndike and B.F. Skinner, have dedicated the majority of their lives to the study. Thorndike’s theory Law of effect. Thorndike suggests that certain stimuli and response become connected or dissociated from each other. His experiment worked by placing a cat in a box, then observing its behavior as it tried to escape and obtain the food on the other side. He studied several cats and plotted the time it took for them to escape from the puzzle box. The challenge to get out of the box remained the same, but the amount of time to get out of the box decreased, and while the animal may have not realized what it was doing, but knew what he had to do to receive the food. He concluded that animals learn from reward and punishment or trial and error. The theory of B.F. Skinner is based upon the idea that learning is about change in behavior. Operant conditioning is learning by consequence. To put it simply, an action which he rewarded is likely to be repeated along with an action that is punished is less likely to be repeated. B.F. Skinner introduced a new term into the law of effect known as reinforcement. Behavior that is reinforced tends to be repeated while behavior which is no reinforced tends to disappear. conducted an experiment where he placed a rat inside a special

B. F. Skinner was a Harvard Psychologist who did the majority of the research on operant conditioning, although he did not “discover” it. He designed the operant box which is sometimes called the Skinner box. Skinner used rats in his research. Inside of the Skinner box there was a lever and a cup that stuck out of the wall. When the lever was pressed down, it would release a food pellet into the cup. Once the rat recognized that food was being released by pressing the lever, the rate in which the lever gets pressed is increased. Learning has been

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) fully developed the concept of operant conditioning and how this could explain much of our daily behaviour. Operant conditioning involves an association between a stimulus, the response to the stimulus (a behaviour), and its consequence. In many marketing situations, the behaviour is an action,

B.F. Skinner: He was one of the prominent propionates of a theory called behaviourism. He also constructed what became known as the ‘Skinner Box’. Within this box he discovered that a rat or a bird could be trained to obtain food by pressing a button. This he called ‘Operant Conditioning’ and ‘Negative Reinforcement’. According to Martin Fiebert, Professor of clinical