Essay about B.F. Skinner

One famous behaviourist was Skinner (1904-1990) who was an American psychologist and believed in the role of reinforcement. There are two types of reinforcement: positive and negative. Positive reinforcement occurs when a particular behaviour is followed by a consequence that is desired such as receiving food, money or verbal praise. Whereas negative reinforcement takes place when a particular behaviour removes something unpleasant. Skinner used both positive and negative reinforcement in his experiment where he worked with rats and pigeons. He used a “Skinner box” to investigate the key values of learning new and challenging behaviours. Skinner used the theory of operant conditioning and would place the rat or pigeon into the “Skinner Box” the animal would then be curious and sniff and run around the box until eventually it would press the lever, which would release a food pellet. After a while the animal would carry out this behaviour many times, as it has learnt that after pressing the lever it will receive a food pellet as a consequence. As the pellet is experienced as reinforcing and something that the animal desires, this increases the chance of the behaviour being repeated. This is called

1. Skinners theory is based on the idea that learning is a function of change in overt behaviour.

He removed the pellets as a reinforced and found that the rats would eventually stop pressing the lever. He also decided to reward the rats intermittently. He found that irregularly rewarded behavior was the hardest to eradicate. He was then able to explain why we do dumb things even when we are not consistently rewarded. Skinner’s experiments were amazing and disturbing at the same time.

Skinner 's theory of operant conditioning was based on the work of Thorndike that he reviewed (1948). Edward Thorndike studied learning in animals using a puzzle box to propose the theory known as the 'Law of Effect ', responses that produce a satisfying effect in a situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation. Skinner introduced a new term to Thorndike’s theory known as reinforcement (Skinner, 1948). Reinforcement is a stimulus (as a reward or the removal of an electric shock) that increases the probability of a desired response in operant conditioning by being applied or affected following the desired response. Skinner branched off Thorndike’s approach studied operant conditioning by experimenting on animals using conditioning chambers also known as a Skinner box and in 1948

According to Kail and Cavanaugh the theory established by Skinner known as operant conditioning is a “learning paradigm in which the consequences of a behavior determine whether a behavior is repeated in the future” (p. 13). This theory to an extent, parallels the previous theory of operant conditioning but is also important in trying to understand why one makes the decisions they do as well as how often they partake in certain behaviors. Through his theory Skinner displayed that there are two types of consequences, reinforcement and punishment, in which one increases the chances of repeated behavior and the other vice versa. Reinforcement is the component that increases the likeliness of repeated behavior and includes two divisions, negative and positive. Negative reinforcement is that in which a person’s

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

Chapter 1 of Opening Skinners Box portrays the life and experiments of one B.F. Skinner. The way this one man researched and spent so many years of his life dedicated to his findings is not only crazy and committed, but encouraging, motivational, and stimulating. Skinner was a neo-behaviorist well-known and notorious for his findings about the behavior animals have when using positive reinforcement and what you can teach them to do with these findings.

Thereby, Skinner produced experiments whereby rats would navigate through mazes to achieve the goal of a box containing food. His interest was the behaviour of the rat, taking the right turn to achieve the desired result, food. To begin with the rats would take the wrong turn but with experience, they became more skilful. The rats learning behaviour was measured in two ways, firstly the length of time it took from start to end and secondly, the reduction in errors. This was a lengthy experiment which led Skinner to produce ‘the Skinner box’. Whereby, rats learnt to press a lever and pigeons learnt to peck a key in order to attain food, also known as behaviour shaping. This experiment lacks ecological validity as the animals are kept in a controlled environment which is dissimilar to their natural habitat. However, the results which were attained could not have been possible in natural circumstances. Skinner wanted to observe if behaviour could be learned through reaching a desired outcome such as positive reinforcement which needed to be

Skinner created the theory of Operant Conditioning as he believed that all behaviour can be controlled by rewards or reinforcement. This is very different from Pavlovs theory of Classical Conditioning as Skinner is trying to control voluntary behaviour. This is done by giving the subject a positive or negative reaction to an action with the theory that a negative response will discourage the subject to repeat the action. A good example of this is house training a dog, as the dogs natural reaction is to relieve itself, however it must be taught to wait until it is outside. The more the dog waits until he is outside, the more praise he receives therefore it is less likely to wish to instigate a negative reaction by relieving himself inside the house.

A question Skinner had to deal with was how we get to more complex sorts of behaviors. He responded with the idea of shaping, or “the method of successive approximations.” Basically, it involves first reinforcing a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so on, until you have the animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life. Skinner and his students have been quite successful in teaching simple animals to do some quite extraordinary things.

Skinner’s reinforcement experiments conducted on rats showed the principles of operant conditioning. While working with rats, Skinner would place them in a Skinner box with a lever attached to a feeding tube. After multiple trials, rats learned the connection between the lever and food, and started to spend more time in the box procuring food than performing any other action. He used positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement to produce or inhibit specific target behaviors. Therefore, if a specific behavior is reinforced then the probability of that behavior occurring again is increased. Based on Skinner’s view, this theory can be applied to learning because learning is nothing more than a change in behavior. Operant conditioning encourages positive reinforcement, which can be applied in the classroom environment to get the good behavior you want and need from students. One of the ways of reinforcing a student’s behavior is through praise. Also teachers can build operant conditioning techniques into their lesson plans to teach children possible skills as well as good behaviors. For example: to give a smiley face, or motivational stamps to encourage children to perform correctly and encourage them to repeat such action again.

Just as Freud is known as the father of Psychoanalysis, B.F. Skinner is often referred to ask the “the father of operant conditioning.” B.F. Skinner is also known for major contributions to the field of psychology (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). Skinner was a prolific author, publishing nearly 200 articles and more than 20 books. Skinner was most known for his work in behavior psychology. Behavioral psychology is the psychological practice that focuses on learning new behaviors and how to modify our existing behavior and how that takes place (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). One of his major contributions was his theory of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning means roughly, the changing of behavior by the use of reinforcement, either positive or negative, and which these reinforcements are given after the desired response (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). Skinner identified three types of responses or operant that can follow behavior.

Skinner conducted a series of research experiments with rats and pigeons under controlled laboratory conditions using a specially designed cage. By doing so he sought to demonstrate that behaviour can be created and reinforced by external factors. The puzzle box he created for his experiments has become so widely used that it is now known as the “Skinner box”. Animals would be placed in a cage which had a bar lever mechanism used to dispense food; Skinner would measure the frequency of the bar pressing and introduce different variables into the experiments. This led to his discovery of 'partial reinforcement' and its correlation to the slower extinction of shaped behaviour. When food pellets would only be dispensed once in a while (as opposed to every pressing) Skinner noticed that it took longer for the learnt behaviour to become extinct. The powerful phenomenon of partial reinforcement can be noticed in gambling establishments; a player on a slot machine is more likely to keep up their behaviour of playing if the rewards are unpredictable and occasional. The player becomes more persistent in their gambling in the hope that the next coin will be the winner (Hunt, 1993).

According to Gewirtz and Peláez-Nogueras (1992), “B. F. Skinner contributed a great deal to advancing an understanding of basic psychological processes and to the applications of science-based interventions to problems of individual and social importance.” He contributed to “human and nonhuman behavior, including human behavioral development, and to various segments of the life span, including human infancy” (p. 1411). One of Skinner's greatest scientific discoveries was “single reinforcement” which became sufficient for “operant conditioning, the role of extinction in the discovery of intermittent schedules, the development of the method of shaping by successive approximation, and Skinner's break with and rejection of stimulus-response

Operant conditioning developed by Skinner is one of the learning methods according to which the likelihood of behavior is increased or decreased by the use of reinforcement or punishment. In case of positive reinforcement a certain behavior becomes stronger by the effect of experiencing some positive condition. In case of negative reinforcement a certain behavior becomes stronger by the outcome of stopping or staying away from some negative condition. In case of extinction a certain behavior is becomes weaker by the outcome of avoiding to experiencing some positive condition or stopping some negative condition.