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Operant Conditioning (The Skinner box (Operant conditioning (Mouse…
Operant Conditioning
What is it?
In classical conditioning an association is made between a neutral stimulus and an innate, unconditioned response
In operant conditioning the association is made between an action and a reward (a reinforcer)
operant = an action
The Skinner box
Structure of the box
- A food container on the top filled with sugar pellets
- A tube leading from the food container to the tray
- A feeding tray attached to the wall to catch food pellets
- Lever attached to one wall of the box
Skinner used animals to isolate measurable behaviour and reinforce it in different ways to look at the effects
(developing ways of reinforcing rats using food pellets, the reward)
- An imaginary line dividing the floor in half, in which the rat receives a sugar pellet if it moves into the half closest to the lever
- The line becomes closer to the lever, and food pellets aren't given to the mouse if it isn't in this area
- Then food is only given if the mouse's body is touching the lever
Operant conditioning
Mouse performs action: presses lever --> mouse receives award: relieves hunger --> reward reinforces the action, mouse repeats it
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Evaluation
Strengths
- Can explain a wide range of behaviours (e.g addiction), where an activity can become addictive if rewarding
- Skinner argued a child's correct utterances are positively reinforced
- Practical applications
- Token economies have been successful in psychiatric hospitals, schools and prisons
Weaknesses
- Claims to be scientific
- Concepts can be defined, measured well and controlled
- As observable behaviour is measured, it can be considered objective, but these can be replicated allowing reliability
- Controlled environment is unnatural to observe behaviour, questions ecological validity and application
- Both types of conditioning involve animals, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions and generalise to humans