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Operant and ical conditioning Assignment Operant conditioning This term was coined by Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990), a famous American behaviorist, psychologist and author (McLeod, 2007). Basically, operant conditioning refers to the changing of behavior by using negative and positive reinforcements. Through operant conditioning, a person is able to make associations between certain behaviors and consequences (McLeod, 2007). During my early years at school, this method of modeling behavior was applied to me.

Every end of term, my parents used to buy me gifts and other rewards every time I had a good grade. This even included being taken for holiday for a couple of days. However, whenever I had bad grades, I would be forced to remain at home and study while my siblings are taken for holiday and bought gifts. With time, I learnt that working hard in school and getting good grades would guarantee me a holiday and gifts. I made every effort to achieve this. A famous example of this form of behavior modeling was the experiment conducted by B.F. Skinner on rats and pigeons.

For example, Skinner placed rats in a box, called the Skinner box, with a lever connected to a feeding tube. The rats were subjected to an electric current that caused them to move around the box. In the process, the rat would accidentally press the lever that caused food to be dispensed and the current would go off (McLeod, 2007). Therefore, every time a rat pressed the liver, food would come through the feeding tube and the discomfort would go away. With time, the rats realized that there was an association between food and the lever.

As a result, the rats would go to the lever immediately they are placed in the box. In another experiment, Skinner used a pigeon where he fed the bird at continuous intervals of about 15 seconds (McLeod, 2007). He noted that the pigeon’s behavior would change moments before food was given, irrespective of the fact that the actions had nothing to do with dispensing of the food. He concluded that the pigeon had developed a relationship between its actions and the dispending of food. Through such experiments, Skinner identified three responses that follow behavior.

First, there are neutral responses that neither increase nor decrease the behavior (McLeod, 2007). Secondly, reinforces are responses that that increase the chances of behavior reoccurring and finally, punishers are responses which decrease the chances of a behavior being repeated. Classical Conditioning Classical conditioning is a form of learning in which an association is made between certain conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US) (Gluck, et al, 2012). Through this form of learning, a person or an animal learns that a given stimulus predicts the occurrence of a certain important event.

This was discovered by a Russian psychologist named Ivan Pavlov (Gluck, et al, 2012). There is an example of how this form of learning has applied to me. As a preschooler, I was picked every morning by the school bus outside our home. The bus had a certain roaring sound that could be heard hundreds of meters away. Therefore, whenever I heard the bus approach our house, I knew it was time to leave the house and go to school. Even without being reminded by anyone, I learnt that whenever I heard the bus approach, I had to pick my bag and get out of the house.

Another example relates to bed time. Before going to bed, my father usually locked the main door and put off the balcony light. With this routine, I learnt that whenever I saw him put off the light and lock the door, it was time to stand up and go to bed. This was like the communication channel he used to alert us that it was time to sleep. This can also be compared to the experiment used by Pavlov on dogs. In this experiment, Pavlov trained a dog that every time a doorbell rang, food was delivered.

After conducting the experiment a number of times, the dog learnt to associate the ringing of the bell with the delivery of food. The dog salivated more every time the doorbell rang. In this case, the bell was the conditioned stimulus while food was the unconditioned stimulus. Another example is the experiment conducted by Clark Hull, a famous pioneer of mathematical learning. He used his students to blink every time in anticipation of a face slap (Gluck, et al, 2012). Before the face slap, he arranged for a particular tone to be played in the background.

After many attempts, the subjects would start to blink every time the tone was played. This was done whether or not the tone was followed by a slap. ReferencesGluck, M., Mercado, E., & Myers, C. (2012). Classical Conditioning. In Learning and memory. New York, NY: Worth. pp. 117-165McLeod, S. A. (2007). B.F. Skinner | Operant Conditioning - Simply Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html