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Operant Conditioning

Radical Behaviorism

Skinner called his particular brand of behaviorism "Radical" behaviorism. Unlike less austere behaviorisms, it does not accept private events such as thinking, perceptions, and unobservable emotions in a causal account of an organism's behavior: The position can be stated as follows: what is felt or introspectively observed is not some nonphysical world of consciuosness, mind, or mental life but the observer's own body. This does not mean, as I shall show later, that introspection is a kind of psychological research, nor does it mean (and this is the heart of the argument) that what are felt or introspectively observed are the causes of the behavior. An organism behaves as it does because of its current structure, but most of this is out of reach of introspection. At the moment we must content ourselves, as the methodological behaviorist insists, with a person's genetic and environment histories. What are introspectively observed are certain collateral products of those . In this way we repair the major damage wrought by mentalist. When what a person does [is] attributed to what is going on inside him, investigation is brought to an end. Why explain the explanation? For twenty five hundred years people have been preoccupied with feelings and mental life, but only recently has any interest been shown in a more precise analysis of the role of the environment. Ignorance of that role lead in the first place to mental fictions, and it has been perpetuated by the explanatory practices to which they gave rise.

Radical behaviorism inherits from behaviorism the position that the science of behavior is a natural science, a belief that animal behavior can be studied profitably and compared with human behavior, a strong emphasis on the environment as cause of behavior, and a penchant for operationalizing. Its principal differences are an emphasis on operant conditioning, use of idiosyncratic terminology (jargon, a tendency to apply notions of reinforcement to philosophy and daily life and, particularly, an emphasis on private experience.

Reinforcement

Reinforcement is a term in operant conditioning and behavior analysis for the process of increasing the rate or probability of a behavior (e.g., pulling a lever more frequently) in the form of a "response" by the delivery or emergence of a stimulus (e.g. a candy) immediately or shortly after performing the behavior.

The response strength is assessed by measuring frequency, duration, latency, accuracy, and/or persistence of the response after reinforcement stops. Experimental behavior analysts measured the rate of responses as a primary demonstration of learning and performance in non-humans (e.g., the number of times a pigeon pecks a key in a 10-minute session).

A reinforcer is the stimulus, event, or situation that is presented or otherwise emerges when the response behavior is performed.

Positive and negative reinforcement

As Skinner discussed, positive reinforcement is superior to punishment in altering behavior. He maintained that punishment was not simply the opposite of positive reinforcement; positive reinforcement results in lasting behavioral modification, whereas punishment changes behavior only temporarily and presents many detrimental side effects.

The accepted model of reinforcement began shifting in 1966 when Azrin and Holz contributed a chapter to Honig's volume on operant conditioning. Skinner defined reinforcement as creating situations that a person likes or removing a situation he doesn't like, and punishment as removing a situation a person likes or setting up one he doesn't like. Thus the distinction was based on the appetitive or aversive nature of the stimulus. Azrin and Holz defined punishment "as 'a reduction of the future probability of a specific response as a result of the immediate delivery of a stimulus for that response'."This new definition of punishment encroached on Skinner's definition of reinforcement, but most textbooks now only present examples of the 1966 model summarized below:

Helpful definitions:

• Appetitive stimulus: a pleasant outcome
• Aversive stimulus: an unpleasant outcome

A positive reinforcer is a consequence that increases the frequency of a behavior or maintains the frequency. What is reinforcing is defined by what happens to the frequency of the behavior. It has nothing to do with whether the organism finds the reinforcer 'pleasant' or not. For example, if a child gets slapped whenever he/she says a 'naughty' word but the frequency of naughty words increases, the slap is a positive reinforcer.

A 'pleasant' consequence is not necessarily a positive reinforcer. Getting a birthday gift is not a positive reinforcer. There is no behavior that will increase (or be maintained) in frequency. When deciding whether or not something is a reinforcer or not, the basic criteria is whether there is a behavior that is increasing or being maintained in the frequency of its occurrence.

Consequences are not universally reinforcing. For example, happy face stickers may be effective reinforcers for some children. Other children may find them silly.

A negative reinforcer increases or maintains the frequency of a behavior. It is not punishment. These terms are often confused. A negative reinforcer increases or maintains the frequency of the behavior that terminates the negative reinforcer. In this case the negative reinforcer is present before the behavior. The organism performs a behavior that terminates the negative reinforcer. The behavior that terminates the negative reinforcer is likely to increase or be maintained in frequency. Suppose someone has a headache (negative reinforcer). The person takes two aspirin but nothing happens. Then the person takes two Tylenol tablets and the headache goes away. The next time the person has a headache it is likely the person will take Tylenol. That is the behavior that has been reinforced.

Forms of operant conditioning:

• Positive reinforcement: the adding of an appetitive stimulus to increase a certain behavior or response.
  Example: Father gives candy to his daughter when she picks up her toys. If the frequency of picking up the toys increases or stays the same, the candy is a positive reinforcer.
• Positive punishment: the adding of an aversive stimulus to decrease a certain behavior or response.
  Example: Mother yells at a child when running into the street. If the child stops running into the street the yelling is positive punishment.
• Negative reinforcement: the taking away of an aversive stimulus to increase certain behavior or response.
  Example: Turning off distracting music when trying to work. If the work increases when the music is turned off, turning off the music is a negative reinforcer.
• Negative punishment (omission training): the taking away of an appetitive stimulus to decrease a certain behavior.
  Example: A teenager comes home an hour after curfew and the parents take away the teen's cell phone for two days. If the frequency of coming home after curfew decreases, the removal of the phone is negative punishment.

Operant Conditioning

An operant conditioning chamber (also known as the Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used in the experimental analisys behavior to study animal behavior. The operant conditioning chamber was created by B. F. Skinner while he was a graduate student at Harvard university  (Masters in 1930 and doctorate in 1931). It is used to study both operant conditioning and classical conditioning.

 Purporse

An operant conditioning is done by applying a principle called Law of Effect, when a behavior has good consequences, it will tend to be repeated by the subject while bad consequences will tend to be not repeated. An operant conditioning chamber permits experimenters to study behavior conditioning (training) by teaching a subject animal to perform certain actions (like pressing a lever) in response to specific stimuli, like a light or sound signal. When the subject correctly performs the behavior, the chamber mechanism delivers food or another reward. In some cases, the mechanism delivers a punishment for incorrect or missing responses. With this apparatus, experimenters perform studies in conditioning and training through reward/punishment mechanisms.

Structure

The structure forming the shell of a chamber is a box large enough to easily accommodate the organism being used as a subject. (Commonly used model organisms include rodents—usually lab rats—pigeons, and primates). It is often sound-proof and light-proof to avoid distracting stimuli.

Operant chambers have at least one operandum (or "manipulandum"), and often two or more, that can automatically detect the occurrence of a behavioral response or action. Typical operanda for primates and rats are response levers; if the subject presses the lever, the opposite end moves and closes a switch that is monitored by a computer or other programmed device. Typical operanda for pigeons and other birds are response keys with a switch that closes if the bird pecks at the key with sufficient force. The other minimal requirement of a conditioning chamber is that it has a means of delivering a primary reinforcer or unconditioned stimulus like food (usually pellets) or water. It can also register the delivery of a conditioned reinforcer, such as an LED (see Jackson & Hackenberg 1996 in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior for example) signal as a "token".

Despite such a simple configuration, one operandum and one feeder, it is possible to investigate many psychological phenomena. Modern operant conditioning chambers typically have many operanda, like many response levers, two or more feeders, and a variety of devices capable of generating many stimuli, including lights, sounds, music, figures, and drawings. Some configurations use an LCD panel for the computer generation of a variety of visual stimuli.

Operant chambers can also have electrified nets or floors so that electrical charges can be given to the animals; or lights of different colors that give information about when the food is available. Although the use of shock is not unheard of, approval may be needed in some countries to avoid unnecessary harmful experimentation on animals. Skinner's work did not focus on punishment, and involved a "paw slap" which caused him to conclude, incorrectly, that punishment was ineffective. Works by Azrin, Sidman and others in the 1960s and 1970s showed this was not the case.

Behaviorism Skinner

Behaviorism (or behaviourism), also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior), is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns or modifying the environment. The behaviorist school of thought maintains that behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal phycological events or to hypothetical constructs such as the mind.Behaviorism comprises the position that all theories should have observationalcorrelates but that there are no philosophical differences between publicly observable processes (such as actions) and privately observable processes (such as thinking and feeling)

B.F. Skinner was influential in defining radical behaviorism, a philosophy codifying the basis of his school of research (named the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, or EAB.) While EAB differs from other approaches to behavioral research on numerous methodological and theoretical points, radical behaviorism departs from methodological behaviorism most notably in accepting feelings, states of mind and introspection as existent and scientifically treatable. This is done by identifying them as something non-dualistic, and here Skinner takes a divide-and-conquer approach, with some instances being identified with bodily conditions or behavior, and others getting a more extended "analysis" in terms of behavior. However, radical behaviorism stops short of identifying feelings as causes of behavior.^[1] Among other points of difference were a rejection of the reflex as a model of all behavior and a defense of a science of behavior complementary to but independent of physiology. Radical behaviorism has considerable overlap with other western philosophical positions such as American pragmatism