Question

Summarize the basic principles of operant conditioning that is, how do reinforcement, punishment, and extinction influence the rate of responding?

Answer 1

Skinner has been a proponent of operant school of learning . As per this school of thought learning is a consequence of leraner's pairing of reward and punishment with an action or certain behaviour . The learner gets conditioned to getting a reward or escaping a punishment by indulging in an action and is motivated to indulge in such behaviour . The rate responding to reinforcement , punishment and extiction depends on there frequency consistency and intensity or relevance . As the lerner gets enough exposure of the stimulant his respinse and reward or escaping puniishment, the learner gets consitioned to repeat the response.

The strength of desired behaviour can be modified with the operant conditioning .

The basic toold of this is reinforcement and Punishment . Both can be positive and negative .

Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increases the occurence of a behaviour .

Posicive punishment and negative punishment reduce the ocuurence of a cerain behavior .

Based on the intervention of the reinforcement and punishment we can extract better performance , help learn a behaviour or extinct a ceratin undesirable behaviour .

There can be several forms of such stimuli intervention , like it can be continiuous , intermitted or periodic. We have to moderate the usage based on desired bahviour to be elicited .

For operant coniitioning to happen the following conditions should preexist :

Desired change expected

Reward or punishment

Clear relationship between reward and punishment .