Skinner and Operant Conditioning

• What did Skinner suggest

  -learning is an active process whereby humans and animals operate on their environment.

  -in operant conditioning there are different types of consequences to behaviour
• Outline Positive reinforcement

  -receiving a reward when a certain behaviour is performed
• Outline Negative Reinforcement

  -Animal or human avoids something unpleasant

  -Both negative and positive reinforcement increase the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated
• Outline Punishment

  -An unpleasant consequence decreases likelihood of behaviour

  -decreases likelihood of behaviour being repeated
• What did Skinner believe was the best way to understand behaviour

  -by looking at the causes of an action and its consequences.

  -called this approach operant conditioning
• Outline the schedules of reinforcement starting with continuous

  -an animal/human is postively reinforced every time a specific behaviour occurs.

  -RESPONSE RATE IS SLOW

  -EXTINCTION RATE IS FAST
• What is fixed ratio reinforcement

  -behaviour is reinforced only after the behaviour occurs a specified number of times e.g after every 5th response

  -Response rate is FAST

  -Extinction rate is MEDIUM
• What is variable reinforcement

  -Behaviour is reinforced after an unpredictable number of times e.g gambling and fishing

  -Response rate is FAST 

  -Extinction rate is SLOW(very hard to extinguish because of unpredictability  
• What is a weakness?

  -many of the experiments that behaviourists have conducted were conducted on animals and it can be argued that animal behaviour is not comparable to that of humans

  -BARNETT ARGUES THAT THE USE OF ANIMAL RESEARCH IN EXPLAINING HUMAN BEHAVIOUR IS OUTDATED AND OVERSIMPLIFIED AS HUMANS ARE COGNITIVELY BIOLOGICALLY AND SOCIALLY DIFFERENT TO OTHER ANIMALS

  -Therefore operant conditioning research has contributed little to our understanding of human behaviour
• What is a strength

  -a positive of operant conditioning is that it has practical applications and it's principles have been used to treat schizophrenic individuals.  

  -alloy found that when token economy(a therapy using rewards) was used that the patients showed more socially desirable behaviours. This demonstrates how rewards can shape behaviour

  -However these treatments tend to only be effective as long as rewards are given and do not lead to a long term changes in behaviour patterns as Skinner suggested
• What is another weakness

  -however bandura argued that "if actions were determined solely by external rewards and punishments people would behave like weathervanes constantly shifting in behaviour"

  -in fact we often pursue our long term goals rather than being influenced by the immediate situation

  -therefore operant conditioning is an overly-simplistic explanation in explaining human behaviour
• What is another criticism of Skinner


  -he famously described free will as an illusion and argued that all behaviour is a result of conditioning.

  -Our experience of choice is merely the sum of total reinforcement contingencies that have acted upon us throughout our lives

  -This approach is hard determinism and it states humans have no free will.

  -other approaches such as humanism suggest this is not the case
• What is a strength of skinner


  -his reliance on the scientific method.

  -His use of laboratory experiments was highly controlled objective systematic and replicable

  -this allowed him to establish a causal relationship.

  -this means that his research lends strength to his theory