Dog trainers often use treats and encouraging actions and words to teach their dogs specific tricks and behaviors. This is a common example of operant conditioning in action.
Operant conditioning or instrumental conditioning is a behavioral learning tool that allows people to reinforce or decrease the occurrence of a specific observable behavior or action. This type of conditioning is very instrumental, which means that the person will need to use various types of reinforcement and punishment to conduct the operant conditioning.
Operant conditioning is a very useful behavioral learning tool that has plenty of real-life applications. Teachers can use operant conditioning in their classrooms to help manage the behaviors and actions of their students. These operant conditioning techniques include the application of various rules and encouragement of students in the classroom.
Teachers and mentors can use positive reinforcement to help increase the student’s participation and performance. You can encourage students to participate in the lesson more via rewards and encouragement. Not only that, but you can also add different flourishes and tools the student may use to improve themselves.
Teachers and mentors can use negative reinforcement to increase the likelihood of the student’s obedience and predilection for bad or illicit behavior. This can be done through the implementation of rules in the classroom. If a student breaks a specific rule the teacher or mentor may cancel specific activities or events to prevent or discourage the student from breaking said behavior.
Teachers and mentors can use positive punishment to decrease the likelihood of a student doing an action that is illicit or against the rule. This can come in the form of adding rules and punishments to prevent bad behavior from happening. Not only that but scolding a student is also another common example of positive punishment.
Teachers and mentors can use negative punishment to decrease the occurrence of behavior that they don’t want their students to exhibit, by taking away something that is seen as positive by the student. Examples of negative punishment include the taking away or confiscation of something the student likes.
Operant conditioning is a type of conditioning that focuses on using reward and punishment as the main instrument of conditioning. There are many practical examples of operant conditioning that are widely used today. This type of conditioning is usually used in the training of animals and children. A dog trainer conditioning their dog to stay and heel in specific situations via the use of positive reinforcement and negative punishment is a common example of operant conditioning. Another common example of operant conditioning is a scientist training their lab rat to finish specific tasks and mazes through the use of rewards as the positive enforcer.
Classical conditioning focuses more on the association of an involuntary response and a stimulus. Classical conditioning has more applications with animals like dogs, cats, and rats, which targets a specific type of learning. While operant conditioning focuses more on the reinforcement of specific behaviors that may be encouraged or discouraged by positive and negative reinforcements and punishments. But for operant conditioning to occur, the behavior must first be observed before you can utilize operant conditioning. This means that classical conditioning works more on inducing a specific involuntary behavior while operant conditioning works more on the encouragement of specific existing behaviors.
The four quadrants of operant conditioning are the ways and modes people take when they conduct operant conditioning. These four quadrants are a cross between the x-axis which is positive (adding) and negative (taking away), while the y-axis is the intent or the output of the conditioning, which is reinforcement and punishment. Positive reinforcement is a mode of operant conditioning that adds a reward or stimuli to encourage a specific behavior or action. Negative reinforcement is the removal or taking away of something or stimuli that the thing perceives as negative to improve the occurrence of a behavior. Positive punishment is a mode of operant conditioning that adds a specific stimulus to take away or discourage a specific behavior or action. While negative punishment is the taking away of a stimulus to prevent or discourage the occurrence of a specific behavior.
Operant conditioning is the conditioning of specific behavior and action, wherein the behavior is modified to occur more or less frequently through the addition or removal of stimuli. This type of conditioning is very useful for training animals and people.
