What is Skinner operant behavior? What is this about? Who came up with such a difficult word, and most importantly, for what purposes was all this? You will find answers to such questions and much more in this article.
What is operant behavior?
Such behavior is called that active action that is not supported by any obvious incentive, but which is aimed at achieving the desired goal. Behavior formed, created and corrected due to consequences, due to such as reinforcement (i.e. strengthening) and punishment (i.e. weakening).
It should be remembered that operant and respondent behavior should not be confused! The second of them is a reaction caused by a certain stimulus (for example, the pupil of the eyes expanding in bright light).
Who invented this?
The theory of operant behavior is a work that is part of a series of works related to behaviorism. Who is involved in this current? John Watson is the founder of behaviorism, and the author of the theory of the teaching of operant behavior is Burres Frederick Skinner. Burres Skinner before the publication of his work was acquainted with the works of John Watson, but more on that later.
How it all began?
Skinner was born March 20, 1904 in the small town of Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer. As a child, Skinner was fond of inventions. He later created equipment for animal experiments. In his school years, Skinner dreamed of becoming a writer and aspired to his dream, trying his abilities in this type of creativity. Unfortunately, one of the days of his life, Skinner realized that he could not write anything about what he had once seen, felt or experienced, although he had witnessed various manifestations of human behavior all his life. After such a conclusion, he realized that he would have to abandon writing once and for all, although this saddened him very much.
Skinner soon became acquainted with the works of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov and John Watson. After that, he realized that the future of science depends on the study of human behavior, namely on the study of conditioning reactions (operant behavior).
Skinner's activities in the study of human behavior
The fact that Skinner had been interested in invention for a long time, helped him to create a “problem cell”. In one of the corners of such a building was a bar with food and drink. Over time, the rat accidentally came across its paws on the bar, clicking on it. After these simple actions, in some cases, the food in the form of a ball entered the cage to the animal, and sometimes not. Using this experiment, it was possible to obtain more accurate data on the behavior of rodents, which could not be done before Skinner's work. In this situation, it was the rat who “decided” what time should pass between pressing the bar button. This was the first discovery of a specific type of animal behavior that could change in response to reinforcements in which there was no intervention by the experimenter.
This was the first example of operant behavior.
Based on his experience, Skinner begins to transfer the behavior of a rat in a cage with a bar button to human reality. On the behavior of the rodent, there was an analogy of the actions of a person as a player at special machines in one of the casinos. As in the case of the rat and the player, none of them knows exactly when the next successful case will fall out (food for the rat, money for the man), but every time they do not lose hope and they continue again and again "click on the button."
The concept of operant learning
Skinner's concept of operant learning is an important contribution to scientific work. According to many scientists, only for this achievement his name should already be inscribed on the list of great psychologists around the world.
The random movement that the animal makes is precisely operant. With regular reinforcement of any random movements of the animal (in our case, rats), the experimenter is able to completely control the behavior of the rodent. This is the essence of Skinner's operant behavior.
"Creating" the behavior of a dove
Using the concept of operant learning, Skinner was able to "create" the behavior of a dove, which he forced to peck a plastic disk attached to the cell wall. This experiment was that when the pigeon turned in the same direction as the disk, he was given food. When this action was completed, the task for the bird became more and more difficult. Further reinforcement continued only if the bird's head moved in a certain direction or if the beak had direct contact with the disk.
Skinner equated such bird training with teaching children speech, singing, dancing and all other human behavior, which consists entirely of simple and consistent actions.
As usual, Skinner began to be condemned, but at the same time, supporters of his opinion began to appear in him. His conditioning technique began to be used in experimental psychology.
Skinner's visit to his daughter's school
This happened in 1956, when a scientist came to the school of his daughter Derby. On that day, Skinner realized that subjects taught by schoolchildren could be made an order of magnitude easier. For this, the lesson must be divided into small "gaps" that will be allocated to a separate topic or section in the study of something, as was the case with the "long-suffering" pigeon. Students are asked certain questions that they try to answer on their own, and teachers will immediately notice which of their answers are correct. Positive reinforcement works better than negative and brings more fruit, and the very answers that were given correctly will be reinforcement.
But here is the problem ... There is only one teacher in the student team, but the students themselves are twenty people, and sometimes more. From this it follows that the teacher is not able to give reinforcements to each of them at the same time. How to solve this problem? Textbooks should be created that will be written in such a way that the questions and answers to them will follow directly one after another. Skinner also proposed special machines for self-study.
After some time, the principles of such training were nevertheless introduced in US colleges, as well as outside the country.