Monday, June 12, 2017

Operant Conditioning

After learning about operant conditioning, which is a type of learning where the future probability of a behavior is affected by its consequence. While learning about operant conditioning the book talked about reinforcers and punishers. Reinforcement and punishment is the process of strengthening a behavior. In the show the Big Bang Theory, the girl does positive things for the guy, such as take the phone call with her friend out into the hall, so that it does not disturb the guys’ television show he is watching. The girl knows that if she does what the guy would like her to do, then she will receive a piece of chocolate. This is a correct representation of positive reinforcement of operant conditioning because in operant condition the positive reinforcement is supposed to teach a person what to do, but allows them the choice to do so or not. The mistake although in this clip is that the guy believes that he can change the girl all together by “training her” to make her do things, such as make her jump out of a pool balancing a beach balloon her head.  To train her he thinks that he can use a negative reinforcement, such as an electric shock. Although a negative reinforcement in operant conditioning must do with removing an act that is not wanted, such as taking away her phone when watching television, to show that we do not use the phone when watching television. An electric shock is not a correct representation of a negative reinforcement. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt4N9GSBoMI

6 comments:

  1. This was an awesome post! Operant conditioning was usually kind of boring for me and overdone. The video you shared made it fun and different than how it is usually discussed. You make great points about correct representations of the reinforcements and punishments and television works for comedy. Overall, great post to freshen up my operant conditioning knowledge with a funny video!

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  2. After reading so much on operant conditioning, I would say you hit the spot. Consequences are generally derived from whether a behavior will occur or not, and I like how you started it off by saying that this is a type of learning that refers to it. Continuing further, reinforcers and punishers were explained in detail in our book, lecture slides and powerpoint, and in our chapter quizzes.
    Reinforcement and punishment are the processes that strengthen behavior as you mentioned. When we add something that is negative to the picture, we hope to decrease the likelihood of that behavior occurring, and that means it is punishment. On the contrary, reinforcement alludes to when we would like to strengthen a behavior. One example might be hoping to clean the house or study for an exam. We want to build on that one strength or behavior and make sure it occurs more often and with greater ease! Well done on your part for mentioning this.
    I like how you mentioned the "Big Bang Theory" since we had a link to it in our videos section for this class. It helped me understand more about this topic and it made me realize how important operant conditioning is in the process of learning and hoping positive behaviors will continue to occur, while punishment will enable us to decrease a behavior.
    Seriously well done.

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  3. Furthermore, I greatly relate to this topic since I am always figuring out if a behavior needs changing in my life. I am kind of a messy person and I am reminding myself to clean my room on a daily basis. I realize that if I maintain my room in the long run, I won't have days which I am scrambling in to fix everything.

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  5. Operant conditioning is about thinking and making your own decision in a conditional way. Reading your post made it very easy to understand the theory. The girl has a choice for getting the piece of chocolate or not.The girl knows that if she does what the guy would like her to do, then she will receive a piece of chocolate. I most of the time used the same method to get what I want from my kids. I asked them to get all A's in every class they take in school and for every A they get I give them a price that they really want but that I can afford.

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