The Operant and Classic Conditioning of Learning

A man is a social animal. He has to learn to live in a society. Learning is maturity. Learning is strengthening of the individual’s nervous system. We can refer learning as the acts that individual learns with his conscious effort through observation, repetition and reinforcement. For example, the newly born child cannot sit, walk or talk: it can perform these tasks on maturity or Cycle riding involves the maturation of our backbone and leg muscles. Fernald and Fernald emphasis that “Learning refers to relatively permanent improvement in the individual’s behavior that takes place because of previous activity, special training or observation”. Hilgard opined that “Learning is a process that initiates a new activity or brings about a change in old one”.

Laws of Learning

Thorndike has introduced three laws of learning i.e.

• Law of Exercise.
• Law of Effect.
• Law of Readiness,

Types of Learning

There are methods of learning which are adopted according to the situation.

• Learning by Modelling.
• Learning by Insight.
• Learning by Conditioning.

When we are involved in a learning process, it is not necessary to follow one of these methods. We can make a use of more than one method at a time.

Learning by Conditioning

This method of learning has more importance than others. Learning by conditioning is also named as learning by association. If one act comes to connect with other, it is called as association. These associations work under the influence of the laws of learning, i.e. repetition, effect and reinforcement. Watson has also considered association very important. Whatever we learn is mostly based on conditioning. For instance, a child shows obedience to get toffees or toys, acts piously for fear of hell or reward of heaven, avoids dirtying clothes in order not to incur mother’s wrath etc. Learning by conditioning is of two types:

• Classical Conditioning
• Operant Conditioning

Introduction

In 1900’s, A Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov initiated classical conditioning while studying the digestive system of animals. Classical conditioning has a major influence on the school of thought in psychology known as behaviorism. Conditioning refers as the mechanical association between two or more stimuli at spatial level. It means association between two or more stimuli because of proximity which later become a mechanical bond. Unconditioned acts are involuntary and occur naturally in response to a stimulus. If new stimuli are attached with these spontaneous and autonomous responses, this is called conditioning.

Classical Conditioning Of Taste Aversions

In 1966, psychologists’ Garcia, J. & Koelling, R. studied taste aversion while researching the effects of radiation on laboratory rats. They noticed that rats avoided drinking water from plastic bottles in radiation chambers. After understanding that rats might be associating the plastic-tasting water with the sickness experienced from radiation.

Garcia and Koelling divided rats in three groups and gave them high, medium, or low doses of radiation after the rats drank sweetened water. The higher the dose or radiation, the sicker the rats become. Most of the rats later refused to even drink sweetened water.

Explanation

When taste aversion occurs, you avoid eating food that makes you feel ill. Sometimes, its is so powerful that you associate food with illness even it did not cause you illness. The experiment that Gracia and Koelling performed on rats explained learning by conditioning. The rats learned that drinking sweetened water could cause them illness. So, they refused to drank it. In this experiment, the radiation represents as unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the nausea represents as unconditioned response (UCR). After the pairing of two, the flavoured water represents as conditioned stimulus (CS) and the nausea that expressed when expose to the water alone is conditioned response (CR).

Evaluation

Classical conditioning is a scientific theory. Experimenter observed the behavior of individual before, during and after conditioning under conditioned environment. This theory supports nurture over nature but it is not valid to rely only on nature or nurture. It does not give complete explanation. Whenever someone responds to an event which is based on past experience and not by reasoning, it is an indication of classical conditioning. This technique is useful for helping people to cope with the phobias or anxiety problems. For instance, when someone responds with fear to the arrival of a threatening person, rather than to his actual display of dangerous behavior. In this example, individual’s actual display of dangerous behavior is unconditioned stimulus (UCS), a threatening person is conditioned stimulus (CS) and the response of fear towards it, is conditioned response (CR).

Introduction

In 1937, Skinner introduced the term of operant conditioning in which he postulated that operant is the behavior that occurs without any apparent stimulus while the respondent is behavior that occurs as a result to stimulus. In this conditioning, the subject’s behavior is conditioned by reinforcement. “The strengthening of the subject’s voluntary acts (spontaneous behavior) through reinforcement is called operant conditioning.”

Operant conditioning is also termed as Instrumental conditioning. Thorndike’s experiment forms the basis of this type of conditioning but the American Psychologist Skinner termed it as operant conditioning. Skinner performed many experiments on rats, cats, and pigeons. In this conditioning, it is proposed that the behavior which is influenced by reinforcement is more likely to repeat in future. But the actions that result in punishment will be weakened and it will be more unlikely to repeat in future. For instance, if we are being praise in class for good result in examinations then we will do more hard work in future to maintain or get more praise in future.

Types of Behavior

Skinner discussed two types of behavior in operant conditioning i.e. Respondent behavior is that action which occurs automatically in response to some stimuli. For instance, when you touch hot stove you automatically pull your hands off in response to hot stimulus. This is respondent behavior. Operant behavior is the actions that are spontaneous and are performed without any apparent stimulus are operant. Any behavior of the individual can be conditioned in this process through reinforcement or punishment. The behavior that brings comfort to individual is repeated.

Components of Operant Conditioning

• Reinforcement: It is tendency in which the individual, having established connection with the environment through voluntary action, enhances the chances of a particular response.
• Positive reinforces bring ease, comfort, and satisfaction to individual
• Negative reinforces are intended individual to avoid an aversive stimulus by presenting the desired behavior e.g. punishment, reprimand etc.
• Punishment: The behavior reduction process in which the occurrence of behavior is followed by an aversive stimulus (punisher).
• Positive punishment referred to as punishment by application. E.g. spanking for misbehavior.
• Negative punishment referred to as punishment by removal e.g. taking away child’s toy for misbehaving.

Operant Conditioning on Rats

Skinner performed experiment on rats through operant conditioning. He used his famous “Skinner Box” which had a mirror on front to observe the behavior of rat and a lever at the other end for dropping food.

Positive Reinforcement Experiment

Skinner places a hungry rat in his skinner box. Initially, the rat was inactive but with the time he started to explore the box. He then discovered the lever in the box, opon pressing which he was served with food. He fulfilled his hunger. After that he again started exploring the box. Whenever he pushed the lever food was dropped in. after many trials, the conditioning was deemed to be completed. In this experiment, pressing of the lever is the operant response and releasing of food in the box is the reward. It was a positive reinforcement as it explains positive effects.

Negative Reinforcement Experiment

Skinner not only performed on positive reinforcement but also on negative reinforcement. In a similar manner, he put a rat in box and subjected the box with unpleasant electric current. In discomfort experience rat started move in box and reached the lever. When he pressed the lever, it relieved him from discomfort zone. After some trials, rat had become smartened enough to understand that by pressing lever he could prevent himself from discomfort. In this procedure, electric current referred as negative reinforcement and pressing of lever is again an operant response.

Evaluation

Hence, both experiment worked on operant conditioning. The important thing that to be learned in operant conditioning is to identify what is operant behavior and its consequences. There are daily life examples of operant conditioning e.g. when you train a dog to fetch by praising him and pat on his head whenever he performs the task correctly. This is the positive reinforcement. Another example is, if a teen girl does not clean her room as she was asked to do so, she is reinforced by her parents by taking her phone away. This is negative reinforcement.