Operant Conditioning

Conditioning is a form of learning in which either a given stimulus signal becomes increasingly effective in evoking a response or a response occurs with increasing regularity in a well-specified and stable environment. The type of reinforcement used will determine the outcome. When two stimuli are presented in an appropriate time and intensity relationship, one of them will eventually induce a response resembling that of the other. The process can be described as one of stimulus substitution. This procedure is called classical respondent conditioning.
            Operant conditions are processes that attempt to modify individual, group or organization's behavior by the use of positive and negative reinforcement. 
Some of the examples of operant conditioning include the following:
Most parents reward their children's excellent performance of their grades with candy, phones, or even taking then for a vocational tour, a car and laptop. A best player in a match can be awarded a golden boot, a trophy or given a free ticket to any destination of choice. 
           Reinforcement is a consequence that will strengthen an organism's future behavior whenever that behavior is preceded by a specific antecedent stimulus. This strengthening effect may be measured as a higher frequency of behavior, longer duration, greater magnitude or shorter latency. Reinforcement may have both intermittent and negative effects: Intermittent reinforcement involves inconsistent and occasional handing out of rewards, rules or personal boundaries. Intermittent reinforcement always encourages other people to work hard towards getting what they need from you without changing their own behavior. An example of intermittent reinforcement includes: A company enacts a rewards program in which employees earn prizes dependent on the number of items sold. The prizes the employees receive are the positive reinforcement if they increase sales.
           Negative reinforcement occurs when the rate of a behavior increases because an aversive event or stimulus is removed or prevented from happening. A negative reinforce is a stimulating event for which an organism will work in order to terminate, to escape from, to postpone its occurrence. As opposed to positive reinforcement, Verbal and Physical Punishment may apply in negative reinforcement. An example of negative reinforcement includes: a child cleans his or her room, and the parent stopping asking the child repeatedly to do so follows this behavior. Since the child cannot clean without being asked, it leads to negative reinforcement.
            In the operant conditioning, extinction refers to the process of no longer providing the reinforcement that has been maintaining a behavior. Operant extinction differs from forgetting in that the latter refers to a decrease in the strength of a behavior over time when it has not been emitted. For example, a child cries in a congregation, a response, which has been reinforced by attention, is subsequently ignored until the attention-seeking behavior no longer occurs. 
  B.F. Skinner noted how he accidentally discovered the extinction of an operant response due to the malfunction of his laboratory equipment when A rat was pressed the lever in an experiment on satiation and the pellet dispenser jammed. He was not there at the time, and when he returned he found a beautiful curve. The rat had gone on pressing although no pellets were received.
             In extinction, when implemented consistently over time, results in the eventual decrease of the undesired behavior, in the short-term the subject might exhibit what is called an extinction burst. An extinction burst will often occur when the extinction procedure has just begun; for example, a pigeon that has been reinforced to peck an electronic button. During its training history, every time the pigeon pecked the button, it will have received a small amount of birdseed as a reinforcement. So, whenever the bird is hungry, it will peck the button to receive food. However, if the button were to be turned off, the hungry pigeon will first try pecking the button just as it has in the past. When no food is forthcoming, the bird will likely try again ... and again, and again. After a period of frantic activity, in which their pecking behavior yields no result, the pigeon's pecking will decrease in frequency.