B.F. Skinner played a crucial role in the understanding of what has come to be known as operant conditioning. His experiments illustrated concepts such as reinforcement and shaping.
Skinner illustrated the idea of operant conditioning through experiments involving animals. By putting an animal in a small cage, Skinner could affect the animal’s behavior by forcing it to take a certain action in order to receive a reward such as a food pellet. The action performed would be a conditioned response enacted for the reward, which would be the reinforcer of the animal’s behavior.
For example, Skinner could design a box where a pigeon had to press a button in order to receive a food pellet. Skinner found that the pigeon eventually would stumble upon the fact that pushing the button elicited a food pellet. The pigeon would become conditioned to pres the button in order to receive the pellet, and the frequency of the conditioned response–pushing the button–would increase.
Thorndyke’s experiments corroborate Skinner’s. Thorndyke’s “puzzle boxes” were boxes where a cat placed inside would have to perform some kind of task to escape. Not knowing how to escape the box, the cat would try various unsuccessful methods of escape–say, clawing at the walls–until it would stumble upon the correct action that would allow escape–a process called trial and error. When the same cat was placed in the same box again, it would be able to escape the box more quickly, because it had been conditioned to perform the successful action in order to achieve the desired effect of escaping the box.
B.F. Skinner and Thorndyke were staunch behaviorists, believing that a person’s behavior was shaped entirely as a result of environmental stimuli. There were those who opposed this view, such as Albert Bandura who believed that cognition and consciousness did play a role in learning and conditioning. Some research that supported the view that cognition plays a role in shaping human behavior was conducted by Robert Rascola.
Rascola conducted an experiment in which one group of rats was administered 20 tones which every time was followed with a food pellet. The second group of rats displayed stimulus discrimination, being able to identify an unreliable stimulus, suggesting that some cognition was involved.
An experiment by Albert Bandura himself also showed evidence of cognition and helped to refute Skinner’s argument that cognition played no role in the shaping of behavior. Bandura’s experiment involved showing one group of children a video in which an adult attacked a large “Bobo” doll and received no consequences; one in which the adult attacked the doll and was punished for it; and a third in which an adult attacked the doll and was rewarded for it. When presented with the opportunity to play with a Bobo doll themselves, the children who had viewed the tapes showing no consequence or reward were more likely to model the behavior of attacking the doll. However, the children that had viewed the tape showing punishment were significantly more likely not to model after the behavior of attacking the doll. However, when all three groups of children were asked to reenact the behavior the adults had displayed in exchange for reinforcement in the form of a reward such as stickers or candy, all of the children, from all three groups, were able to do so.
This showed that even though the children that viewed punishment had learned the behavior by watching the tapes, they would not necessarily perform the action without motivation. Bendura thought this a sign of cognition.
It could perhaps be argued, though, that in viewing the adult’s punishment, the tape itself was an environmental stimulus, therefore supporting and not refuting Skinner’s arguments.
Another thing that Skinner was able to learn through his research was that conditioned behaviors could be shaped. What is meant by shaping is that an animal might be rewarded for a behavior that is not the end-goal behavior, but is a step in the correct direction. Then the animal might be rewarded only for the next progressive step toward the end goal, and so on and so forth, until the desired goal-behavior is achieved. For example, in learning to drive, a teenager may initially be praised for being able to adjust mirrors, etc. Soon that will be expected and the behavior will not be reinforced with praise, but the next step–starting the car–would be, until the teenager is able to perform the basic task of driving down the road.
While Skinner’s strict behaviorist views may not be the standard in psychology today, they play a large role in understanding how operant conditioning and learned behaviors work and have been instrumental in getting this far in our understanding of ourselves.
