Operant Conditioning

Words: 521
Pages: 3

There are many different theories of development and frameworks which we use to help support development on the children we care for. One example of a well known theory which is used even today is the Operant Conditioning Theory which was supported by Skinner. Skinner’s theory was all about ‘classical conditioning’ which means for children to learn through positive reinforcement, being a treat, negative reinforcement when they don’t get the treat they anticipated and lastly through punishment, when there is a consequence. However, with Skinners theory people had discovered some faults and variables which were not catered for, for example, emotions are not taken into account, someone who is sad may not follow orders as well as they might when …show more content…
When the dog understood to salivate when told/when had the cue to, this turned into the condition response. The process Pavlov used to do this experiment was: he used 1 bell, 1 dog, and a bowl of food. During food time, when the dog was waiting for their food, Pavlov would ring the bell and then give the bowl of food which caused the dog to salivate. Eventually the dog connected the sound of the bell to food, this meant that when the dog heard the bell he began to salivate even without food there because he anticipated food to be the next step. However, skinner believed that the dog being able to learn to salivate when hearing the bell, wasn’t an active process, skinner believes that for animals and humans to learn something, they need to use the process of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Pavlov use none of these, he didn’t punish the dog when he didn’t salivate, he didn’t do negative reinforcement because when the dog didn’t salivate, he still gave him the food he didn’t remove it and lastly he didn’t follow up with positive reinforcement because by the end of the experiment, the food was no longer