A Bit Longer Description

BF Skinner (1904-1990) Best known for the “Skinner box”, his schedules of reinforcement, token economies, programmed learning and teaching pigeons to play table tennis, B.F. Skinner founded operation conditioning. Instead of emphasizing the stimuli which elicit responses (as in classical conditioning), he focused on behavior that is emitted and on what occurs immediately after a behavior occurs. For Skinner, the consequence of a behavior impacts an operant (an entire class of behaviors). You no doubt have an operant for the way you enter a room. Depending on how you feel, you might enter bouncily, angrily, slowly or shyly. The entire class of room entering behavior is an operant. Consequently, in operant conditioning, rewards impact an entire class of behavior. Punishment would not only reduce bouncy entrances, it would reduce all entering. Reinforcement would increase the likelihood of the entire class of room entering behavior. Skinner relied on operational definitions for his experiments. Instead of inferring internal states (such as hunger), he defined hunger in terms of the number of hours since having last eaten. Skinner insisted on clear definitions that are not open to interpretation. He did hypothesize drive, insight or any internal process. Although he didn't deny their existence, he thought them to be unknowable. For Skinner, like Watson, if it didn't impact behavior, whatever went on in the black box of the mind was unimportant. Basing his findings on animal research (mostly rats and pigeons), Skinner identified five schedules of reinforcement: continuous reinforcement, fixed interval (FI), fixed ratio (FR), variable interval (VI) and variable ratio (VR). Continuous reinforcement is used to shape (refine) a behavior. Every time the subject performs the desired behavior, it is rewarded. Continuous reinforcement leads to quick learning and (after the reinforcement is stopped) quick descent.