Operant conditioning is a type of learning that allows living things to create associations between their actions and the responses or the resulting events. Something called the Law of Effect explains that when a living thing does some type of behavior and soon after gets rewarded for their action, then they are more likely to continue to perform the desired action. This can be seen in popular movies or in TV shows and is also known widely because of the experiment with Skinner Boxes or Operant Chambers. These boxes showed people that when birds or rats pull or peck a lever and get rewarded with food, they are more likely to repeat that desired behavior with the expectation that food will again be given in return.
There are different types of reinforcers when it comes to getting an animal to repeat a desired behavior. One type is a positive reinforcers which, ultimately, increases a behavior by presenting positive stimuli such as food for the rats in the Skinner Boxes. The other type is a negative reinforcer that increases a behavior by removing negative stimuli such as taking away the annoying beeping sound when a person’s seatbelt is eventually fastened in the car. Operant Conditioning also involves punishments that remove unwanted behaviors. The first type of punishment is positive punishment which decreases a behavior by administering aversive stimulus such as spanking a child when they are behaving badly. The second is negative punishment which takes away behavior by taking away something desirable such as taking a child’s cell phone from them because they were behaving badly.
Something that strongly makes up operant conditioning is shaping. Shaping is a technique used to guide a person or animal to continually performing a desired behavior through gradually giving them rewards. It is also referred to as successive approximations. I have experienced using successive approximations through getting my dog to do various things such as shake my hand or laying down on the floor. The process needs to be done one step at a time by first getting him to sit down and then giving him a treat for that first action. Then when he finally started to get sitting down correctly I started the process of physically making him lay down and then handing out a treat. Finally, he understood what I wanted him to do every time I said the words lay down and he eventually began doing it without even getting a treat in return. If I wanted to continue further with the shaping process I could have gotten him to roll over through successive approximations, but I had only just stopped with laying down.