This document is about B.F. Skinner's learning principles, laws of learning and factors that influence and decelerate learning process

1. Learning Principles: B. F.
Skinner

2. • Burrhus Frederic Skinner
(March 20, 1904 – August
18, 1990)

3. Early life
• B.F. Skinner was born on March 20, 1904
in Susquehanna, a small railroad town in
the hills of Pennsylvania just below
Binghamton, New York.
• Skinner’s father was a lawyer
• With one younger brother, he grew up in
a home environment he described as
"warm and stable".

4. Early life (Cont…)
• Skinner went to Hamilton College, New
York, as he wanted to become a writer.
• After getting his B.A. in English literature in
1926, Skinner attended Harvard
University, where he later received a PhD in
1931.
• His literary skills disenchanted him, and was
inspired by John B. Watson’s Behaviorism. He
acquired a degree in psychology, which led
to the development of his influential operant

5. Books by B.F. Skinner
• The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental
Analysis (1938)
• Walden Two (1948)
• Science and Human Behavior (1953)
• Schedules of Reinforcement (1957)
• Verbal Behavior (1957)
• The Analysis of Behavior: A Program for Self
Instruction (with James Holland, 1961)
• The Technology of Teaching (1968)
• Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical
Analysis (1969)

6. Books by B.F. Skinner (Cont…)
• Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)
• About Behaviorism (1974)
• Particulars of My Life: Part One of an Autobiography
(1976)
• Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)
• The Shaping of a Behaviorist: Part Two of an
Autobiography (1979)
• Notebooks (with Robert Epstein, 1980)
• Enjoy Old Age: A Program of Self-Management (with
M. Vaughan, 1983)
• A Matter of Consequences: Part Three of an
Autobiography (1983)
• Upon Further Reflection (1987)
• Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior (1989)

7. Operant Conditioning
(Instrumental Conditioning)

8. • Skinner is regarded as the father of Operant
Conditioning
• Skinner believed that the best way to
understand behavior is to look at the causes of
an action and its consequences. He called this
approach operant conditioning
• It was the dominant school in American
psychology from the 1930s through the 1950s.

9. B. F. Skinner’s influence
Skinner's theory of operant
conditioning was based on the
work of Thorndike (1905).
• Law of Effect: rewarded
behavior is likely to recur.

10. • Operant
Any activity behavior that operates upon
the environment to generate
consequences
• Operant Conditioning
The behavior is followed by
consequence, and the nature of the
consequence modifies the organisms
tendency to repeat the behavior in the
future

11. B. F. Skinner’s Experiment

12. Operant Conditioning
There are two types of consequences:
positive (sometimes called pleasant)
Strengthens Behavior
negative (sometimes called unpleasant)
Weakens behavior

13. Reinforcer
Any event that STRENGTHENS the
behavior it follows.
There are 2 types of reinforcement
1. Positive reinforcement
2. Negative reinforcement

14. Positive Reinforcement
Strengthens a response by presenting a
pleasant stimulus after a response.

15. Negative Reinforcement
• Strengthens a response by reducing or
removing an aversive (unpleasant)
stimulus.

16. Punishment
An event that DECREASES the behavior
that it follows
There are 2 types of punishment
1. Positive Punishment
2. Negative Punishment

17. Positive Punishment
It involves the presentation of an
unfavorable event or outcome in order to
weaken the response it follows

18. Negative Punishment
When a favorable event or outcome is
removed after a behavior occurs, to
decrease the following response

19. Do rewards or punishment work?

21. Reinforcement Schedules
• Stimuli are presented in the
environment according to a schedule of
which there are two basic categories:
Continuous
Intermittent

22. Continuous Reinforcement
• Continuous reinforcement refers to
reinforcement being administered to
each instance of a response

23. Intermittent reinforcement
Intermittent reinforcement lies between
continuous reinforcement and extinction.
It is the random or periodic administration
of reinforcement for the desired response.

25. TYPE MEANING OUTCOME
Fixed
Ratio
Reinforcement depends on
a definite number of
responses
Activity slows after
reinforcement and
then picks up
Variable
Ratio
Number of responses
needed for reinforcement
varies
Greatest activity of
all schedules
Fixed
Interval
Reinforcement depends on
a fixed time
Activity increases as
deadline nears
Variable
Interval
Time between
reinforcement varies
Steady activity
results

26. Give me a
child and I’ll
shape him
into anything

27. If you're
old, don’t try
to change
yourself, chan
ge the
environment

28. The real problem
is not whether
machines
think, but
whether men do