Illustrate the operant-conditioning process using the example of a rat in a Skinner box

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANS: Operant conditioning is the procedure by which a change in the consequences of a response will affect the rate at which the response occurs.
The operant conditioning process can be illustrated by following the progress of a rat in Skinner's operant-conditioning apparatus, also known as the Skinner box. When a food-deprived rat is placed in the box, its behavior at first is spontaneous and random. The rat is active, sniffing, poking, and exploring its environment. These behaviors are emitted, not elicited; in other words, the rat is not responding to any specific stimulus in its environment.
At some time during this random activity, the rat will depress a lever or bar located on one wall of the Skinner box, causing a food pellet to drop into a trough. The rat's behavior (pressing the lever) has operated on the environment and, as a result, has changed it. The environment now includes a food pellet. The food is a reinforcer for the behavior of depressing the bar.
The rat now begins to press the bar more often. It gets more food—more reinforcement—and so presses the bar even more frequently. The rat's behavior is now under the control of the reinforcers. Its actions in the box are less random and spontaneous because it is spending most of its time pressing the bar, and eating.
If we put the rat back in the box the next day, we can predict its behavior and we can control its bar-pressing actions by presenting or withholding the reinforcers or by presenting them at a different rate. Withholding the food extinguishes operant behavior in the same way that it extinguishes respondent behavior. If the unreinforced behavior no longer works, in that it no longer brings a reward, after a while it will stop. Thus, the person who controls the reinforcers controls the subjects' behavior.