GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY

General Psychology



Operant conditioning is the use of a behavior's antecedent and/or its consequence to influence the occurrence and form of behavior. Operant conditioning is distinguished from classical conditioning in that operant conditioning deals with the modification of voluntary behavior or operant behavior.

Operant conditioning is the name that gave Skinner, but now prefers to instrumental conditioning, to be more descriptive. From the historical point of view, the term operant conditioning has been used to refer to experimental situations in which the subjects act at their own pace, as opposed to receiving direct testing. Some argue in this separation ...