Operant conditioning is B.F. Skinner’s name for instrumental learning: learning by consequences. Not a new idea, of course. Humanity has always known how to teach children and animals by means of ...

B.F. Skinner was one of those intellectual supernovae who shine brilliantly in the academic heavens, then vanish, seemingly without a trace. Scarcely three years after the famed Harvard professor’s ...

Burrhus Frederic Skinner became one of the nation’s most influential psychologists. His theory of operant conditioning, with its ideas about reinforcement through rewards and punishments, found its ...

This refers to a form of learning wherein certain forms of voluntary behaviour are either encouraged or discouraged through the appropriate use of rewards and punishment. Such learning happens because ...