Conditioning Procedures in Shaping Children's Behaviour
2. A child is repeatedly exhibiting inappropriate and unwanted behaviour (e.g. hitting sibling), which conditioning procedures could be used to most effectively stop this? Behaviours that produce favourable consequences are repeated and become habits, but those that produce unfavourable consequences tend not to recur (Ouellette and Wood, 1998 as cited in Martin et.al, 2006). Experience changes the probability of repeating certain behaviours indicating that learning involves adaptation. As time goes on, old behaviours are eliminated and new behaviours are learned. Pavlov discovered and formalized many of the most important laws of classical behaviour, B.F.Skinner (1938) investigated and formalized may of the basic laws of operant behavior. (Sheppard & Willoughby, 1975). Habituation and classical conditioning taught us the stimuli in the environment where we learn to ignore unimportant stimuli and learn those that predict occurrence of the important ones. (Martin et.al, 2006). Operant conditioning involves the use of consequences to modify the occurrence and form of behaviour. Operant conditioning was first discovered by Edward L. Thorndike where he placed a hungry cat in a small chamber called puzzle box with food placed outside as a stimuli where the car need to performed an appropriate response to open the door of the puzzle box. The cat become less random and more efficient until it open the latch without hesitation after several random attempt. Thorndike called this relation between a response and its consequences the law of effect. (Martin et.al, 2006). Although Thorndike discovered the law of effect, B.F Skinner was the one who brought the study of operant conditioning into the lab and devised objective methods for studying human behaviour. He invented the operant chamber which is also known as the Skinner box where animal’s behaviour can be easily observed, manipulated, and automatically recorded. Operant conditioning allows us to learn association