What is Skinner’s law of acquisition? How did it differ from Thorndike’s and Hull’s positions on learning?
Many generations of students of psychology have learned conditioning of operations by Skinner and how there are different from the behavior of respondent examined by Pavlov. In the situation of conditioning by Pavlov, an already familiar stimulus is combined with a response under reinforcement conditions.
The response of behavior is increased by a particular stimulus which is observed; Skinner termed this response of behavior as behavior of respondent. Behavior of operant occurs with no antecedent, externally observable stimulus, such that response of organism seems to be spontaneous.
This did not mean that stimulus eliciting the response is absent, however, instead, that stimulus is absent because there is no application of stimulus and one did not see it. One more distinction among behavior of operant and respondent is that behavior of operant functions on the environment of organism, however, behavior of respondent does not.
Since behavior is most of the times operant kind only, it chases that one of the effective way to the behavioral science is to examine the extinguishing and conditioning of these behaviors of operations.
Acquisition law asserts that the power of the behaviors of operants elevates when it is chased by the representation of the stimulus which is reinforced. Though practice is essential in developing a higher rate, the variable would be reinforcement.
Practice in itself would not elevate the frequency of responding, all it is doing if providing an opportunity for extra reinforcement to take place. He did not deal with any kind of pain/pleasure or dissatisfaction/satisfaction results of reinforcement.