Distinguish between operant and respondent conditioning. How is operant conditioning used to modify behavior?
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.