How to Thrive in the Digital Age: Creating Boundaries With Social Media
Creating Boundaries With Social Media
Finding purpose and living a healthy and happy life is what many are thriving for. However, a rise in cognitive disorders and obesity is becoming the reality for some and social media is likely decreasing life satisfaction. Find out how.
Learning is such an insightful and meaningful process. You learn new things at every stage of your development and it’s been an integral part of every aspect of your life. In today’s age of information, it’s become easier to satisfy your curiosities and to create your own personal inquiry projects.
You may have grown up thinking of learning as something you do to acquire information, but it’s also a way for you to develop certain behaviours and characteristics.
B.F. SKINNER AND OPERANT LEARNING
Skinner was an American behavioural psychologist. He was interested in learning more about how the consequences of people’s actions influenced their behaviours. This later became known as operant conditioning - a type of learning where rewards and punishments are used to acknowledge certain behaviours.
Skinner invented the ‘Skinner box,’ an enclosed apparatus with a key or a lever that an animal could press to obtain food or some type of reinforcement. There was also a device that recorded each response provided by the animal. Over time the animal (a pigeon in this case) learned that by pulling the lever, they would be rewarded with food. Later, Skinner incorporated green and red lights into his experiment. When the lever was pulled as the green light flashed the animal would be rewarded with food. When the lever was pulled when the red light flashed, the animal was punished with an electrical shock. Over time the animal learned to avoid pressing the lever when the light was red.
Through this experiment, Skinner learned that specific consequences are associated with voluntary behaviours in natural settings. This meant that rewards increased a behaviour and punishments decreased a behaviour.
REINFORCEMENT SCHEDULES
Skinner went on to discover that the timing and frequency of reinforcements influenced how new behaviours were learned and old behaviours were modified.
There are four schedules of partial reinforcements that impact the operant conditioning process.
