So B.F Skinner studied rats and pigeons in an operand conditioning chamber,
which is called a Skinner box. Inside the Skinner box, they have a food
dispenser and a level that the rat can press. Other conditioning chambers have
things such as lights, as well. Now you might wonder why did Skinner look at
rats and pigeons in a Skinner box. Well it turns out that what he learned from
the Skinner box can be applied to humans, meaning the information from the
animals generalizes to human behavior as well. First we want to know why does
the rat first press the lever. Well, it turns out rats are exploratory
creatures, meaning they will walk around their environment and check it out,
And so when the rat is first placed in the Skinner Box, it may go over to the
corner Stand up and smell the walls. But eventually it may come over and bump
into the lever, or stand on it to smell something up here. When that first
occurrence happens, we can deliver a food pellet to the rat. But how do we get
the rat to press a lever again? We can get the rat to press the lever through
the process of shaping, and shaping is reinforcing successive approximations to
the final target behavior. So if the rat were standing over here in the corner,
I wouldn't deliver a food pellet. However if the rat started to approach the
lever, I could deliver a food pellet. Eventually you'll reinforcing those
behaviors that are closest to the final one. Shaping is important for many of
our operant conditioning and behaviors.
