Operant Conditioning Essay

Operant conditioning principles in training my little sister
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According to Robert Feldman in Understanding Psychology, operant conditioning is the process by which voluntary responses by individuals become strengthened or weakened in response to favorable or unfavorable consequences they bring about. B.F Skinner, in his theory of operant conditioning, asserts that behavior that receives positive consequences is likely to reoccur as opposed to the behavior that attracts negative consequences (Feldman, 2011, pp. 183). In the application of this theory in life, one can utilize reinforcers or punishment to achieve the desired behavior. As a psychology student, I practiced the operant conditioning theory in training my toddler sister to adopt good behavior and various communication skills.
The first principle of operant conditioning I utilized on my sister is the positive reinforcement to facilitate language acquisition. My small sister is two years old, and as other children in this age bracket, their primary developmental growth involves learning how to speak and express themselves in a manner that is understandable to others. According to B.F. Skinner, learning language among toddlers is a learned behavior from others, whose facilitation is through observing, imitating, reward and punishment. Therefore, in order to teach my sister how to talk, I would say words and if she said them back accurately, I would cheer her and smile as I congratulated her. Additionally, I also taught my parents on how to respond to her whereby, if she called my dad ‘dada,’ or my mum ‘mama’ we would all cheer her and give her hugs and kisses as a sign of our approval for her learning a new word. With such behavior, I continually guided and motivated her to pronounce more words.
According to Skinner, the positive stimulus can facilitate the reinforcement of a positive behavior in an individual (Feldman, 2011, pp. 186). In training my sister, one major hurdle my parents had to deal with was potty training her as opposed to always relying on diapers. Through my knowledge of the benefits of positive stimulus such as toys, candy, and chocolate in strengthening positive responses, I set up to potty train my sister using operant conditioning. Knowing that she loved chocolate that I always bring her every time I go home, I us...