tinue performing well in school.
On the other hand, a behavior is said to be negatively reinforced when a presentation of a reinforcer (Usually an aversive stimulus like punishment) reduces or eliminates the likelihood that a particular behavior will occur. For example, a whining child who gets spanked for the behavior is less likely to repeat it.
Skinner's theory focuses on relationships between the desired response and the rates and intervals at which it is reinforced--these differing rates and intervals being termed "schedules of reinforcement." According to Skinner, no matter how complex the desired behavior, it can be elicited by application of these learning principles and processes. As he put it:
Operant conditioning shapes behavior as a sculptor shapes a lump of clay. Although at some point the sculptor seems to have produced an entirely novel object, we can always follow the process back to the original undifferentiated lump, and we can make the successive stages by which we return to this condition as small as we wish...An operant ...is the result of a continuous shaping process. (Skinner, 1953, p.91).
According to Babladelis (1984), the concept of shaping (referred to in the foregoing quote) is central to the theory of operant conditioning. She states that:
Shaping involves the reinforcement of successive approximations to the precise behavior desired. (p.46)
Animal training provides the best and most dramatic examples of shaping; e.g. training a dolphin to jump through a hoop. Skinner's theory would explain such behavior by noting that an animal performs a great variety of actions as it goes abut its life in captivity. When one of these actions is rewarded (positively reinforced) by a trainer, the animal performs it more often.
As the training progresses, shaping is used to reinforce a string of actions that would seldom be performed in the animal's random activity. For example, a traine...