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| Edward L. Thorndike |
Instrumental Conditioning Theory
Learning Theory in the next Psychology is instrumental conditioning. Other types of learning have many similarities to the types of learning with classical conditioning as above, referred to as instrumental conditioning or operant conditioning. The operant term derived from English refers to how an organism operates in an environment. Therefore, instrumental conditioning comes from how an individual responds to what is faced in his environment. This can be simplified as the thought that learning is a natural result of our actions.
In instrumental conditioning itself is divided into 2 types, namely:
The strength of a behavior is modified by the consequences of the behavior itself such as reward or punishment
This behavior is controlled by its predecessor, referred to as a discriminatory stimulus, which then gives rise to a response
Although instrumental conditioning and classical conditioning are both controlled by stimuli originating from the environment, both are different things.
In instrumental conditioning, a stimulus arises when a behavior is rewarded or punished which functions to control that behavior. For example, a child will learn to open a box or jar to pick up candy that is in it, or learn not to hold a hot stove. In this example, boxes or jars and stoves are discriminatory stimuli.
Meanwhile in classical conditioning, a stimulus that indicates a particular event will cause reflexive behavior. An example is the sound of a slamming door indicating the anger of a parent that makes a child tremble.
Edward L. Thorndike
Intensive research on instrumental conditioning was carried out by Edward L. Thorndike (1874-1949) who studied and observed the behavior of cats who tried to remove themselves from a puzzle box that they made themselves. A cat can pull itself out of a box with a simple response such as pulling a rope or pushing a pole, but when the first time he is inside the box, a cat will take longer to get out.
With repeated experiments, ineffective responses to exclusion from the city become more rare and on the contrary effective resonations become more frequent, so the cat can come out in a shorter time.
Thorndike then concluded in his theory, namely the law of effect which states that behavior followed by pleasant effects tends to be repeated and that gives unpleasant consequences more likely not to be repeated or avoided. In short, some consequences will reinforce a behavior and some will weaken behavior. By measuring the time to get out of the box compared to the number of trials, Thorndike produced the first animal learning curve ever made with this procedure.
Humans seem to learn a lot of simple behaviors through the learning process as researched by Thorndike. In this case, responses are maintained when they give satisfactory results and are abandoned or discarded when they do not produce satisfactory results or unwanted results. This usually happens unplanned by any teacher, but instrumental conditioning has been used by parents in educating their children since thousands of years ago.
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