Positive reinforcement involves adding something good after a behavior to make it happen more often. Reinforcement works best when given right after the behavior happens to keep the right connections.

Operant conditioning is a behavioral theory created by famed psychologist B.F. Skinner that suggests that behavior is most easily modified when it produces a negative consequence. This theory can be ...

Operant conditioning is B.F. Skinner’s name for instrumental learning: learning by consequences. Not a new idea, of course. Humanity has always known how to teach children and animals by means of ...

Karen Pryor is a behavioral biologist, a pioneering dolphin trainer, and an authority on applied operant conditioning—the art and science of changing behavior with positive reinforcement. Her book, ...

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was one of the preeminent American psychologists of the 20th century. B.F. Skinner founded “radical behaviorism”—a twist on traditional behaviorism, a field of psychology that ...

A long-standing debate in neuroscience is whether classical and operant conditioning are mechanistically similar or distinct. The feeding behavior of Aplysia provides a model system suitable for ...