HIST10014 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Puzzle Box, Reward System, Operant Conditioning
6 Aug 2018
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Operant behaviour: any active/voluntary behaviours that is produced in order to generate consequences, or is instrumental in generating consequences. New stimulus response relationship are learned by association but always involved a re ex response to a stimulus rst. Thorndike paved the way for a behaviourist account of voluntary behaviour. Conducted experiments at the turn of the 20th century. Thorndike"s puzzle box: hungry cat inside cage but food outside. Wanted to nd out whether animals could use reasoning to solve problems. Wanted to see if the cat could work out the mechanism to open the cage. Cat learned by trial and error and success. Cat became faster on subsequent trials in the same cage as it was conditioned. Cats learn to associate response with rewarding consequence. First attempts are random, then it nally stumbles across the solution. He could conclude that cats learn simple stimulus-response associations rather gradually eliminated than complex reasoning processes.
