Operant Conditioning

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about operant conditioning, a form of learning through reinforcement and/or punishment, focusing in particular on: (i) Edward Thorndike’s Animal Intelligence Study (1898), which showed that the provision of a reinforcing stimulus contributes to an increased rate of learning in cats (cf. the Law of Effect); (ii) the example of Ham the ‘Astrochimp’, the first hominid to be launched into space by NASA in 1961; (iii) the nature of the experiment involving Ham performing a series of conditioned tasks on a space flight, demonstrating the effectiveness of operant conditioning across different contexts and environments.

About the lecturer

Martyn Quigley is a Teaching Associate in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. His research interests include the mechanisms which underpin learning in a whole manner of circumstances, and how these can be linked to applied settings (e.g. educational and medical settings). He is also interested in the philosophy of science and how this relates to psychology and the replication crisis.