CHARLES HUGHES: All right, now on to operant behavior. Later in the 20th century, based on Pavlov's work, as well as work by people such as Watson and Thorndike, B.F. Skinner began to focus on operant behavior. That is behavior that operates or acts on the environment and is controlled, to a great extent, by the environmental consequences of the behavior. And again, we've seen this paradigm several times. But this is the operant conditioning paradigm, which is different from the respondent, which only includes the SR.

So as I've mentioned before, this three-term contingency, which is at the core of how operant behavior occurs, includes the stimulus that comes before the behavior, the behavior itself, and the stimulus that occurs as a consequence of the behavior occurring. So here are some examples.

So every time Eli hears his mother say, bedtime, Eli screams and hits his head. His mother sits with him and reads a story to calm him down. So the antecedent stimulus here is his mother saying, bedtime. And the behavior in question is Eli starts screaming and hits his head. The consequence of that behavior is his mother sits down and reads him a story.

And here's another one. So Jose's teacher says, Time to start work. Jose responds by pulling his hair. Jose's teacher calms him down and then has him return to work.

So the antecedent in this case, the antecedent stimuli for all this, was the teacher saying, It's time to work. The behavior in response to that stimulus was Jose starts pulling his hair. And the consequence of him doing that was the teacher goes to him and calms him down and has him return to his work.

So operant behavior acts on the environment, which results from movement of the skeletal frame. Operants are usually contractions of the skeletal or striated muscles. So operative behavior acts on the environment, which results from movement of the skeletal frame. And operants are usually contractions of the skeletal muscles.

Operant behavior is voluntary versus reflexive, and is emitted versus elicited. Now, operant behavior is any behavior whose future frequency is determined by its consequences. That is, operant behavior is shaped and maintained by past consequences. Because consequences play such a critical role in operant conditioning, let's take a closer look at them.

A consequence is a stimulus or event that follows a response. It is an event that occurs after a response. So a consequence is a stimulus or event that follows a response. It is an event that occurs after a response.

Two principal types of consequences are reinforcing and punishing. So two principal types of consequences are reinforcing consequences and punishing consequences. Each type is further divided into two types, as follows. Reinforcing consequences can be positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.

You can also have positive punishment and negative punishment. So we can take reinforcement and punishment and divide them into two types-- positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.

We'll get back to positive and negative reinforcement and punishment in a minute. But now it's time for another self-evaluation activity.