Activities In Class As Positive Reinforcer

We had a very interesting learning with Dr. Hanna on our 4^th topic which is instrumental conditioning. The instrumental conditioning currently is also well known as operant conditioning. We just know that operant conditioning is actually a kind of voluntary action rather than involuntary action which is refer to classical conditioning.  Therefore, we could easily differentiate between of the two.

            There are several subtopics under this chapter which are Thorndike’s early research and Skinner’s operant conditioning. Actually we had already learned all these subtopics in the Introduction to Psychology course. Therefore we managed to get the information easily.

For the first subtopic we learned about Thorndike’s early research that containing three components which are law of effects, law of readiness, and law of exercises. Moreover, the second subtopic is Skinner's operant conditioning. It is divided into two which are reinforcement and punishment. After detailed explanation by Dr. Hanna we can identify between reinforcement and punishment as well as the different between classical conditioning and operant conditioning. For the last 30 minutes in the class session, we had group activity to identify the element of the classical conditioning based on our previous  story, The Phenomenon of Red Riding Hood.

On Thursday, 4^th October 2012 we were given a task by Dr. Hanna since Dr. Hanna cannot attend the class due to other commitment. The task is about the differentiation between the operant and classical conditioning we were very satisfied because we can complete the task in unexpected time. We hope that the activity in class could become as a positive reinforcer for us ‘to hunt’ the knowledge and attend the class consistently.