Saturday, 10 May 2008 14:32
Thorndike Operant Conditioning
This week's resource is a video clip showing one of Edward Thorndike's experiments with his puzzle box. Thorndike put hungry cats in these boxes and put pieces of tasty fish outside them to motivate them to escape. To escape, the cats had to push a lever and pull on a string. When first put in the box, the cats would behave in a fairly random way, pacing up and down, scratching at the sides etc., but eventually, by chance, they would push the lever and pull on the string in the correct sequence. They would then be rewarded by being able to eat the fish.
Published in
The Learning Approach