Operant conditioning is B.F. Skinner’s name for instrumental learning: learning by consequences. Not a new idea, of course. Humanity has always known how to teach children and animals by means of ...

The image of the crackpot inventor, disheveled, disorganized, and surrounded by the remains of his failures, is an enduring Hollywood trope. While a simple look around one’s shop will probably reveal ...

While pigeons and doves are the same species, many people consider the former little more than rats with wings. They roost in cities, gather around anyone with food, and poop on everything. But not ...

Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered that the brain cannot learn simultaneously through both classical conditioning and operant conditioning. In fact, the brain actively prevents the ...

While I appreciate David P. Barash’s fine essays, I take exception to his latest (“B.F. Skinner, Revisited,” The Chronicle Review, April 1). In it, he manages to misrepresent the views of not one but ...

Watch how operant conditioning turns one curious cat into a musical prodigy. Science meets silliness. A Strange Gas-Pumping Defect Is Making $100,000 Corvettes Go Up in Flames Charlie Sheen was once a ...

Operant conditioning is a well known psychology principle -- in which "good" behavior is rewarded and "bad" behavior is punished. While positive reinforcement has found its way into everyday life, ...

Animals rapidly adapt to environmental change. To reveal how cortical microcircuits are rapidly reorganized when an animal recognizes novel reward contingency, we conduct two-photon calcium imaging of ...

Operant conditioning is B.F. Skinner’s name for instrumental learning: learning by consequences. Not a new idea, of course. Humanity has always known how to teach children and animals by means of ...