operant conditioning

noun

1. conditioning.

Word History and Origins

Origin of operant conditioning¹

First recorded in 1940–45

Example Sentences

It knows how to use operant conditioning — the same techniques used to train a dog — to turn young men and women into efficient killers.

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Clive Wynne, founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University, ascribed the talking dogs’ skills to operant conditioning rather than an understanding of the words they seem to use.

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Even Devine says that she thinks Bunny’s “speech” is primarily operant conditioning, where Bunny has made an association between pressing a button and something happening.

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The Twittering Machine, as a wholly designed operant conditioning chamber, needs none of the expedients of the casino or opium den.

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The prank had taken a page out of 20th-century behaviorist B. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning playbook by allegedly teaching pigeons to peck for a food reward whenever the birds detected a relevant search result.

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