Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor, and social philosopher. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior may increase through reinforcement or decrease through punishment or extinction.
An operant conditioning chamber is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior. The operant conditioning chamber was created by B. F. Skinner while he was a graduate student at Harvard University. The chamber can be used to study both operant conditioning and classical conditioning.
The rock dove, rock pigeon, or common pigeon is a member of the bird family Columbidae. In common usage, it is often simply referred to as the "pigeon", although this is the wild form of the bird; the pigeons most familiar to people are the domesticated form of the wild rock dove.
In behavioral psychology, reinforcement refers to consequences that increase the likelihood of an organism's future behavior, typically in the presence of a particular antecedent stimulus. For example, a rat can be trained to push a lever to receive food whenever a light is turned on; in this example, the light is the antecedent stimulus, the lever pushing is the operant behavior, and the food is the reinforcer. Likewise, a student that receives attention and praise when answering a teacher's question will be more likely to answer future questions in class; the teacher's question is the antecedent, the student's response is the behavior, and the praise and attention are the reinforcements.
The experimental analysis of behavior is a science that studies the behavior of individuals across a variety of species. A key early scientist was B. F. Skinner who discovered operant behavior, reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, contingencies of reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, intermittent schedules, discrimination, and generalization. A central method was the examination of functional relations between environment and behavior, as opposed to hypothetico-deductive learning theory that had grown up in the comparative psychology of the 1920–1950 period. Skinner's approach was characterized by observation of measurable behavior which could be predicted and controlled. It owed its early success to the effectiveness of Skinner's procedures of operant conditioning, both in the laboratory and in behavior therapy.
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understand the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex elicited by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, deriving from Skinner's three levels of selection: phylogeny, ontogeny, and culture, they focus primarily on environmental events. The cognitive revolution of the late 20th century largely replaced behaviorism as an explanatory theory with cognitive psychology, which unlike behaviorism views internal mental states as explanations for observable behavior.
During World War II, Project Pigeon was American behaviorist B. F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-controlled guided bomb.
Fancy pigeon refers to any breed of domestic pigeon, which is a domesticated form of the wild rock dove. They are bred by pigeon fanciers for various traits relating to size, shape, color, and behavior, and often exhibited at pigeon shows, fairs and other livestock exhibits.
The Fantail is a popular breed of fancy pigeon. The American Pigeon Journal had special issues devoted to the breed in February 1975 and July 1977 The magazine is available for viewing in Wikipedia Commons. It is characterised by a fan-shaped tail, resembling a peacock, composed of 30 to 40 feathers, abnormally more than most members of the dove and pigeon family, which usually have 12 to 14 tail feathers. The breed is thought to have originated in Pakistan, India, China, Japan or Spain. There are several subvarieties, such as the English Fantail, the Indian Fantail, which has a peak crest and the Thai Fantail. Charles Darwin used it as one of the examples in the first chapter of his book On the Origin of Species. He believed it was a descendant of the rock dove.
Shaping is a conditioning paradigm used primarily in the experimental analysis of behavior. The method used is differential reinforcement of successive approximations. It was introduced by B. F. Skinner with pigeons and extended to dogs, dolphins, humans and other species. In shaping, the form of an existing response is gradually changed across successive trials towards a desired target behavior by reinforcing exact segments of behavior. Skinner's explanation of shaping was this:
We first give the bird food when it turns slightly in the direction of the spot from any part of the cage. This increases the frequency of such behavior. We then withhold reinforcement until a slight movement is made toward the spot. This again alters the general distribution of behavior without producing a new unit. We continue by reinforcing positions successively closer to the spot, then by reinforcing only when the head is moved slightly forward, and finally only when the beak actually makes contact with the spot. ... The original probability of the response in its final form is very low; in some cases it may even be zero. In this way we can build complicated operants which would never appear in the repertoire of the organism otherwise. By reinforcing a series of successive approximations, we bring a rare response to a very high probability in a short time. ... The total act of turning toward the spot from any point in the box, walking toward it, raising the head, and striking the spot may seem to be a functionally coherent unit of behavior; but it is constructed by a continual process of differential reinforcement from undifferentiated behavior, just as the sculptor shapes his figure from a lump of clay.
Pigeon keeping or pigeon fancying is the art and science of breeding domestic pigeons. People have practiced pigeon keeping for at least 5,000 years and in almost every part of the world. In that time, humans have substantially altered the morphology and the behaviour of the domesticated descendants of the rock dove to suit their needs for food, aesthetic satisfaction and entertainment.
In operant conditioning, the matching law is a quantitative relationship that holds between the relative rates of response and the relative rates of reinforcement in concurrent schedules of reinforcement. For example, if two response alternatives A and B are offered to an organism, the ratio of response rates to A and B equals the ratio of reinforcements yielded by each response. This law applies fairly well when non-human subjects are exposed to concurrent variable interval schedules ; its applicability in other situations is less clear, depending on the assumptions made and the details of the experimental situation. The generality of applicability of the matching law is subject of current debate.
In behavioral psychology, stimulus control is a phenomenon in operant conditioning that occurs when an organism behaves in one way in the presence of a given stimulus and another way in its absence. A stimulus that modifies behavior in this manner is either a discriminative stimulus or stimulus delta. For example, the presence of a stop sign at a traffic intersection alerts the driver to stop driving and increases the probability that braking behavior occurs. Stimulus control does not force behavior to occur, as it is a direct result of historical reinforcement contingencies, as opposed to reflexive behavior elicited through classical conditioning.
Charles Bohris Ferster was an American behavioral psychologist. A pioneer of applied behavior analysis, he developed errorless learning and was a colleague of B.F. Skinner's at Harvard University, co-authoring the book Schedules of Reinforcement (1957).
Utility pigeons are domesticated pigeons bred to be a source of meat called squab. Squabs have been used as a food in many nations for centuries. They were bred to breed and grow quickly. Because they are bred for squab production, conformation to a show standard is usually deemed unimportant.
The Nun is a breed of fancy pigeon developed through many years of selective breeding. It was known as the Dutch Shell Pigeon in continental Europe. Nuns, along with other varieties of domesticated pigeons, are all descendants from the rock pigeon . The Nun is one of the oldest breeds and was originally a flying tumbler before being developed for exhibition. It is a mostly white breed, with a hood of feathers, which gives the name to the breed.
The Damascene, also known as the Istanbullu pigeon, is a breed of fancy pigeon developed over many years of selective breeding. Damascenes, along with other varieties of domesticated pigeons, are all descendants of the rock dove . The breed is thought to have originated in Damascus, Syria and hence its name.
The Serbian Highflyer is a breed of domestic pigeon that is bred for endurance flying. The breed is characterized by long circle flights up to 15 hours. It can fly as high as 1,500 metres (4,900 ft). There are about 20,000 fanciers of this breed in Serbia.
