Operant Conditioning Lab Report

In 2004, Sarah Thomas, an undergraduate student at Portland State University, completed an experiment to determine the effect of biofeedback training on muscle tension and skin temperature. The purpose of this experiment was to train the subject of the experiment to change their decrease muscle tension and increase skin temperatures in response to tones. The experiment was based on the research done by Miller and Bruckner in 1979. The experiment done by Miller and Brucker dealt with how rats can modify their heartbeats when given pleasurable brain stimulation (Lee, 2014). The same premises were used in this experiment to see if humans can adjust their muscle tension and skin temperature as a cause of stimulations. The results found in this lab report claim a correlation between a positive reinforcement and control of one’s body, but these results are invalid due to the low sample size and lack of diversity in
The only major deviation from the rest of the data was subject seven. Subject seven had an overall average of mean skin temp minus baseline as a negative when the rest of the data was positive. Regardless, the data collected allowed Thomas to conclude that operant conditioning could be used on humans to train them to decrease muscle tension and to increase skin temperature. Operant conditioning is a theory formulated by B.F. Skinner in the 1920s that taught positive reinforcement of an action would foster encouragement for the action to be done again. On the other hand, negative reinforcement of an action would foster resistance to do the action again (McLeod, 2007). Thomas uses this theory to set up her experiment. She views the tone as a positive reinforcement to teach the subject to repeat the action of increasing skin temperature or decreasing muscle