Operant Conditioning Paper

Learning unlike most of the other concepts that are involved in this lab as well as the pre-cursing studies, can not be directly defined. Instead Learning has to be inferred from the change of behavior observed in the subject. A more or less permanent change implies the subject has "Learned" the desired response. Operant Conditioning is conditioning a specific subject to perform an Operant response to receive a reinforcer (such as food). An apparatus used to achieve this would be the "Skinner Box" or the "Davis universal feeder" (along with key light and response key) that was used in the Talton, Higa and Staddon study of 1999. There are general concepts that are involved with most of the studies conducted on "Learning", such as Continuous Reinforcement. (CI) delivers a reinforcer whenever the subject performs the desired operant response, eventually creating high proportions of responses. Other forms of reinforcement that are involved within both this study as
These were FI 60s, FI 240s, FI 30s, FI 60s, and finally a VI 60s. The observations from this study seemed to match the previous works. They showed the goldfish's seeming ability to learn temporal schedules for response and reinforcement. Specifically that the average wait times (latent periods) depended upon the length of the FI. The final FI 60s period and the VI 60s period did not differ greatly. These overall findings indicated that the fish learned to estimate the interval time of reinforcement and were therefore able to only increase their responses as they got closer to the interval time, and decrease them directly after receiving the reinforcer. Although these differences were not to the same scale as those visible in rats and pigeons they nonetheless provided evidence to support the temporal thought abilities of