Operant Conditioning

      Operant conditioning involves the active manipulation of environmental events to produce change in a student's behavior. Teachers can increase, decrease, initiate, or extinguish students's behavior by manipulation of the consequences following a response (Morgan & Jenson, 1988; Ysseldyke & Algozzine, 1990). Positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment are examples of consequences that may be used to change behavior.
      Positive reinforcement involves the presentation of a pleasant event of reward after the behavior is performed, this increases the likelihood the behavior will be performed again. Negative reinforcement involves the removal of an unpleasant or noxious event as the result of a specific response. Like positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement increases the likelihood that a response will occur again. Punishment decreases behavior and involves either the removal of positive consequences (punishment by removal) or the presentation of unpleasant consequences (punishment by application).
      Whether an event is positive, negative, or punishing to a student depends on the student's past learning history. Operant conditioning procedures have been used successfully in a variety of settings with all types of problem behaviors.

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