Enter Dr. Nick, dressed in a white lab coat, messy hair and thick glasses.

Beside him is a younger boy, Mikey. They walk to the center of a stage, and
address the audience.

Dr. Nick: Hi Everybody!

Crowd: Hi Dr. Ni-!
Dr. Nick: NO! Thats Copyrighted by The Simpsons! Anyways, today we are
going to learn about Operant Conditioning!
Crowd: Whats that?
Dr. Nick: Operant Conditioning is one of the many we, and many animals
learn! How do we figure out that touching a hot stove is bad, and that we
should not? When we touch it we feel pain, a bad thing! And as a result we
do it less!
Crowd: ok
Dr. Nick: It really is amazing and a necessary component of our
understanding of psychological development. Let us look at its history.

Scene cuts to old time sepia, with B.F. Skinner reading Thorndikes studies

Dr. Nick: Skinner was not the first person to observe the phenomenon of
Operant conditioning, but he was the first to provide an empirical method of
proving and causing the phenomenon.
Michael: but what is that phenomenon Dr. Nick?

Dr. Nick: Im Glad you asked Mikey. Basically, Thorndike saw and observed
the reactions of humans and animals to stimuli, but his reasonings were not
objectively observable. For example, he said a reaction could be a state of
satisfaction, but that does not have a definition that is the same for every
person observing. To Skinner these phenomena needed numerical data to be
proven.
Michael: So howd he do that?
Dr. Nick: I am glad you asked!

Cuts to Skinner bringing out a Skinners Box, inside is a rat, on one side
there is a food dispenser, button, a light and a wire grid on the floor,
apparently electrified.

Dr. Nick: Wait, Before we watch the Skinners box in action, we need to
establish some definitions!

Cut to a screen with four terms Reinforcement: Increases Behavior

Punishment: Decreases behavior, Positive: Giving something Negative:
taking away.

Dr. Nick: Now this can get a bit confusing, you can have something called
Positive Punishment, which inflicts something like pain, or say getting
grounded a punishment, to increase a behavior. For example, if you dont

clean your room, your mom grounds you, driving you to clean your room
more often. Increased behavior due to being punished. This brings we to
negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is when say your mom
removes your TV time restriction when you clean your room, youd clean
your room more right? So it removes something, and as a result your
behavior increases. Now let us look at the box!

Cut to the Box

Michael: Whats that doc?

Dr. Nick: This is how Skinner observed and proved his theories!
Michael: So how does it work?
Dr. Nick: Well Lets take some positive reinforcement. We want to increase
the rat turning on the light. So we need to give him some motivation, this will
be done through the food dispenser. So the rat pushes the button, which
turns on the light, thus a pellet of food is dispensed.
The Rat presses the button, a bright green light flashes, and a brown pele
falls out of the dispenser, landing at the rats feet.
Dr. Nick: This is repeated every time the rat pushes the button, or on a
schedule determined by the Scientists running the experiment.
The rat repeats the action sequence.
Dr. Nick: This reinforcement increases the behavior and thus, after repetition,
the rat has learned the action!

Mikey: Wow!
End Scene