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Thorndike's Puzzle-Box. The graph demonstrates the general decreasing trend of the cat's response times with each successive trial. Thorndike emphasized the importance of the situation in eliciting a response; the cat would not go about making the lever-pressing movement if it was not in the puzzle box but was merely in a place where the ...
To test this, Thorndike created puzzle boxes. The puzzle boxes were approximately 20 inches long, 15 inches wide, and 12 inches tall. [11] Each box had a door that was pulled open by a weight attached to a string that ran over a pulley and was attached to the door. [11] The string attached to the door led to a lever or button inside the box. [11]
In his famous experiment, a cat was placed in a series of puzzle boxes in order to study the law of effect in learning. [4] He plotted to learn curves which recorded the timing for each trial. Thorndike's key observation was that learning was promoted by positive results, which was later refined and extended by B. F. Skinner's operant conditioning.
Original puzzle box designed by Edward Thorndike. In 1898, American psychologist, Edward Thorndike proposed the 'law of effect', which formed the basis of operant conditioning. [8] Thorndike conducted experiments to discover how cats learn new behaviors. His work involved monitoring cats as they attempted to escape from puzzle boxes.
B.F. Skinner's observations extended the understanding of the Law of Effect presented by Thorndike to include the conditioning of responses through negative stimuli. Similar to Thorndike's "puzzle-box", Skinner's experiments demonstrated that when a voluntary behavior is met with a benefit, such as food, the behavior is more likely to be repeated.
Laboratory research on reinforcement is usually dated from the work of Edward Thorndike, known for his experiments with cats escaping from puzzle boxes. [6] A number of others continued this research, notably B.F. Skinner, who published his seminal work on the topic in The Behavior of Organisms , in 1938, and elaborated this research in many ...
Unlike Thorndike's puzzle box, this arrangement allowed the subject to make one or two simple, repeatable responses, and the rate of such responses became Skinner's primary behavioral measure. [8] Another invention, the cumulative recorder, produced a graphical record from which these response rates could be estimated.
Japanese puzzle box, closed Japanese puzzle box, open. A puzzle box (also called a secret box or trick box) is a box that can be opened only by solving a puzzle. Some require only a simple move and others a series of discoveries. Modern puzzle boxes developed from furniture and jewelry boxes with secret compartments and hidden openings, known ...