operant conditioning

noun

1. conditioning ( def 1 ).

Word History and Origins

Origin of operant conditioning¹

First recorded in 1940–45

Example Sentences

It knows how to use operant conditioning — the same techniques used to train a dog — to turn young men and women into efficient killers.

From Salon

Clive Wynne, founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University, ascribed the talking dogs’ skills to operant conditioning rather than an understanding of the words they seem to use.

From Seattle Times

In our case—other zoos may have better behaved ones—our gibbons are ridiculously smart, and they have not responded as well to the operant conditioning for training voluntary injections.

From Slate

My feelings about the camp are well-defined: They have performed a kind of operant conditioning on my son, teaching him that if he is in a new or uncomfortable situation, he can just act up and people will give up on him and he won’t have to do the new and uncomfortable thing.

From Slate

Even Devine says that she thinks Bunny’s “speech” is primarily operant conditioning, where Bunny has made an association between pressing a button and something happening.

From The Verge