Operant Learning

Learning patterns and mind conditioning behaviours

Operant learning is a learning process in which a behavioural response is strengthen or extinguished by reinforcement or punishment. Since our organism react in different ways to external feedback, our brain learn to select which behaviour caused which response, reinforcing where it experienced a pleasant experience and discouraging where it had an unpleasant one.

B. F. Skinner made some research on this utilizing “Skinner box”. Basically he placed a rat in each of this boxes and used a positive experience (receiving food) to make the rat push a lever.
The rat quickly learned that if he pushed the lever, he would have received food, and by this positive reinforcement he started doing it more frequently. 

There are 4 different procedures to execute this kind of learning:
-    Positive reinforcement: add a pleasant response to increase the frequency of a behaviour right after it manifests
-    Negative reinforcement: remove a pleasant response to increase the frequency of a behaviour whenever is not done with frequency
-    Positive punishment: add a bad stimulus to extinguish the frequency of a behaviour right after it manifests
-    Negative punishment: remove a bad stimulus to extinguish the frequency of a behaviour whenever is not done with frequency
 
As an example for this, we can look into a common trick used in online games to encourage the player to play with frequency: the daily rewards system.
In most online games right now, you get rewarded with items in game just by logging in the game on each unique day. This is positive reinforcement, and some games like “Game of Dice” use a streak system in which if you keep logging you get a better reward each time, and if you stop you restart from zero.

This way if you have already build quite a big streak of daily login bonus, you are less likely to throw everything away and stop doing it (negative reinforcement).
 

Reference images:
-    https://miro.medium.com/max/544/1*Y2TU-beWp1AfipJTHoEZGQ.png
-    https://cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/game-of-dice/Game-of-Dice-Daily-Login-Rewards.png