Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Operating to produce effects; effective.
  • adjective Psychology Of, relating to, or being a response that occurs spontaneously and is identified by its reinforcing or inhibiting effects.
  • noun One that operates.
  • noun Psychology An element of operant behavior.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Working; engaged in action; active; operative; effective.
  • noun One who operates; an operator or operative; a worker or workman.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective rare, rare, rare Operative.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective That operates to produce an effect.
  • noun An operative person or thing.
  • noun psychology A class of behavior that produces consequences by operating (i.e., acting) upon the environment.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having influence or producing an effect

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin operāns, operant-, present participle of operārī, to work; see operate.]

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Examples

  • He argued that this occurs through a process that he called operant conditioning.

    Innateness and Language Cowie, Fiona 2008

  • Because the brain reward system is part of a larger brain circuit that underlies a primitive form of learning called operant conditioning, activating it not only produces pleasure, but also teaches people to repeat the drug-taking behaviors that turned it on in the first place.

    Dental Work 2009

  • a stimulus such as food is a reinforcer only if its presentation increases the frequency of a response in a type of associative conditioning known as operant conditioning.

    Behaviorism Graham, George 2007

  • There is another type of conditioning called "operant" conditioning.

    Morty Lefkoe: How to Stop Emotional Eating (and Other Compulsive Behavior Problems) for Good 2010

  • There is another type of conditioning called "operant" conditioning.

    Morty Lefkoe: How to Stop Emotional Eating (and Other Compulsive Behavior Problems) for Good 2010

  • Brookstone - I see one of these places and I salivate with the kind of operant conditioning that comes from a lifetime of gadgeteering.

    nad hen j��c eto 2010

  • This would be an early use of the kind of operant conditioning that I think would be useful.

    Education 2009

  • This would be an early use of the kind of operant conditioning that I think would be useful.

    Printing: Education 2009

  • Who cares about evolution if we can explain the length and breadth of human behavior on the basis of minimalistic principles such as operant conditioning or utility maximization?

    David Sloan Wilson: EvoS: Coming Soon to a College Near You 2008

  • I think that the whole island “attracts” people through the electromagnetism so that some kind of operant behavior testing can be done and the button has something to do with it.

    Open ‘Lost’ Thread 2005

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