Operant conditioning chamber

An operant conditioning chamber (also known as a Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior. The operant conditioning chamber was created by B. F. Skinner while he was a graduate student at Harvard University. The chamber can be used to study both operant conditioning and classical conditioning.^[1][2]

Skinner created the operant conditioning chamber as a variation of the puzzle box originally created by Edward Thorndike.^[3] While Skinner's early studies were done using rats, he later moved on to study pigeons.^[4][5] The operant conditioning chamber may be used to observe or manipulate behaviour. An animal is placed in the box where it must learn to activate levers or respond to light or sound stimuli for reward. The reward may be food or the removal of noxious stimuli such as a loud alarm. The chamber is used to test specific hypotheses in a controlled setting.