Psychology chapter 7, principles of learning; i am the process whereby animals are taught a complicated response by being rewarded in steps leading up to the response. what am i?

Burrhus Frederic Skinner's Operant Conditioning.

B.F. Skinner  believed that to understand behavior, in the best way, is to look at the root causes or reasons of an action and its outcomes. 

Skinner proposes the Law of Effect-Reinforcement. Here,he differentiated the positively reinforced behavior or the strengthened behavior, the negatively reinforced behavior (removal of the unpleasant experience), and weakened behavior because of punishment.  

In positive reinforcement,  behavior is strengthened through providing an outcome, an effect that an individual finds rewarding. Negative reinforcement also strengthens behavior because the unpleasant experience was removed. Punishment on the other hand is an opposite to reinforcement. Instead of increasing the response, it eliminates it or weakens it.