Final answer:
Jack's situation BEST illustrates operant conditioning, where his timely response to coming to dinner is reinforced with the reward of having a friend sleep over, thereby increasing the likelihood of this behavior in the future.
Step-by-step explanation:
The example of Jack's mother finding that he comes to dinner the first time he is called since she has allowed him to have a friend sleep over whenever Jack comes to dinner on time for 6 days in a row BEST illustrates operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is a learning process through which the strength of a behavior is modified by reinforcement or punishment.
In Jack's case, the opportunity to have a friend sleep over acts as a positive reinforcement for his behavior of coming to dinner on time, thereby increasing the likelihood that he will repeat this behavior in anticipation of the reward. This principle of conditioning is based on the work of psychologists like B.F. Skinner and is related to the Rescorla-Wagner model of classical conditioning, which describes how an organism learns the predictive relationship between a conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus.