Behaviorism

“ Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and the race of his ancestors” ( Behaviorism , John Watson, 1924) The Master’s Thought

• Period: 1920’s to 1950’s
• Question: How is behaviour learned?
• Goal: To explain complex behaviour in terms
of learning from simple behaviour
• Logic: If you can control the simple behaviour,
and have a theory of learning, you can predict complex behaviour.
Some facts

• Method: Experimentation
• Contribution: Rigorous scientific methodology
• Objective observation: Associative learning
Some facts

Classical conditioning (Ivan Pavlov)
Operant conditioning (B.F. Skinner)
Law of effect (Edward Thorndike)
Social learning (Albert Bandura)
Theories under the behaviorist paradigm

Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning

Adhesive principle: A response is attached to every stimulus. For every stimulus, there is always a corresponding response
Excitation: Law of acquisition; Previously neutral stimulus gains the ability of eliciting response
Stimulus generalization: Conditioned response occurs in response to stimuli which are similar to the conditioned stimulus
Spontaneous recovery: Conditioned response which does not appear for sometime reoccurs without need for further conditioning
Principles under Classical Conditioning

Discrimination: Conditioned response does not occur to all possible similar stimuli (learned difference between stimuli)
Extinction: When pairing of conditioned and unconditional stimulus stops
Association weakens----conditioned response less frequent----till disappears
Personality ---–pattern of responses--- changes by exposure to feared stimuli under relaxed and supportive conditions
Principles under Classical Conditioning

Behavior is changed by consequences
Feedback principle: Manipulate environment to change behaviors; presenting or removing stimuli (rewards, punishment)
By shaping successive approximations to desired behavior
Deterministic theory with NO FREE WILL
Personality is a group of responses to environment
Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

Subject segregated from all irrelevant environmental influences
Only stimuli were controlled by experimenter
Reinforcement rates & schedule were measured
Positive-food, negative-electro shock
Evolved into teaching machines and self-paced teaching regimens
Skinner Box

Freedom
Dignity
Self-fulfillment
Skinner said:
Although people look and feel free they are always controlled by the environment – Education & Religion control people = NO FREE WILL
Behaviorists reject concepts of …

Consequences of behavior will either strengthen or weaken the behavior
Consequences = effect of the behavior
Learning come thru trial and error
Learn to do actions which bring rewards & help avoid pain
Thorndike’s Law of Effect

Law of Readiness: when an individual is prepared to respond-Allowing=satisfaction: Inhibiting=disappointment
Law of Exercise: Constant repetition
Other Laws of Learning by Thorndike

Principle: Reciprocal determinism
Behavior----Person Variable----Environment
Self systems
a. Self evaluation
b. Self regulation
c. Self efficacy
Sources
a. Mastery experience
b. Social modelling
c. Social persuasion
d. Physical and emotional states
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

Observational learning
Modeling - adding & subtracting from observed behaviors and generalizing from one observation to another
Types
1. inhibition
2. disinhibition
3. facilitation
4. true observational learning
Enactive learning (evaluating consequences)
Two Major Types of Learning

• Problem: Couldn’t explain the richness of human language. • Is this sentence grammatical? – I tripped over President McPherson sleeping on the side walk in front of the Land Shark . – You recognize this as grammatical – But you have probably never seen this sentence before. – So where did you learn the recognition response? Other problems include: Persistent human error. Criticisms on Behaviorism

Behaviorism

by njbotor on Dec 20, 2011

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Behaviorism — Presentation Transcript