1) Classical conditioning can cause test anxiety when a teacher says "tests are coming" (neutral stimulus) and students feel stressed (unconditioned response). Through repeated pairings, just hearing "tests" causes stress (conditioned response). 2) Using positive reinforcement, a teacher praises a student for on-task behavior (behavior), increasing the likelihood they'll repeat it. 3) A teacher uses negative reinforcement by allowing a disruptive student to leave time-out early (removal of an unpleasant stimulus) when they calm down (behavior), increasing calm behavior.

1. Behaviorism
A brief overview…A brief overview…

2. • Behavioral psychology is the study of external
behavior
• Behavior is objective and observable, where as
what goes on in one’s mind can never really be
known or measured (the mind is a “black box”)
• Behavior is the response of an organism to
stimuli
What is behaviorism all about?

3. Pavlov (1927), a
Russian physiologist
discovered classical
conditioning in dogs.
History of Behaviorist Theory

4. “Give me a dozen healthy infants,
well-formed, and my own special
world to bring them up in and I’ll
guarantee to take any one at
random and train him to be any
type of specialist I might select –
a doctor, a lawyer, artist…”
-Watson 1924
Do you agree?

5. Explains some learning of involuntary emotional
and physiological responses.
– Dog drooling when it smells food and later
when it hears a bell
It’s important for us as teachers to understand
since school is often the cause of unintentional
learning through classical conditioning,
especially anxiety.
– Test anxiety conditions us to have general
school anxiety
Classical Conditioning

6. Before Conditioning
Unconditioned
Stimulus
Unconditioned Response
Neutral Stimulus No Response
Ivan Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning

7. Ivan Pavlov's Classical ConditioningIvan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning
During Conditioning
Unconditioned
Stimulus
Neutral
Stimulus
Unconditioned
Response

8. Ivan Pavlov's Classical ConditioningIvan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning
After Conditioning
Conditioned
Stimulus
Conditioned
Response

10. • Kids who often get strep throat, after much swabbing of
their throat, begin to gag as soon as they see the doctor
with the swab.
• Hearing a teacher say, “Come see me after class”. Upon
hearing this phrase your stomach “flutters”.
The point is, we learn to associate a stimulus with a
response, and eventually our body does this automatically
in the presence of the stimulus. Our response is
involuntary.
Examples of Classical Conditioning

11. • Classical conditioning can face “extinction”, where the
learning is undone.
– This can happen naturally (the dog stops getting meat
when music is played)
– Or can happen through some type of therapy in the case
of severe anxiety reactions
• Ex: people who are afraid to fly….
Remember: Classical conditioning is more than forming an
association – it is an involuntary, physiological response
Classical Conditioning

12. Classical Conditioning inClassical Conditioning in
the Classroomthe Classroom
• Playing soothing music, dimming the
lights to calm and relax students
• Unintentional classical conditioning:
– Test anxiety
– Math anxiety
– Public speaking anxiety
– General school anxiety

13. • American psychologist - influential from the 1930’s - 60’s –
developed operant conditioning
• Skinner was interested in education
– He believed that behavior is sustained by reinforcements or
rewards, not by free will.
• Famous for the skinner box & the teaching machine
• Often worked with pigeons
& rats and applied what he learned
with these animals to human learning
B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

14. • This involves conditioning voluntary, controllable
behaviors, not the automatic physiological responses in
Classical Conditioning
• With Operant Conditioning the Response comes before the
Stimulus (the opposite of CC)
RR SS
Operant Conditioning (Skinner)

15. • Teachers can deliberately use operant conditioning
with their students (training)
• How someone reacts to our behaviors determines
whether or not we continue the behavior
– if we are rewarded for something we will likely do it
again - do you do this as a teacher?
Operant Conditioning (Skinner)

16. Behavior
Increases
Behavior
Decreases
Positive
Reinforcement
Negative
Reinforcement
Punishment
Presence of Pleasant
Stimulus
Absence of Unpleasant
Stimulus
Presence of
Unpleasant Stimulus
Operant Conditioning (Skinner)

17. • Positive Reinforcement – You behave in a certain way that
results in a reward, and as a result, you are more likely to
repeat that behavior
• Negative Reinforcement – You behave in a certain way that
results in the removal of something unpleasant, and as a
result you are more likely to repeat that behavior (ex: doing a
paper early)
– In both cases, something happened that you saw as “good”
and as a result, you exhibited the behavior moremore.
Consequences for Behaviors

18. • Punishment – A consequence that follows a behavior so
that you do the behavior less often in the future.
– Punishment can involve adding something (paying a
fine, staying after school) or involve removing
something you like (losing recess time, leaving your
friends)
– In both cases, adding something or removing
something, you perceive it as “bad” and as a result,
you exhibit the behavior lessless.

19. • Negative reinforcement: Something unpleasant
is removed & as a result you are more likely to
do it again
– Something happened that was “good”
• Punishment: A consequence happens that you
don’t like and you are less likely to do it again.
The punishment can add something or take
something away.
– Something happened that was “bad”
Negative Reinforcement vs. Punishment

20. • Shaping is a process of reinforcing a series of responses
that increasingly resemble the desired final behavior
• When a desired behavior occurs rarely or not at all, we
use shaping
– First reinforce any response that in some way
resembles the desired behavior, then one that is closer
etc.
– Think of animal training or the hyper kid who can’t sit
in his chair in class – do things in small steps
Shaping New Behaviors

21. • External rewards may diminish intrinsic motivation
–Studies where participants work on an interesting task
(ex: puzzles) - experimental group is given a reward when
finished while the control group is not.
– After initial period, during a non-rewarded time
participants are given a choice between continuing to
work on the task or switching to another activity. Typical
result is that participants in the experimental group spend
less time on the activity than the control group. This is
taken as indicating that reward reduces intrinsic
motivation. Pizza Hut used to give away free pizza to kids
who read a certain number of pages. This practice was
discontinued as it actually eroded students intrinsic
motivation to read!
Critiques of Behaviorism

22. • Behaviorism doesn’t account for anything that isn’t an
observable behavior
– There has to be more going on than what is
observable - doesn’t there?
• Behaviorism only accounts for learning through direct
experience with the environment (not observational
learning)

23. • Can you come up with classroom examples of:
– Classical Conditioning (use all the right labels)
– Operant Conditioning (again, use all the right
labels)
– Positive and Negative Reinforcement
– Punishment