Behaviorist

Bibi Nahida

 Core to all of behaviorism is the assumption that human and animal behaviors are determined by learning and reinforcement. Whether by classical conditioning or operatant conditioning, species acquire new skills, deepening on the effects these skills have on the specie's environment.

 If an action proves to have a positive outcome (e.g., if by pressing a button, a rat receives food), the organism is more likely to continue to repeat this behavior. However, if the outcome is negative (e.g., if by pressing a button, a rat rat receives a shock), the organism is less likely to repeat the behavior.

 Skinner, and Stimulus-Response (S-R) adherents, believed that behaviorist theory could be used to infer a learning history. They held that one could take an animal or person, observe its/his/her behavior, and figure out what had been reinforced previously. Behaviorist reduced all responses to associations, to a pattern of positive and negative reinforcement that establishes links between stimuli and their environmental antecedents and consequences

 Skinner proposed that language could be categorized by the way it was reinforced. He claimed that there were four general types of speech: echoic behavior, mand, tact,interverbals and autocli tic.

 Echoic behavior is the primary form of verbal behavior of language learners. These verbalizations include repeated utterances, as in (1) (1) PARENT: [pointing to cookie] Thats a cookie. Can you say cookie? CHILD: Cooookie Mands (short for deMANDS) are defined as utterances that are reinforced by the elevation of deprivation. So for instance, if a child were hungry or cold, her requests (as in (2)) (2) Cookie. Directives such as Stop, Go, and Wait also count as mands. However, in (3), the child may be simply naming the object or stating what she likes. (3) Cookie!

Ivan Pavlov

 Pavlov was a behaviorist. This means that his theories focused on observable behavior, because behavior can be measured and thought can not. The human mind should be interpreted as ablack box that can not be opened. Only was goes in the box and what comes out can be known. Scientific evidence is the keyword in his theory.

 Pavlov studied reflexes, automatic behavior that is caused by a stimulus from the environment. Some reflexes, such as blinking your eyes when a puff of air comes in it, or the sucking of a baby when something is put in his/her mouth. This automatic behavior can be manipulated. This is called conditioning. In this conditioning process, a unconditional stimulus is given to a person.

 This stimulus causes a reflex on its own. When the unconditional stimulus is now given to the person together with a stimulus that does not cause a reflex on its own. Thus, a unconditional stimulus is given together with a conditional stimulus. Because the presence of the unconditional stimulus, the reflex is caused.

 This process of stimulus-response is repeated for a number of times. After a while, the unconditional stimulus is not offered any more. Only the conditional stimulus is offered. Because of the repeated association of the unconditional and the conditional stimulus, the conditional stimulus will now cause the reflex on its own. Classical conditioning is succeeded.

 Pavlov's theories where very influential, in particular in the field of child psychology.

Edward Thorndike

 Edward Thorndike (1874 - 1949) is famous in psychology for his work on learning theory that lead to the development of operant conditioning within behaviorism.

 Whereas classical conditioning depends on developing associations between events,operant conditioning involves learning from the consequences of our behavior. Skinner wasnt the first psychologist to study learning by consequences. Indeed, Skinner's theory of operant conditioning is built on the ideas of Edward Thorndike.

 Thorndike (1898) studied learning in animals (usually cats). He devised a classic experiment in which he used a puzzle box (see fig. 1) to empirically test the laws of learning.

 He placed a cat in the puzzle box, which was encourage to escape to reach a scrap of fish placed outside. Thorndike would put a cat into the box and time how long it took to escape. The cats experimented with different ways to escape the puzzle box and reach the fish.

 Eventually they would stumble upon the lever which opened the cage. When it had escaped it was put in again, and once more the time it took to escape was noted. In successive trials the cats would learn that pressing the lever would have favorable consequences and they would adopt this behavior, becoming increasingly quick at pressing the lever (see Fig 1).

 Edward Thorndike put forward a Law of effect which stated that any behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated, and any behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is likely to be stopped.