Download radical behaviorism

EDCI 5774-092203
Learning Theories for Instructional Design
Course Instructor: Dr. Michael A. Evans
Unit2 Summary and Analysis: Behaviorism
By Yeonjeong Park ([email protected])
September 18, 2006
1. Learning and Radical Behaviorism
When I just came to U.S. and started to drive, I didn’t know drivers must
completely stop at the red octagon traffic sign located beside a road. One day, I ignored
that sign, and I got warning from policemen. (In Korea, even though there is same kind
of sign, as long as there is no any obstacle, we can pass without complete stop. Usually
go slow in this case.) Therefore, now I definitely stop at the red octagon sign.
Let us analyze my behavior more precisely. I stop when I see the red octagon sign,
but not when I see the other sign like green rectangle sign.
So, the red octagon sign is a discriminative stimulus for stopping behavior. The
stopping behavior (operant response) was followed by getting warning. If so, the
warning by policeman is a new stimulus which is contingent on the stopping behavior,
and which may serve to reinforce that behavior.
B. F. Skinner, a major proponent of radical behaviorism, defined “learning” as a
more or less permanent change in behavior that can be detected by observing an
organism over a period of time (Driscoll, 2005). As I described above connected to
Skinner’s S-F-S chain, learning occurs with environment (clue, input) which results
response (behavior) followed by contingent stimulus (consequences of a response).
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2. Reinforcement and behavior management
Simply the purpose of reinforcement is for organism to behave in the intended way.
In other words, behavior can be controlled by reinforcements in the way of “making,
strengthening weakening, and maintaining behavior.” (Figure 1)
Figure 1. Behavior management
First of all, to teach new behaviors we can shape, chain, and fade the behavior.
“Shaping” involves positive reinforcement of successive approximations of a target
behavior. But this successive approximations had been reinforced until the goal
behavior was achieved (Driscoll, 2005). Comparing the shaping, “Chaining” serves to
establish complex behaviors such as teaching new dance or memorizing long prose.
Besides, formed behavior can be gradually faded. I think this is often very desirable
and can be one of important condition of learning objective. For example, I was only
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able to ride a bicycle with somebody’s support at first. The fact that somebody helps me
was positive reinforcement but now I can ride it by myself without reinforcement.
Secondly, to strengthen and weaken behaviors, we can use four kinds of
reinforcements in terms of the type of reinforcement (satisfying and aversive), and
whether it is presented or removed. Each of these reinforcements has pros and cones,
and the reason is based on the context and purpose of using theses reinforcement.
Third, behaviors can be maintained in the different types of reinforcement schedules
such as fixed ratio, fixed interval, variable ratio and variable interval. But the most
effective way is variable ratio.
Finally, this reinforcement is distinguished from feedback. Even though feedback is
the consequence of response, typically reinforcement for an appropriate behavior, it not
only reinforces a response, also provides information to the learner as to how
performance can be improved (Driscoll, 2005).
3. My opinion: the value and critique of behaviorism
Behaviorism is the philosophy of science (Skinner, 1974). Through reviewing the
history of antecedents of behaviorism like Ebbinghaus’s associationism, Thorndike’s
law of effect, Pavlov’s classical conditioning and especially radical behaviorism
supported by Skinner and Watson, I have found the common phenomena which is that
they consistently tried this “scientific approach” and only believed “behavior” that they
can “observe”. And I can not but being surprised at the fact how well behaviorists have
been defining their concepts and range, and set their assumption.
Above all, as a person who is interested in evaluation, I totally rely on the possibility
that observable learning goal itself become the criterion of evaluation. And this fact
sometimes gave me huge hope to approach scientifically evaluation of human
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performance. Especially, I really set high value on the radical behaviorism in terms of
that it has been foundation of contemporary instructional design model. And I agree
behaviorism provides the best vehicle for educational technologists to describe and
converse about human learning and behavior (Burton et all, 2004).
Nevertheless, I see somehow big hole that is not explained by the behaviorism.
Maybe it is the fact that we are dealing with “human” not “animal.” Human can think
about high-level contents, analyze complex problem, sometimes synthesize and evaluate
them. Above all, they create new knowledge through communicating others and this
cannot be explained by behaviorism’s motivation or other notions.
In this regard, studying different perspectives and consistently trying to apply them
into the real world would be very important to explore the answer from the questions
about learning. I hope I can enjoy next paradigm as well.
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