Download Behaviorism Fall 2014

•Classical
Conditioning (Ivan Pavlov) 1903
•Law of
Effect (Thorndike) 1905
•Environmentalism (Watson) 1913 (1920)
•Operant Conditioning (Skinner) 1936
•Observational Learning (Bandura) 1963
What is behaviorism all
about?
Behavioral psychology is the study
of external behavior

Behavior is objective and
observable, whereas 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

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
 Unconditioned
US = Unconditioned
Stimulus: the US
reliably produces
the UR
 UR = Unconditioned
response: usually
based in physiology
such as salivation,
sweating, blinking,
or other reflexive
responses;

 Conditioned


CS = Conditioned
Stimulus: a CS is a
neutral stimulus
prior to conditioning
but produces CR
after conditioning
CR = Conditioned
Response: same
type of response as
UR but occurs in
response to CS
Edward Thorndike
(1874-1949)
Trial and Error: (Cat has to escape to get food)
Successive Trials Resulted in Faster Responses
1878-1958
1913: Psychology as the Behaviorist
Views it.
« The Behaviorist Manifesto »
Experimented with Little Albert using a
white rabbit and loud noise.
Watson changed the focus of psychology
from introspection, to environmentalism.
The principles of learning would account for
the largest share of behavioral development
and are exercised almost exclusively
through environmental learning
opportunities provided for children.
(reflected in cultural diversity & learning
studies)
“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
 A reinforcer
is any stimulus that increases
the frequency of the target behavior
 A “punishment”
is any stimulus that
decreases the frequency of the target
behavior
 POSITIVE
REINFORCEMENT = increasing a
behavior by administering a reward
 NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT = increasing a
behavior by removing an aversive stimulus when a
behavior occurs
 PUNISHMENT = decreasing a behavior by
administering an aversive stimulus following a
behavior OR by removing a positive stimulus
 EXTINCTION = decreasing a behavior by not
rewarding it
Put simply
Positive
Reinforcement
Presence of Pleasant
Stimulus
Negative
Reinforcement
Absence of Unpleasant
Stimulus
Punishment
Presence of
Unpleasant Stimulus
Behavior
Increases
Behavior
Decreases
 Punishment
does not teach appropriate
behaviors
 Must be delivered immediately & consistently
 May result in negative side effects
 Undesirable behaviors may be learned through
modeling (aggression)
 May create negative emotions (anxiety & fear)
 Behavior
is most quickly established
by Continuous Reinforcement
 Continuous Reinforcement most
vulnerable to Extinction
 Partial Reinforcement is most resistant
to Extinction
Obvious
connection between
behavior and consequence
Delayed
consequences whether
positive (reward) or negative
(punishment) have less or no
effect at all: Importance of
immediate feedback in the
classroom.
 An
operant conditioning procedure in
which reinforcers guide behavior
toward closer and closer approximations
of the target behavior.
 Reinforce
students for what they are
currently able to perform / do.
 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
: breaking down a task into
smaller steps/Feedback and rewards
Paragraph writing: Topic sentence,
1 argument for, 1 argument against,
conclusion.
Blank filling, from easier to more
challenging gaps.
: The final subskills
of a complex task are learned before
the first subskill.
 Extinction:
This term refers to disappearance
of a link between the conditioned stimulus and
the conditioned response.
 Ex. Watson’s experiment with Albert:
 The child’s response gradually extinguishes, or
fades until it has disappeared entirely when
experimenter stopped associating the loud
sound with the appearance of the white
rabbit. In a sense the child’s initial learning is
“unlearned”.
 Generalization:
When Pavlov studied
conditioning in dogs, he noticed that
the original conditioned stimulus (tone)
was not the only neutral stimulus that
elicited the conditioned response; a
bell, steps, etc. elicited the conditioned
response, too.
 Psychologists call this process
generalization, or the tendency for
similar stimuli to elicit a conditioned
response.
 When
Omar’s mother told him the iron was
hot and he shouldn’t touch it, he also
learned to stay away from the stove, oven,
and hot water in the bathtub. What is
Omar’s learning process called?
 extinction
 operant conditioning
 stimulus
 stimulus
generalization
discrimination
 Discrimination
occurs when the
individual learns to distinguish or
respond differently to one stimulus than
to another.
Behaviorists
focus on establishing
environments that maximize
learning as measured via
stimulus/response mechanisms
Behaviorists
do not consider as
important the following:




Affective Domain
Processing Skills
Mental Knowledge Structures
Expert vs. Novice Solving
Ppt. compiled by R. Kerkech, based on
www.wou.edu/~girodm/611/behaviorism
www.webster.edu/~woolflm/personalityskinner
www.math.wvu.edu/.../BehavioristTheoryPresentation...
www1.assumption.edu/users/emhowe/.../behavior
prezi.com/0qq9xb2iqwj7/behaviorism/ (Khan academy)