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Behaviourism
Siobhán Dervan
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
IDA Business Park
Lower Dangan, Galway, Ireland
Tel: +353 91 495053
E-mail: [email protected]
INTRODUCTION
Learning theories are utilised in both psychology and education to help us understand and explain the process of learning.
As with any other field of research there are many different
theoretical perspectives on how people acquire knowledge.
Generally speaking there are three basic theories of learning
each of which with distinctly different views of the learning
process; behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism. Behaviourism is based on observable changes in behaviour
whereas cognitivism focuses on the thought process behind
the behaviour and constructivism is founded on the premise
that every human constructs their own perspective of the
world through individual experiences. The focus of this paper
however is on the behaviourist orientation to learning. Behaviourism became one of the dominant areas of research into
learning throughout the twentieth century and bbehaviourist
learning theories were the first to be used in the development
of instructional design. For many years concepts of behavioural theory formed the basis of the majority of the learning
theory applied in child rearing and in classrooms. Later when
the cognitive approach became more widely popular behaviourist theorists focused their attention on programmed learning and most modern computer-aided instruction is built on
the solid foundation laid by behaviourist researchers. Today
in many instances parents and teachers still find behavioural
principles are often effective, especially with small children
and simpler tasks.
learning is the concept of rewarded response. In order for
learning to take place the desired response must be rewarded.
For example in education, advocates of behaviourism have
effectively adopted this system of rewards and punishments
in their classrooms by rewarding desired behaviours and punishing inappropriate ones. Obviously the rewards vary but
they must be important to the learner in some way. Both reinforcement rewards and punishments can either positive or
negative. This idea is prone to the common misconception
that negative reinforcement is actually punishment but this is
not the case. Positive reinforcement gives the learner something to increase desired behaviour e.g. a treat or compliment,
whereas negative reinforcement strengthens behaviour
through the removal of an unpleasant stimulus e.g. less
homework. Positive and negative punishments work in a similar way for example as a positive punishment a learner may
receive detention or extra work. Negative punishment removes something from the learner e.g. missing break time.
As with all teaching methods, success depends on each particular student's stimulus and response, and on associations
made by each learner.
There are several general assumptions made by behaviourist theories;
 Every behaviour has causes that can be understood
by scientific methods

The same learning principles apply equally to different behaviours and different species.

To objectively study learning processes one must
focus solely on stimuli and responses. Internal
cognitive processes are excluded from scientific
study

All organisms are born as “blank slates”

Learning involves a behaviour change and largely
the result of environmental events
Basics of behaviourism
Behaviourism is primarily concerned with observable and
measurable aspects of human and animal behaviour. The theory of behaviourism views the mind as a “black box” and
discounts all mental activities or thought processes that may
have occurred. This is because of the belief that the only behaviours worthy of study are those that can be directly observed i.e. actions rather than thoughts or emotions. Behaviour theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behaviour and this is achieved by repeating a
new behavioural pattern until it becomes automatic. Behaviour is directed by stimuli in the external environment; the
individual selects one response over another because of prior
conditioning and psychological drives existing at the moment
of the action. Consequently behaviourists also hold that all
behaviours can also be unlearned, and replaced by new behaviours. One of the key factors in the behaviourist theory of
KEY BEHAVIOURISM THEORISTS
Experiments by behaviourists identify conditioning as a universal learning process. Conditioning is a process of behaviour modification by which a subject comes to associate a
desired behaviour with a previously unrelated stimulus. There
were four key players in the development of behaviourist
theory during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849 - 1936)
Pavlov first explored the theory of classical conditioning and
was famous for his conditioning experiments with his dogs.
Classical conditioning is a learning process which occurs
when a natural reflex responds to a stimulus. When a hungry
dog sees food he salivates. This is an unconscious, uncontrolled, and unlearned response. Therefore we call the food
an "unconditioned" stimulus and the salivation an "unconditioned" response. They are naturally connected. They did
not have to be learned, it was already present. Through his
canine experiments Pavlov discovered that when an unconditioned stimulus (food) which produces an unconditioned response (salivation) is presented together with a conditioned
stimulus (a bell), the unconditioned response (salivation) is
eventually produced on the presentation of the conditioned
stimulus (the bell) alone, thus becoming a conditioned response.
He also discovered that if you stopped the simultaneous ringing of the bell with the food, eventually the dog would cease
the connection between the salivation and the bell. It was
easy to recover the response if the connection was begun
again. Today this concept of learning by association is profusely exploited in advertising and these associations can be
chained and generalized for better or for worse, For example
"smell of baking" associates with "kitchen at home in childhood" which associates with "love and care".
gradually shortened with each try. His realized the animal
created a connection between the proper response and the
food the cat received. The process of having a particular
stimulus-response sequence followed by pleasure allowed the
response to be "stamped in". When the stimulus-response
was followed by pain, the responses were "stamped out." He
established his principle of law of effect from his conclusions
in this experiment.
John B. Watson (1878 - 1958)
Watson is considered the father of behaviourism because the
paper he published in 1913 stating his beliefs on psychology
later formed the basis for a new branch of psychology, behaviourism.
 He believed that you should only study those behaviours that could be observed and measured.
The study of emotions or thoughts was considered
to be an inappropriate area of study because it
could not be directly observed.

He did not believe that heredity was a significant
factor in shaping human behaviour.

A behaviourist's goal is to try to see which stimulus will elicit which response
Watson is best known for his experiment with Albert, the 9month old baby boy. Albert was classically conditioned to
fear a white rat. Initially the child showed no fear towards the
rat and allowed the rat to crawl over him. Whenever Albert
was playing with the rat, Watson began to sound a loud,
deafening noise. The noise scared the child. Watson continued to pair the unpleasant noise with the appearance of the
rat. After the two stimuli continued to be paired, Albert began to cry at the sighting of the rat. The child also carried
this phobia to other small animals and other rat like objects.
B. F. Skinner (1904 - 1990)
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874 - 1949)
Thorndike was a psychologist who worked on educational
psychology and the psychology of animal learning. After
studying animal intelligence, he formulated his well known
"law of effect" which states behaviours are learned by trial
and error or reward and punishment. He also found that having satisfying consequences will enhance the learned behaviour. Thorndike is best known for his experiments with the
"puzzle boxes."
The experiment placed a hungry cat into a puzzle box. The
only way for a cat to escape was to successfully perform certain actions such as pulling a string or pushing a button. After
plotting the time it took for several cats to escape, Thorndike
found that the time the cat had to spend in the maze was
Like Watson, Thorndike and Pavlov before him Skinner believed that psychologists should study predicting and controlling behaviour. His developed the theory of “operant conditioning”, a theory which dealt with the modification of voluntary behaviour through the use of consequences. Skinner was
looking for the stimuli that control behaviour. He focused on
changes in observable behaviour, ignoring the possibility of
any processes occurring in the mind. Once he began to study,
he became impressed with the effects of reinforcement and its
effects of behaviour. He conducted experiments on animal
behaviour using his now infamous “Skinner Box”. The Skinner box was a contraption that would automatically dispense
food pellets and electric shocks. In this box a rat was asked
to push a lever to receive food. Skinner found that the rat
would not do much in the beginning. Skinner would help the
rat begin to learn behaviours that would get closer and closer
to pressing the lever. He used a process of teaching called
“shaping” whereby he used positive reinforcement to reward
the rat for “correct” behaviours.
Skinner also conceptualized the first ever teaching machine
as he felt one teacher was inadequate to properly reinforce
thirty or more students in a classroom. His idea was that students could answer questions and the teaching machine
would move students to the next level of difficulty depending
on the answer. This was the roots of programmed instruction.
BEHAVIOURISM IN EDUCATION
Until the introduction of cognitivist and constructivist
learning theories behaviourist techniques were employed in
education to promote behaviour that is desirable and discourage that which is not. It was a widely popular theory
because it is a relatively simple theory to understand and its
positive and negative reinforcement techniques were found
to be very effective both in animals, and in treatments for
human disorders such as autism and antisocial behaviour. In
addition to modern learning theories certain tools of behaviourism are still used by many teachers today, who reward
or punish student behaviours using these reinforcement
techniques.
Educational implications of behaviourism:

Emphasis on behaviour: students should be active
respondents; people are most likely to learn when
they actually have a chance to behave. Also, student learning must be evaluated; only measurable
behaviour changes can confirm that learning has
taken place.

Drill and practice: repetition of stimulus-response
habits strengthens those habits.

Breaking habits: one way to break a stimulusresponse habit is to continue to present the stimulus until the individual is too tired to respond in the
habitual way, or the exhaustion method. Also, the
stimulus can be presented "faintly" so that the individual "learns" over time not to respond in the
habitual manner, or the threshold method. Lastly,
the incompatible stimulus method, would replace
the habit with another habit, where eventually the
individual adopts the "new" behaviour in response
to the stimulus.

Rewards: many theorists emphasize the importance of rewards or reinforcement for learning.
Modern applications of behaviourist techniques
There are two primary scenarios in which behaviourist learning theories excel. Firstly, the theory works well when the
learner is focused on a clear goal and can respond automatically to the cues of that goal. During WWII the American
army developed training videos to teach repetitive processes
and found this to be an extremely successful technique. They
also conditioned their pilots to react to silhouettes of enemy
planes and these responses quickly became automatic. Also
general skills that require a significant amount of integration
between muscle memory and cognitive processing are usually
successfully implemented in the behaviourist learning style.
Examples would be learning skills such as surgery or learning
to fly an airplane in a simulator.
CRITICS OF BEHAVIOURISM
Despite its success in many areas of application there have
however been many critics of behaviourism since its inception. The major areas of dispute surround the limitations it
puts on the learner and its inability to account for certain
learning phenomena. Behaviourists believe that learning is
an independent activity and since behaviourism disregards
the activities of the mind, it does not account for all kinds
of learning. Behaviourism is unable to explain learning that
just occurs on its own when there is no reinforcement
mechanism. An example of this would be new language
patterns developed by young children. Also if solely dependent on a behaviourist learning style the learner may
find themselves in a situation where the stimulus for the
correct response does not occur, therefore the learner cannot respond. For example a worker who has been conditioned to respond to a certain cue at work stops production
when an anomaly occurs because they do not understand
the system. Another issue with behaviourism is that its
mechanistic explanations of human behaviour are often
perceived as somehow humiliating, an affront to human
dignity.
REFERENCES
1.
Mergel, B. Instructional Design & Learning, 1998.
http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/
mergel/brenda.htm
2.
Sandridge, M. Behaviourism, 2002. Available online:
http://www.coe.uga.edu/epltt/Behaviorism.htm
3.
Boothe, K. A and Walter, L. B., 1998. Behaviourist
theories
of
learning.
Available
online:
http://www.sil.org/linguaLinks/literacy/ImplementALit
eracyProgram/BehavioristTheoriesOfLearning.htm
4.
Graham, G., 2005.Behaviourism. In the Stanford Encyclopedia
of
Philosophy.
Available
online:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/
5.
Behavioural Learning Theory. Available online:
http://suedstudent.syr.edu/~ebarrett/ide621/behavior.htm
6.
Beginning Instructional Design; Behaviourism.
http://suedstudent.syr.edu/~ebarrett/ide621/behavior.htm