3 Behaviourism

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Behaviourism



Behaviourism

All things should be looked at from theperspective of behaviour.

Behaviourism argues that there is no mind,no thoughts, no feelings, and the onlyimportant thing to consider is behaviour.



Behaviourists (before Dr. Phil)

Ivan Pavlov

Edward Thorndike

John B. Watson

B.F. Skinner



Ivan Pavlov

Edward Thorndike

John B. Watson

B.F. Skinner




Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

Born Sept 14, 1849Died Feb 27, 1936born in Ryazan, Russia

physiologist,psychologist, andphysicianawarded the Nobel

Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for research on thedigestive system



Edward Lee Thorndike

Born August 31, 1874Died August 9, 1949Born in Williamsburg,MassachusettsStudied animal behaviour and the learning processled to the theory of connectionismLaying the foundation for modern educationalpsychology.



Cats in Puzzle Boxes




Thorndike looked at how cats learned toescape from puzzle boxes

The puzzle box experiments weremotivated by Thorndike's dislike for statements that animals made use of

extraordinary faculties such as insight intheir problem solving.




Thorndike's instruments in answering thisquestion were learning curves revealed byplotting the time it took for an animal to

escape the box each time it was in the boxif the animals were showing insight, then their time to escape would suddenly drop to anegligible period, which would also be shownin the learning curve as an abrupt drop;while animals using a more ordinary methodof trial and error would show gradual curves.




His finding was that cats consistentlyshowed gradual learnin g.




So it was trial-and-error These led Thorndike to formulate

first his Principles of Learning andthen his Theory of Learning thatbecame the foundation of modern

educational psychology.



Principles of Learning

Thorndike specified three conditions thatmaximizes learning:

The Law of Effec t states that the likely

recurrence of a response is generally governed byits consequence or effect generally in the form of reward or punishment.The Law of Recency states that the most recent

response is likely to govern the recurrence.The Law of Exerc i se stated that stimulus-response associations are strengthened throughrepetition.



Law of Effect

"Of several responses made to the same situation,those which are accompanied or closely followed by satisfaction to the animal will, other thingsbeing equal, be more firmly connected with the

situation, so that, when it recurs, they will bemore likely to recur; those which are

accompanied or closely followed by discomfort tothe animal will, other things being equal, havetheir connections with that situation weakened, sothat, when it recurs, they will be less likely tooccur "



Theory of Learning

Thorndike created 13 basic rules

I want us to pause after each one and checkif you think this is a universal principle. Also see if there is some technology or teaching approach you can imagine thatmight help support this rule



Theory of Learning

1. The most basic form of learning is trial anderror learning.



Theory of Learning

2. Learning is incremental not insightful.



Theory of Learning

3. Learning is not mediated by ideas.



Theory of Learning

4. All mammals learn in the same manner.



Theory of Learning

5. Law of Readiness: Interference with goaldirected behaviour causes frustration andcausing someone to do something they donot want to do is also frustrating.

a. When someone is ready to perform some act, to doso is satisfying.b. When someone is ready to perform some act, not todo so is annoying.c. When someone is not ready to perform some actand is forced to do so, it is annoying.



Theory of Learning

6. Law of Exercise: We learn by doing. Weforget by not doing, although to a small extentonly.

a. Connections between a stimulus and a responseare strengthened as they are used. (law of use)b. Connections between a stimulus and a responseare weakened as they are not used. (law of disuse)



Theory of Learning

7. Law of Effect: If the response in aconnection is followed by a satisfying state of affairs, the strength of the connection isconsiderably increased whereas if followedby an annoying state of affairs, then thestrength of the connection is marginally

decreased.



Theory of Learning

8. Multiple Responses: A learner would keeptrying multiple responses to solve a problembefore it is actually solved.



Theory of Learning

9. Set or Attitude: What the learner alreadypossesses, like prior learning experiences,present state of the learner, etc., while itbegins learning a new task.



Theory of Learning

10. Prepotency of Elements: Differentresponses to the same environment would beevoked by different perceptions of theenvironment which act as the stimulus to theresponses. Different perceptions would besubject to the prepotency of different

elements for different perceivers.



Theory of Learning

11. Response from analogy: New problemsare solved by using solution techniquesemployed to solve analogous problems.



Theory of Learning

12. Associative Shifting: Let stimulus S bepaired with response R. Now, if stimulus Q ispresented simultaneously with stimulus Srepeatedly, then stimulus Q is likely to getpaired with response R.



Theory of Learning

13. Belongingness: If there is a naturalrelationship between the need state of anorganism and the effect caused by aresponse, learning is more effective than if the relationship is unnatural.



John Broadus Watson

Born Jan 9, 1878Died Sept 25, 1958Born in Greenville,

South Carolina American psychologistestablished thepsychological school of

behaviourism“Little Albert”experiment



The Behaviorist Manifesto

In 1913, Watson published the article"Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It " — sometimes called " The Behaviorist Manifesto ". In this article, Watson outlinedthe major features of his new philosophy of psychology, called "behaviorism".



The Behaviorist Manifesto

The first paragraph of the article concisely describedWatson's behaviorist position:“Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely

objective experimental branch of natural science. Itstheoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior.Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor isthe scientific value of its data dependent upon the

readiness with which they lend themselves tointerpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist,in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response,recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The

behavior of man, with all of its refinement and '



"Little Albert" experiment

Occurred in 1920One of the mostcontroversialexperiments in thehistory of psychologyIt was an experimentshowing empiricalevidence of classicalconditioning in humans Rosalie Rayner

Albert B. John B. Watson



"Little Albert" experimentWatson and Rayner selectedan infant named Albert, atapproximately 9 months of age,he was tested and was judgedto show no fear whensuccessively observing anumber of live animals (e.g., arat, a rabbit, a dog, and amonkey), and variousinanimate objects (e.g., cotton,human masks, a burningnewspaper).




He was, however, judged to show fear whenever a long steel bar was unexpectedlystruck with a claw hammer just behind hisback.




Two months after testing Albert's apparentlyunconditioned reactions to various stimuli, Watsonand Rayner attempted to condition him to fear a

white rat. This was done by presenting a white rat to Albert, followed by a loud clanging sound (of thehammer and steel bar) whenever Albert touched theanimal. After seven pairings of the rat and noise (in

two sessions, one week apart), Albert reacted withcrying and avoidance when the rat was presentedwithout the loud noise.



However

Ben Harris in“Whatever Happened toLittle Albert ?” 1979

says that “ critical reading of Watson and Rayner's (1920) report reveals little evidence

that Albert developed arat phobia ”



Little Albert Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVt0k9IPQ-A







Radical Behaviorism

Skinner views (Radical behaviourism)differed from other behaviourists(Methodological behaviourism) in that he feltthat thoughts and feelings could be taken intoaccount when considering that psychology of the individual



Radical Behaviorism

Radical behaviourism seeks to understandbehaviour as a function of environmentalhistories of reinforcing consequences.Reinforcement processes were emphasizedby Skinner, and were seen as primary in theshaping of behaviour.

A common misconception is that negativereinforcement is some form of punishment.



Radical Behaviorism

Positive reinforcement is the strengthening of behaviour by the application of some event (e.g.,praise after some behaviour is performed),Negative reinforcement is the strengthening of behaviour by the removal or avoidance of someaversive event (e.g., opening and raising anumbrella over your head on a rainy day is reinforcedby the cessation of rain falling on you).

Both types of reinforcement strengthen behaviour,or increase the probability of a behaviour reoccurring.



Radical Behaviorism

Punishment and extinction have the effect of weakening behaviour, or decreasing theprobability of a behaviour reoccurring, by theapplication of an aversive event (punishment)or the removal of a rewarding event(extinction).



Inventor

Cumulative Recorder Operant Conditioning Chamber

(“Skinner Box”) Teaching Machine

Air Crib



CumulativeRecorder



Cumulative Recorder

an instrument used toautomatically recordbehaviour graphicallyThe needle would start atthe bottom of the page andthe drum would turn the rollof paper horizontally. Eachresponse would result in themarking needle movingvertically along the paper one tick.



Operant

ConditioningChamber



Operant Conditioning Chamber (“Skinner Box”)

A box large enough to easily accommodatethe animal being used as a subject (includinglab rats, pigeons, and primates).It contains one or more levers which ananimal can press, one or more stimulus lightsand one or more places in which reinforcers

like food can be delivered.It is often sound-proof and light-proof to avoiddistracting stimuli.

d h b




In one of Skinner’s experiments a hungry ratwas introduced into the box. When the lever was pressed by the rat a small pellet of foodwas dropped onto a tray. The rat soonlearned that when he pressed the lever hewould receive some food. In this experiment

the lever pressing behaviour is reinforced byfood.

O C di i i Ch b




O C di i i Ch b




If pressing the lever is reinforced (the rat getsfood) when a light is on but not when it is off,responses (pressing the lever) continue to bemade in the light but seldom, if at all, in thedark. The rat has formed discriminationbetween light and dark. When one turns on

the light, a response occurs, but that is not aPavlovian conditioned reflex response.

O C di i i Ch b




In this experiment Skinner demonstrated theideas of "operant conditioning" and "shapingbehaviour." Unlike Pavlov's "classicalconditioning," where an existing behaviour (salivating for food) is shaped by associatingit with a new stimulus (ringing of a bell or a

metronome), operant conditioning is therewarding of an act that approaches a newdesired behavior.

O C di i i Ch b




Skinner's operant chamber allowed him toexplore the rate of response as a dependentvariable, as well as develop his theory of schedules of reinforcement. The first operantchambers were attached to cumulativerecords on drums producing characteristic

pauses, scallops, and other lines.



How pigeons get tobe superstitious

O t C diti i Ch b




Skinner also used pigeons in his experiments

O t C diti i Ch b




In one experiment he decided to drop foodinto the box at completely random times,independent of any behaviour on the part of the pigeons.

Amazingly the pigeons behaviour soon

started to display a consistent type of behaviour. Each pigeon did different things.

O t C diti i Ch b




One circled counter-clockwise, another spunaround in circles; seventy-five percent of them exhibited some kind of odd behaviour.

Skinner concluded that the pigeons hadincorrectly associated their behaviour at the

times of the food drops to the food appearing,and had become 'superstitious'.



Teaching Machine



Teaching MachineIn 1954 B.F. Skinner embarkedupon a series of studies designed toimprove teaching methods for spelling, math, and other schoolsubjects by using a mechanicaldevice that would surpass the usualclassroom experience.

He believed the classroom haddisadvantages because the rate of learning for different students wasvariable and reinforcement was alsodelayed due to the lack of individualattention.Since personal tutors for every

student was usually unavailable,Skinner developed a theory of programmed learning that was to beimplemented by teaching machines.



Teaching Machine

The teaching machine is composed of mainly aprogram, which is a system of combined teachingand test items that carries the student graduallythrough the material to be learned.The "machine" is composed by a fill-in-the-blankmethod on either a workbook or in a computer. If thesubject is correct, he/she gets reinforcement and

moves on to the next question. If the answer isincorrect, the subject studies the correct answer toincrease the chance of getting reinforced next time.



Teaching MachineThe teaching machine is merely a device for presenting theset of frames of which the program is composed.However, it is not supplementary but all-inclusive. Theprogram will do all the teaching through a response/rewardmechanism.

Skinner also noted that the learning process should bedivided into a large number of very small steps andreinforcement must be dependent upon the completion of each step.Skinner suggested that the machine itself should not teach,but bring the student into contact with the person whocomposed the material it presented. He believed this was thebest possible arrangement for learning because it took intoaccount the rate of learning for each individual student.

k d



1. People have a fear of failure.

2. The task is not broken downinto small enough steps.

3. There is a lack of directions.

4. There is also a lack of clarityin the directions.

5. Positive reinforcement islacking.

1. Give the learner immediatefeedback.

2. Break down the task intosmall steps.

3. Repeat the directions asmany times as possible.

4. Work from the most simpleto the most complex tasks.

5. Give positivereinforcement.

Skinner on Education

Skinner says thatthere arefive mainobstaclesto learning

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1. People have a fear of failure.

2. The task is not broken downinto small enough steps.

3. There is a lack of directions.

4. There is also a lack of clarityin the directions.

5. Positive reinforcement islacking.

1. Give the learner immediatefeedback.

2. Break down the task intosmall steps.

3. Repeat the directions asmany times as possible.

4. Work from the most simpleto the most complex tasks.

5. Give positivereinforcement.

Skinner on Education



Air Crib



Air Crib

To help his wife cope withthe day-to-day tasks of child rearing, Skinner improved upon the

standard crib with the 'air-crib' to meet this challenge. An 'air-crib' (also known asa 'baby tender' or humorously as an 'heir conditioner') is an easilycleaned, temperature andhumidity-controlled boxSkinner designed to assistin the raising of babies.



Did you know?

Opening Skinner's Box:Great PsychologicalExperiments of theTwentieth Century by

Lauren Slater (2004)In this book Slater revealsthat B.F. Skinner raised hisdaughter Deborah in anoperant conditioningchamber and subjected her to psychologicalexperiments



Did you know?

Opening Skinner's Box: Great PsychologicalExperiments of the Twentieth Century by LaurenSlater (2004)

“. . . caged for two full years, placing within her crampedsquare space bells and food trays and all manners of mean punishments and bright rewards, and he tracked her

progress on a grid. And then, when she was thirty-oneand frankly psychotic, she sued him for abuse in agenuine court of law, lost the case, and shot herself in a

bowling alley in Billings, Montana. Boom-boom went

the gun. ”



Wow



But…



It is totallyuntrue



Deborah Skinner is alive andwell, living in the UK. She was

understandably upset aboutthese stories (something of anurban legend) and wrote an

article in The Guardian



The Guardian, Friday 12 March 2004

I was not a lab ratBy Deborah Skinner Buzan



Skinner’s Critics

We will look at a few of Skinner’s mostfamous critics

Harry HarlowAnthony BurgessNoam Chomsky



Harry Harlow’s Wire and

Terrycloth

mothers



Harry Harlow• Born October 31, 1905

• Died December 6,1981

• Born in Fairfield, Iowa• American psychologist

best known for hismaternal-separationand social isolationexperiments on rhesusmonkeys, which

demonstrated theimportance of care-giving andcompanionship insocial and cognitivedevelopment.

• In a well-known series



of experimentsconducted between1957 and 1963,Harlow removed babyrhesus monkeys fromtheir mothers, andoffered them a choicebetween two surrogate

mothers, one made of terrycloth, the other of wire.



Two groups of baby rhesus monkeys wereremoved from their mothers. In the first group, aterrycloth mother provided no food, while a wiremother did, in the form of an attached baby bottlecontaining milk.In the second group, a terrycloth mother providedfood; the wire mother did not.It was found that the young monkeys clung to theterrycloth mother whether or not it provided themwith food, and that the young monkeys chose thewire surrogate only when it provided food.



Harlow's interpretation of this behaviour, which is stillwidely accepted, was that a lack of contact comfort ispsychologically stressful to the monkeys.The importance of these findings is that they contradicted

both the then common pedagogic advice of limiting or avoiding bodily contact in an attempt to avoid spoilingchildren and the insistence of the then dominantBehaviourist School of Psychology that emotions werenegligible.

d h h b h



Feeding was thought to be the most importantfactor in the formation of a mother-child bond.

Harlow concluded, however, that nursingstrengthened the mother-child bond because of the intimate body contact that it provided.



Anthony BurgessJohn Burgess WilsonBorn 25 February 1917Died 22 November 1993Born in Manchester, England

An English author, poet,playwright, composer, linguist,translator and critic.The dystopian satire “ AClockwork Orange ” is Burgess'

most famous novel, though hedismissed it as one of his lesser works.



Anthony Burgess

In his novel, AClockwork Orange,

Anthony Burgesscriticizes Skinner's

theories as beingimmoral, claiming thatmoral choice is anecessary part of one's humanity.



Anthony BurgessThe novel's protagonist,

Alex, believes he can bereleased from prisonearly by participating inan Ivan Pavlov/B.F.Skinner inspiredrehabilitation programreferred to as the"Ludovico technique,"which conditionscriminals to becomenauseous from the merethought of violence.



Anthony Burgess

Before participating in theprogram the prisonchaplain warns against it,declaring that an action isonly good if derived from

good intentions. Thusconditioning in any formis criticized for beingdehumanizing andoppressive.

Noam Chomsky



Born December 7, 1928

Born in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania An American linguist,philosopher, cognitivescientist, and political

activist.One of the fathers of modern linguistics, anda major figure of analyticphilosophy.

Noam Chomsky



Noam ChomskyIn 1959, Chomsky published awidely influential review of Skinner'sbook Verbal Behavior , Chomskybroadly and aggressively challengedthe behaviourist approaches tostudies of behaviour dominant at thetime, and contributed to the

cognitive revolution in psychology.In the review Chomsky emphasizedthat the scientific application of behavioural principles from animalresearch is severely lacking inexplanatory adequacy and isfurthermore particularly superficialas an account of human verbalbehaviour because a theoryrestricting itself to externalconditions, to "what is learned",cannot adequately account for generative grammar.



Noam ChomskyChomsky raised the examples of rapid language acquisition of children, including their quicklydeveloping ability to formgrammatical sentences, and theuniversally creative language use of competent native speakers to

highlight the ways in which Skinner'sview exemplified under-determination of theory by evidence.He argued that to understandhuman verbal behaviour such as thecreative aspects of language useand language development , onemust first postulate a geneticlinguistic endowment. Theassumption that important aspectsof language are the product of universal innate ability runs counter to Skinner's radical behaviourism.



Noam ChomskySkinner, who rarely respondeddirectly to critics, never formallyreplied to Chomsky's critique. Astudent of Skinner, KennethMacCorquodale, wrote a reply in1970 that was endorsed by Skinner.He claimed that Chomsky did not

possess an adequate understandingof either behavioural psychology ingeneral, or the differences betweenSkinner's behaviourism and other varieties; consequently, it is arguedthat he made several serious errors.Chomsky has maintained that thereview was directed at the waySkinner's variant of behavioralpsychology " was being used inQuinean empiricism and naturalization of philosophy "



That’s it,thanks.

3 Behaviourism

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