The Theory of Behaviorism

• Behaviorism's origins trace back to Descartes, who proposed that humans are like machines dependent on external stimulus

• Behaviorism dismisses internal human workings, posing a challenge to its comprehensive theory status

• Critics acknowledge that behaviorism has contributed significantly to understanding specific human behaviors

The Theory of Behaviorism

• Pavlov's experiment on dogs led to the beginnings of behavioral theory

Classical Conditioning

• Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning while studying digestive reflexes in dogs
• Initially, Pavlov found that dogs would salivate when he placed food in their mouths
• Soon the dogs began to salivate at the sound of the bell or the sight of the attendant, even before food was presented
• Pavlov found that the dogs began to salivate simply at the sound of the bell even without food

First Order Conditioning

• A neutral stimulus that causes no natural response in an organism is associated with an unconditioned stimulus automatically causing a response
• Unconditioned stimulus no longer needs to be present for a response to occur in the presence of the neutral stimulus
• The response is now a conditioned response, and the neutral stimulus is now a conditioned stimulus
• The sound of a bell was the neutral stimulus associated with food
• The unconditioned response of salivation became a conditioned response to the newly conditioned stimulus of the tone

Classical conditioning

• Classical conditioning was the first type of learning studied in the behaviorist tradition
• Ivan Pavlov, was a Russian scientist trained in biology and medicine
• Pavlov investigated why dogs deprived of food began to salivate when one of his assistants walked into the room
• Skinner renamed this type of learning respondent conditioning, responding to an environmental antecedent

Major concepts

• Classical conditioning involves a Stimulus that elicits a Response, where the antecedent stimulus causes a reflexive or involuntary response
• Classical conditioning starts with a reflex, an innate involuntary behavior caused by an antecedent environmental event
• You have no voluntary or conscious control over whether the blink occurs or not

Model

• Unconditioned Stimulus (US) elicits an Unconditioned Response (UR), a stimulus will naturally elicit a reflexive response

• Neutral Stimulus (NS) does not elicit the response of interest

• The Neutral/Orienting Stimulus (NS) is repeatedly paired with the Unconditioned/Natural Stimulus (US).

• The NS becomes a Conditioned Stimulus (CS), eliciting the Conditioned Response (CR) when presented alone

• Classical conditioning does not create new behaviors, but an association between the neutral stumulus and the unconditioned stimulus

• Both the unconditioned stimulus and condition stimulus will elicit the same involuntary response even to a new stimulus

• The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus, because it will now elicit a different response as a result of conditioning

• The response is now called a conditioned response because it is elicited by a stimulus as a result of learning

• The two responses, unconditioned and conditioned, look the same, but they are elicited by different stimuli

Operant Conditioning

• B. F. Skinner's entire system is based on operant conditioning
• During this "operating," the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer
• The behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future

Four Types of Operant Conditioning

• Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Punishment, and Extinction

• Both Positive and Negative Reinforcement strengthen behavior while both Punishment and Extinction weaken behavior

• Positive Reinforcement strengthens a behavior by the consequence of experiencing a positive condition

• A hungry rat presses a bar in its cage and receives food, the rate presses the bar again and again receiving food

• Negative Reinforcement strengthens a behavior by the consequence of stopping or avoiding a negative condition

• A rat placed in a cage receives a mild electrical shock, pressing a bar stops the shock

• Punishment weakens a behavior by the consequence of experiencing a negative condition

• A rat presses a bar in its cage receiving a mild electrical shock weakening its behavior

• Extinction weakens a behavior by the consequence of not experiencing a positive condition or stopping a negative condition

• A rat presses a bar in its cage and nothing happens

• A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future

• A behavior that is no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results in a decreased probability of that behavior in the future

• With extinction, the operant conditioned response decreased at a much slower rate than when punishment was used

• Operant conditioning occurs in the rewarding or punishing discipline action taken towards a child

Discriminative stimuli

• Discriminative stimuli guide the response towards a positive or negative consequence, unlike Pavlovian conditioning where stimuli cause the response
• Discriminative stimuli differentiate between beneficial and adverse outcomes, influencing the selection of the most advantageous response
• For example, a red stoplight signals the need to step on the brakes, indicating that negative consequences will arise if the behavior is ignored

Avoidance theory

• The red stop light stimuli and the appropriate stop response are also an example of the behavior known as avoidance-escape behavior
• If an action is not carried out, so the action is carried out
• An animal was trained to jump over the partition to avoid a shock and the animal retained its conditioned jumping behavior
• In avoidant behavior, the escape or absence of reinforcement occurs because of a response

Schedules of reinforcement

• An operant conditioned response conditioned by intermittent schedules of reinforcement
• Intermittent schedules: fixed interval schedules that reinforce a response after a certain fixed amount of time
• Variable interval schedules reinforce a response after an amount of time that varies from reinforcement to reinforcement
• Fixed ratio schedules that reinforce a response after a certain fixed number of responses have been made
• Variable ratio schedules reinforce a response after varied numbers of responses are made
• Maintenance of behavior is increased on intermittent schedules
• Intermittent schedules keep the organism "guessing" as to when the reinforcement will occur

The Validity of Behaviorism

• Pavlovian conditioning and operant conditioning experiments, have been based on animals and their behavior
• Skinner's application of animal behavior to complex human behavior has been questioned.
• Skinner is making the big assumption that general laws relating to the behavior of animals can be applied to describe the complex relations in the human world
• Experiments with human participants must be done to prove the validity of this theory

Inability to explain the development of human language

• Skinner's ideas on operant conditioning are able to explain phobias and neurosis
• The theory's inability to explain the language phenomenon has in fact drawn a large number of critics to dismiss the theory
• Skinner's arguments in response to his critics, remain weak and unproven
• Public objective stimuli act as operational stimuli as verbal responses, private stimuli or concepts such as "I'm hungry" are harder to explain
• Skinner claimed that private stimuli and the community do not need a connection, and public stimuli can be associated with private ones
• M. E. P. Seligman offers an alternative, and states that there is a genetic preparedness of an organism to associate certain stimuli
• An organism brings certain tendencies decided by genetics, which cause conditioned stimuli and unconditioned stimuli to be more or less associable
• Prepared or easily able to associate two stimuli, unprepared or somewhat difficult to associate two stimuli, and contraprepared or unable to associate two stimuli
• Experiments have been concentrated on unprepared sets of stimuli such as lights and shock
• Seligman gives an example of an experiment that evolution had prepared the rats to associate taste with illness, but had contraprepared the association between noise/light and illness
• Seligman's theory of preparedness states that language is simply composed of well-prepared stimuli that are easily able to create relationships between verbal words and ideas or objects