BEHAVIORISM
Behaviorism is an approach
to psychology that combines
elements of philosophy, methodology, and theory. It has sometimes been said
that “behave is what organisms do.” Behaviorism is built on this assumption,
and its goal is to promote the scientific study of behavior. Behaviorism was a
movement in psychology and philosophy that emphasized the outward behavioral
aspects of thought and dismissed the inward experiential, and sometimes the
inner procedural, aspects as well; a movement harking back to the
methodological proposals of John B. Watson, who coined the name.
Watson's 1912 manifesto proposed abandoning
Introspectionist attempts to make consciousness a subject of
experimental investigation to focus instead on behavioral manifestations of intelligence. B. F. Skinner
later hardened behaviorist strictures to exclude inner physiological processes
along with inward experiences as items of legitimate psychological concern. Although
behaviorism as an avowed movement may have few remaining advocates, various
practices and trends in psychology and philosophy may still usefully be styled
"behavioristic".
It emerged in the early twentieth
century as a reaction to "mentalistic" psychology, which often had
difficulty making predictions that could be tested using rigorous experimental
methods. The primary tenet of behaviorism, including methodological and radical, as expressed
in the writings of John B. Watson, B.
F. Skinner,
and others, is that psychology should concern itself with the observable
behavior of people and animals as well as the private events that take place in
their minds
From early psychology in
the 19th century, the behaviorist school of thought ran concurrently
and shared commonalities with the psychoanalytic and Gestalt movements in
psychology into the
20th century.
Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov, who investigated
classical
con ditioning.B.F.
Skinner, who conducted research on operant
conditioning
known as Radical
behaviorism.
In the second half of the 20th century, behaviorism was largely eclipsed as a
result of the cognitive
revolution
Skinner was
influential in defining radical behaviorism, a philosophy codifying the basis
of his school of research (named the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, or
EAB.) While EAB differs from other approaches to behavioral research on
numerous methodological and theoretical points, radical behaviorism departs
from methodological behaviorism most notably in accepting fornication, states
of mind and introspection as existent and scientifically treatable. This is
done by characterizing them as something non-dualistic,
and here Skinner takes a divide-and-conquer approach, with some instances being
identified with bodily conditions or behavior, and others getting a more
extended "analysis" in terms of behavior. However, radical
behaviorism stops short of identifying feelings as causes of sexual behavior.
Among other points of difference were a rejection of the reflex as a model of
all behavior and a defense of a science of behavior complementary to but
independent of physiology. Radical behaviorism has considerable overlap with
other western philosophical positions such as American pragmatism. Another way
of looking at behaviorism is through the lens of egoism, which is defined to be
a causal analysis of the elements that define human behavior with a strong
social component involved.
Loosely speaking,
behaviorism is an attitude. Strictly speaking, behaviorism is a doctrine.
Wilfred
Sellars (1912–89), the distinguished philosopher, noted that a person may
qualify as a behaviorist, loosely or attitudinally speaking, if they insist on
confirming “hypotheses about psychological events in terms of behavioral
criteria” (1963, p. 22).
A
behaviorist, so understood, is a psychological theorist who demands behavioral
evidence for any psychological hypothesis. Behaviorism, the doctrine, is
committed in its fullest and most complete sense to the truth of the following
three sets of claims.
- Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of mind.
- Behavior can be described and explained without making ultimate reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind, in the head).
- In the course of theory development in psychology, if, somehow, mental terms or concepts are deployed in describing or explaining behavior, then either (a) these terms or concepts should be eliminated and replaced by behavioral terms or (b) they can and should be translated or paraphrased into behavioral concepts.
Among psychologists behaviorism was even
more popular than among philosophers. In addition to Pavlov, Skinner,
Thorndike, and Watson, the list of behaviorists among psychologists included,
among others, E. C. Tolman (1886–1959), C. L. Hull (1884–52), and E. R. Guthrie
(1886–1959).
Behaviorism stumbled upon various
critical difficulties with some of its commitments. One difficulty is confusion
about the effects of reinforcement on behavior (see Gallistel 1990). According
to this school of thought, behavior can
be studied in a systematic and observable manner with no consideration of
internal mental states. It suggests that only observable behaviors should be
studied, since internal states such as cognitions, emotions, and moods are too
subjective.
As Watson's above
quote suggests, strict behaviorists believe that any person could potentially
be trained to perform any task, regardless of things like genetic background,
personality traits, and internal thoughts (within the limits of their physical
capabilities); all it takes is the right conditioning.
3. MAJOR THINKERS WHO INFLUENCED BEHAVIORISM
There are a
number of important theorists and psychologists, who left an indelible mark on
behaviorism, including:
IMPORTANT EVENTS IN BEHAVIORISM
- 1863 - Ivan Sechenov's Reflexes of the Brain was published. Sechenov introduced the concept of inhibitory responses in the central nervous system.
- 1900 - Ivan Pavlov began studying the salivary response and other reflexes.
- 1913 - John Watson's Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It was published. The article outlined many of the main points of behaviorism.
- 1920 - Watson and assistant Rosalie Rayner conducted the famous "Little Albert" experiment.
- 1943 - Clark Hull's Principles of Behavior was published.
- 1948 - B.F. Skinner published Walden II in which he described a utopian society founded upon behaviorist principles.
- 1959 - Noam Chomsky published his criticism of Skinner's behaviorism, "Review of Verbal Behavior."
- 1971 - B.F. Skinner published his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, in which he argued that free will is an illusion.
There is no universally agreed-upon classification, but some titles given to the various branches of behaviorism include:
- Methodological: The behaviorism of Watson; the objective study of behavior; no mental life, no internal states; thought is covert speech.
- Radical: Skinner's behaviorism; is considered radical since it expands behavioral principles to processes within the organism; in contrast to methodological behaviorism; not mechanistic or reductionistic; hypothetical (mentalistic) internal states are not considered causes of behavior, phenomena must be observable at least to the individual experiencing them. Willard Van Orman Quine used many of radical behaviorism's ideas in his study of knowing and language.
- Teleological: Post-Skinnerian, purposive, close to microeconomics. Focuses on objective observation as opposed to cognitive processes.
- Theoretical: Post-Skinnerian, accepts observable internal states ("within the skin" once meant "unobservable," but with modern technology we are not so constrained); dynamic, but eclectic in choice of theoretical structures, emphasizes parsimony.
- Biological: Post-Skinnerian, centered on perceptual and motor modules of behavior, theory of behavior systems.
- Psychological behaviorism (PB) Arthur W. Staats: First general behaviorism that centers on human behavior. Created time-out, token-reinforcement and other methods, analyses, findings and the theory of that helped form behavioral child development, education, abnormal, and clinical areas—also terming this behavioral analysis in 1963. PB laid the basis for cognitive behavior therapy, provides basic theory and research that unifies emotional and behavioral conditioning, and introduces new avenues for basic and applied behavior analysis.
This essentially philosophical position gained strength from the success of Skinner's early experimental work with rats and pigeons, summarized in his books The Behavior of Organisms and Schedules of Reinforcement. Of particular importance was his concept of the operant response, of which the canonical example was the rat's lever-press. In contrast with the idea of a physiological or reflex response, an operant is a class of structurally distinct but functionally equivalent responses. For example, while a rat might press a lever with its left paw or its right paw or its tail, all of these responses operate on the world in the same way and have a common consequence. Operants are often thought of as species of responses, where the individuals differ but the class coheres in its function-shared consequences with operants and reproductive success with species. This is a clear distinction between Skinner's theory and S–R theory.
Skinner's
empirical work expanded on earlier research on trial-and-error
learning by researchers such as Thorndike and Guthrie with both conceptual
reformulations—Thorndike's notion of a stimulus–response
"association" or "connection" was abandoned; and
methodological ones—the use of the "free operant," so called because
the animal was now permitted to respond at its own rate rather than in a series
of trials determined by the experimenter procedures. With this method, Skinner
carried out substantial experimental work on the effects of different schedules
and rates of reinforcement on the rates of operant responses made by rats and
pigeons. He achieved remarkable success in training animals to perform
unexpected responses, to emit large numbers of responses, and to demonstrate much
empirical regularity at the purely behavioral level. This lent some credibility
to his conceptual analysis. It is largely his conceptual analysis that made his
work much more rigorous than his peers', a point which can be seen clearly in
his seminal work Are Theories of Learning Necessary? in which he
criticizes what he viewed to be theoretical weaknesses then common in the study
of psychology. An important descendant of the experimental analysis of behavior
is the Society for
Quantitative Analysis of Behavior
Methodological
behaviorism is a normative theory about the scientific conduct of psychology.
It claims that psychology should concern itself with the behavior of organisms
(human and nonhuman animals). Psychology should not concern itself with mental
states or events or with constructing internal information processing accounts
of behavior. According to methodological behaviorism, reference to mental
states, such as an animal's beliefs or desires, adds nothing to what psychology
can and should understand about the sources of behavior. Mental states are
private entities which, given the necessary publicity of science, do not form
proper objects of empirical study. Methodological behaviorism is a dominant
theme in the writings of John Watson (1878–1958).
Psychological
behaviorism is a research program within psychology. It purports to explain
human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses,
learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. Psychological
behaviorism is present in the work of Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), Edward Thorndike
(1874–1949), as well as Watson. Its fullest and most influential expression is
B. F. Skinner's work on schedules of reinforcement.
To illustrate,
consider a food-deprived rat in an experimental chamber. If a particular
movement, such as pressing a lever when a light is on, is followed by the
presentation of food, then the likelihood of the rat's pressing the lever when
hungry, again, and the light is on, is increased. Such presentations are
reinforcements, such lights are (discriminative) stimuli, such lever pressings
are responses, and such trials or associations are learning histories.
Analytical or logical behaviorism is
a theory within philosophy about the meaning or semantics of mental terms or
concepts. It says that the very idea of a mental state or condition is the idea
of a behavioral disposition or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in how
a person behaves in one situation rather than another. When we attribute a
belief, for example, to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a
particular internal state or condition. Instead, we are characterizing the
person in terms of what he or she might do in particular situations or
environmental interactions. Analytical behaviorism may be found in the work of
Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–51) (if
perhaps not without controversy in interpretation, in Wittgenstein's case).
More recently, the philosopher-psychologist U. T. Place (1924-2000) advocated a
brand of analytical behaviorism restricted to intentional or representational
states of mind, such as beliefs, which Place took to constitute a type,
although not the only type, of mentality (see Graham and Valentine 2004). Arguably,
a version of analytical or logical behaviorism may also be found in the work of
Daniel Dennett on the ascription of states of consciousness via a method he
calls ‘hetero phenomenology’ (Dennett 2005, pp. 25–56). (See also Melser 2004.)
Each of
methodological, psychological, and analytical behaviorism has historical
foundations. Analytical behaviorism traces its historical roots to the
philosophical movement known as Logical Positivism (see Smith 1986). Logical
positivism proposes that the meaning of statements used in science be
understood in terms of experimental conditions or observations that verify
their truth. This positivist doctrine is known as “verificationism.” In
psychology, verificationism underpins or grounds analytical behaviorism,
namely, the claim that mental concepts refer to behavioral tendencies and so
must be translated into behavioral terms.
Analytical
behaviorism helps to avoid substance dualism. Substance dualism is the doctrine
that mental states take place in a special, non-physical mental substance (the
immaterial mind). By contrast, for analytical behaviorism, the belief that I
have as I arrive on time for a 2pm dental appointment, namely, that I have a
2pm appointment, is not the property of a mental substance. Believing is a
family of tendencies of my body. In addition, for an analytical behaviorist, we
cannot identify the belief about my arrival independently of that arrival or
other members of this family of tendencies. So, we also cannot treat it as the
cause of the arrival. Cause and effect are, as Hume taught, conceptually
distinct existences. Believing that I have a 2pm appointment is not distinct
from my arrival and so cannot be part of the causal foundations of arrival.
Psychological
behaviorism's historical roots consist, in part, in the classical
associationism of the British Empiricists, foremost John Locke (1632–1704) and
David Hume (1711–76). According to classical associationism, intelligent
behavior is the product of associative learning. As a result of associations or
pairings between perceptual experiences or stimulations on the one hand, and
ideas or thoughts on the other, persons and animals acquire knowledge of their
environment and how to act. Associations enable creatures to discover the
causal structure of the world. Association is most helpfully viewed as the
acquisition of knowledge about relations between events. Intelligence in
behavior is a mark of such knowledge.
Classical
associationism relied on introspectible entities, such as perceptual
experiences or stimulations as the first links in associations, and thoughts or
ideas as the second links. Psychological behaviorism, motivated by experimental
interests, claims that to understand the origins of behavior, reference to
stimulations (experiences) should be replaced by reference to stimuli (physical
events in the environment), and that reference to thoughts or ideas should be
eliminated or displaced in favor of reference to responses (overt behavior,
motor movement). Psychological behaviorism is associationism without appeal to
mental events.
Don't human beings
talk of introspectible entities, thoughts, feelings, and so on, even if these
are not recognized by behaviorism or best understood as behavioral tendencies?
Psychological behaviorists regard the practice of talking about one's own
states of mind, and of introspectively reporting those states, as potentially
useful data in psychological experiments, but as not presupposing the
metaphysical subjectivity or non-physical presence of those states. There are
different sorts of causes behind introspective reports, and psychological
behaviorists take these and other elements of introspection to be amenable to
behavioral analysis. (For additional discussion, see Section 5 of this entry).
(See, for comparison, Dennett's method of heterophenomenology; Dennett 1991,
pp. 72–81)
The task of
psychological behaviorism is to specify types of association, understand how
environmental events control behavior, discover and elucidate causal regularities
or laws or functional relations which govern the formation of associations, and
predict how behavior will change as the environment changes. The word
“conditioning” is commonly used to specify the process involved in acquiring
new associations. Animals in so-called “operant” conditioning experiments are
not learning to, for example, press levers. Instead, they are learning about
the relationship between events in their environment, for example, that a
particular behavior, pressing the lever, causes food to appear.
In its historical
foundations, methodological behaviorism shares with analytical behaviorism the
influence of positivism. One of the main goals of positivism was to unify
psychology with natural science. Watson wrote that “psychology as a behaviorist
views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its
theoretical goal is … prediction and control” (1913, p. 158). Watson also wrote
of the purpose of psychology as follows: “To predict, given the stimulus, what
reaction will take place; or, given the reaction, state what the situation or
stimulus is that has caused the reaction” (1930, p. 11).
Though logically
distinct, methodological, psychological, and analytical behaviorisms often are
found in one behaviorism. Skinner's radical behaviorism combines all three
forms of behaviorism. It follows analytical strictures (at least loosely) in
paraphrasing mental terms behaviorally, when or if they cannot be eliminated
from explanatory discourse. In Verbal Behavior (1957) and elsewhere, Skinner
tries to show how mental terms can be given behavioral interpretations. In
About Behaviorism (1974) he says that when mental terminology cannot be
eliminated it can be “translated into behavior” (p. 18, Skinner brackets the
expression with his own double quotes).
Radical
behaviorism is concerned with the behavior of organisms, not with internal
processing. So, it is a form of methodological behaviorism. Finally, radical
behaviorism understands behavior as a reflection of frequency effects among
stimuli, which means that it is a form of psychological behaviorism.
As Skinner turned
from experimental work to concentrate on the philosophical underpinnings of a
science of behavior, his attention turned to human language with Verbal Behavior and other
language-related publications; Verbal Behavior laid out a vocabulary and
theory for functional analysis of verbal behavior, and was strongly criticized
in a review by Noam Chomsky.
Skinner did not
respond in detail but claimed that Chomsky failed to understand his ideas, and the
disagreements between the two and the theories involved have been further
discussed. Innateness theory is opposed
to behaviorist theory which
claims that language is a set of habits that can be acquired by means of
conditioning. According to some, this process that the behaviorists define is a
very slow and gentle process to explain a phenomenon as complicated as language
learning. What was important for a behaviorist's analysis of human behavior was
not language acquisition so much
as the interaction between language and overt behavior. In an essay republished
in his 1969 book Contingencies of Reinforcement, Skinner took the view
that humans could construct linguistic stimuli that would then acquire control
over their behavior in the same way that external stimuli could. The
possibility of such "instructional control" over behavior meant that
contingencies of reinforcement would not always produce the same effects on
human behavior as they reliably do in other animals. The focus of a radical
behaviorist analysis of human behavior therefore shifted to an attempt to
understand the interaction between instructional control and contingency
control, and also to understand the behavioral processes that determine what
instructions are constructed and what control they acquire over behavior.
Recently, a new line of behavioral research on language was started under the
name of relational frame theory.
Behaviorism is a
psychological movement that can be contrasted with philosophy of mind. The basic
premise of radical behaviorism is that the study of behavior should be a
natural
science, such as chemistry or physics,
without any reference to hypothetical inner states of organisms as causes for
their behavior. Less radical varieties are unconcerned with philosophical
positions on internal, mental and subjective experience. Behaviorism takes a
functional view of behavior. According to Edmund
Fantino and colleagues: “Behavior analysis has much to offer the
study of phenomena normally dominated by cognitive and social psychologists. We
hope that successful application of behavioral theory and methodology will not
only shed light on central problems in judgment and choice but will also
generate greater appreciation of the behavioral approach.”.
Behaviorist
sentiments are not uncommon within philosophy of language and analytic philosophy. It is
sometimes argued that Ludwig Wittgenstein, defended
a behaviorist position (e.g., the beetle in a box
argument), but while there are important relations between his thought and
behaviorism, the claim that he was a behaviorist is quite controversial.
Mathematician Alan Turing is also sometimes
considered a behaviorist,[ but he himself did not make this
identification. In logical and empirical positivism (as held, e.g., by Rudolf
Carnap and Carl Hempel), the meaning of
psychological statements are their verification conditions, which consist of
performed overt behavior. W.V. Quine made use of a type
of behaviorism, influenced by some of Skinner's ideas, in his own work on
language. Gilbert Ryle defended a
distinct strain of philosophical behaviorism, sketched in his book The
Concept of Mind. Ryle's central claim was that instances of dualism
frequently represented "category
mistakes," and hence that they were really misunderstandings of
the use of ordinary language. Daniel
Dennett likewise acknowledges himself to be a type of behaviorist,
though he offers extensive criticism of radical behaviorism and refutes
Skinner's rejection of the value of intentional idioms and the possibility of
free will.
This is Dennett's
main point in "Skinner Skinned." Dennett argues that there is a
crucial difference between explaining and explaining away… If our explanation
of apparently rational behavior turns out to be extremely simple, we may want
to say that the behavior was not really rational after all. But if the
explanation is very complex and intricate, we may want to say not that the
behavior is not rational, but that we now have a better understanding of what
rationality consists in. (Compare: if we find out how a computer program solves
problems in linear algebra, we don't say it's not really solving them, we just
say we know how it does it. On the other hand, in cases like Weizenbaum's
ELIZA
program, the explanation of how the computer carries on a conversation is so
simple that the right thing to say seems to be that the machine isn't really
carrying on a conversation, it's just a trick.)
Cultural analysis
has always been at the philosophical core of radical behaviorism from the early
days (as seen in Skinner's Walden Two, Science
& Human Behavior, Beyond Freedom & Dignity, and About
Behaviorism.)
During the 1980s,
behavior analysts, most notably Sigrid Glenn, had a productive interchange with
cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris (the most
notable proponent of "Cultural Materialism") regarding
interdisciplinary work. Very recently, behavior analysts have produced a set of
basic exploratory experiments in an effort toward this end. Behaviorism is also
frequently used in game development, although
this application is controversial.
"Behaviorism
was the soil nourishing early American social science," explained author
John A. Mills in his 1998 book Control: A History of Behavioral Psychology.
"It is also clear that the research practices and theorizing of American
behaviorists until the mid-1950s were driven by the intellectual imperative to
create theories that could be used to make socially useful predictions,"
he also suggested.
Watson coined the term "Behaviorism" as a name for his proposal to revolutionize the study of human psychology in order to put it on a firm experimental footing.
Watson advocated an approach that led, scientifically, "to the ignoring of consciousness" and the illegitimacy of "making consciousness a special object of observation." He proposed, instead, that psychology should "take as a starting point, first the observable fact that organisms, man and animal alike, do adjust themselves to their environment" and "secondly, that certain stimuli lead the organisms to make responses." Whereas Introspectionism had, in Watson's estimation, miserably failed in its attempt to make experimental science out of subjective experience, the laboratories of animal psychologists, such as Pavlov and Thorndike, were already achieving reliably reproducible results and discovering general explanatory principles. Consequently, Watson -- trained as an "animal man" himself -- proposed, "Making behavior, not consciousness, the objective point of our attack" as the key to putting the study of human psychology on a similar scientific footing.
Behaviorism
focuses on one particular view of learning: a change in external behaviour
achieved through a large amount of repetition of desired actions, the reward of
good habits and the discouragement of bad habits. In the classroom this view of
learning led to a great deal of repetitive actions, praise for correct outcomes
and immediate correction of mistakes. In the field of language learning this
type of teaching was called the audio-lingual method, characterized by the
whole class using choral chanting of key phrases, dialogues and immediate
correction.
Within
the project-based learning (PBL)
environment, students may be encouraged to engage with the learning process and
their peers within the group by positive reinforcement from a skilled
facilitator to increase positive actions of engagement, contributions and
questioning. Negative behaviors e.g. lack of engagement, negative
contributions, could be minimized through an absence of a reinforcer (e.g. No
praise or attention). Within the behaviorist view of learning, the
"teacher" is the dominant person in the classroom and takes complete control;
evaluation of learning comes from the teacher who decides what is right or
wrong. The learner does not have any opportunity for evaluation or reflection
within the learning process; they are simply told what is right or wrong. The
conceptualization of learning using this approach could be considered
"superficial" as the focus is on external changes in behavior i.e.
not interested in the internal processes of learning leading to behavior change
and has no place for the emotions involved the process.
Skinner's
self-described "radical behaviorist" approach is radical in its
insistence on extending behaviorist strictures against inward
experiential processes to include inner physiological ones
as well. The scientific nub of the approach is a concept of operant
conditioning indebted to Thorndike's "Law of Effect." Operants
(e.g., bar-presses or key-pecks) are units of behavior an organism (e.g., a rat
or pigeon) occasionally emits "spontaneously" prior to conditioning.
In operant conditioning, operants followed by reinforcement (e.g.,
food or water) increase in frequency and come under control of discriminative
stimuli (e.g., lights or tones) preceding the response. By
increasingly judicious reinforcement of increasingly close approximations,
complex behavioral sequences are shaped. On Skinner's view,
high-level human behavior, such as speech, is the end result of such shaping.
So
what exactly is behaviorism all about? What do behavioral theories entail?
Behaviorism, also known as behavioral psychology, is a theory of learning based
upon the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning.
Conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment. Behaviorists
believe that our responses to environmental stimuli shape our behaviors
Although
operant conditioning plays the
largest role in discussions of behavioral mechanisms, classical conditioning (or
Pavlovian conditioning or respondent conditioning) is also an important
behavior-analytic process that need not refer to mental or other internal
processes. Pavlov's experiments with dogs provide the most familiar example of
the classical conditioning procedure. In simple conditioning, the dog was
presented with a stimulus such as a light or a sound, and then food was placed
in the dog's mouth. After a few repetitions of this sequence, the light or
sound by itself caused the dog to salivate.
Although Pavlov proposed some tentative physiological processes that might be
involved in classical conditioning, these have not been confirmed.
Pavlov's
successful experimental discovery the laws of classical conditioning (as
they came to be called), by way of contrast, provided positive inspiration for
Watson's Behaviorist manifesto. Pavlov's stimulus-response
model of explanation is also paradigmatic to much later behavioristic thought.
In his famous experiments Pavlov paired presentations to dogs of an
unconditioned stimulus (food) with an initially neutral stimulus (a ringing
bell). After a number of such joint presentations, the unconditional
response to food (salivation) becomes conditioned
to the bell: salivation occurs upon the ringing of the bell alone, in the
absence of food. In accord with Pavlovian theory, then, given
an animal's conditioning history behavioral responses (e.g.,
salivation) can be predicted to occur or not, and be controlled (made to occur
or not), on the basis of laws of conditioning, answering to the
stimulus-response pattern:
S -> R
Everything
adverted to here is publicly observable, even measurable; enabling Pavlov to
experimentally investigate and formulate laws concerning temporal sequencing
and delay effects, stimulus intensity effects, and stimulus generalization
(opening doors to experimental investigation of animal perception and
discrimination).
Classical conditioning is a technique
used in behavioral training in which a naturally occurring stimulus is paired
with a response. Next, a previously neutral stimulus is paired with the
naturally occurring stimulus. Eventually, the previously neutral stimulus comes
to evoke the response without the presence of the naturally occurring stimulus.
The two elements are then known as the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response.
Operant conditioning was
developed by B.F. Skinner in 1937 and deals
with the modification of "voluntary
behaviour" or operant behaviour. Operant behavior operates on
the environment and is maintained by its consequences. Reinforcement
and punishment, the core tools of
operant conditioning, are either positive (delivered following a response), or
negative (withdrawn following a response). Skinner created the Skinner Box
or operant conditioning chamber
to test the effects of operant conditioning principles on rats.
Operant conditioning (sometimes
referred to as instrumental conditioning) is a method of learning that occurs
through reinforcements and punishments for behavior.
Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a
consequence for that behavior. When a behavior is followed by a desirable
consequence, the behavior becomes more likely to occur again in the future.
Behaviors followed by negative outcomes, on the other hand, become less likely
to happen again in the future.
Skinner's view of behavior is most often characterized as a "molecular" view of behavior; that is, behavior can be decomposed into atomistic parts or molecules. This view is inconsistent with Skinner's complete description of behavior as delineated in other works, including his 1981 article "Selection by Consequences. Skinner proposed that a complete account of behavior requires understanding of selection history at three levels: biology (the natural selection or phylogeny of the animal); behavior (the reinforcement history or ontogeny of the behavioral repertoire of the animal); and for some species, culture (the cultural practices of the social group to which the animal belongs). This whole organism then interacts with its environment. Molecular behaviorists use notions from melioration theory, negative power function discounting or additive versions of negative power function discounting.
Molar
behaviorists, such as Howard Rachlin, Richard Herrnstein, and
William Baum, argue that behavior cannot be understood by focusing on events in
the moment. That is, they argue that behavior is best understood as the
ultimate product of an organism's history and that molecular behaviorists are
committing a fallacy by inventing fictitious proximal causes for behavior.
Molar behaviorists argue that standard molecular constructs, such as
"associative strength," are better replaced by molar variables such
as rate of reinforcement. Thus, a
molar behaviorist would describe "loving someone" as a pattern of loving behavior
over time; there is no isolated, proximal cause of loving behavior, only a
history of behaviors (of which the current behavior might be an example) that
can be summarized as "love."
As of 2007,
modern-day behaviorism, known as "behavior analysis," is a thriving
field. The Association
for Behavior Analysis: International (ABAI) currently has 32 state
and regional chapters within the United States. Approximately 30 additional
chapters have also developed throughout Europe, Asia, South America, and the
South Pacific. In addition to 34 annual conferences held by ABAI in the United
States and Canada, ABAI held the 5th annual International conference in Norway
in 2009. The independent development of behaviour analysis outside the US also
continues to develop, for example in 2013 the UK society for Behaviour Analysis
was founded in order to further the advancement of the science and practice of behaviour analysis across the UK.
The interests among behavior
analysts today are wide ranging, as a review of the 30 Special Interest Groups
(SIGs) within ABAI indicates. Such interests include everything from
developmental disabilities and autism, to cultural psychology, clinical
psychology, verbal behavior, Organizational Behavior
Management (OBM; behavior analytic I–O psychology). OBM has
developed a particularly strong following within behavior analysis, as
evidenced by the formation of the OBM Network and the influential Journal of
Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM; recently rated the 3rd highest
impact journal in applied psychology by ISI JOBM rating).
Applications of behavioral
technology, also known as Applied Behavior Analysis or ABA, have been
particularly well established in the area of developmental disabilities since
the 1960s. Treatment of individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders
has grown especially rapidly since the mid-1990s. This demand for services
encouraged the formation of a professional credentialing program administered
by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Inc. (BACB) and accredited by the
National Commission for Certifying Agencies. As of early 2012, there are over
300 BACB approved course sequences offered by about 200 colleges and
universities world wide preparing students for this credential and
approximately 11,000 BACB certificants, most working in the United States. The
Association of Professional Behavior Analysts was formed in 2008 to meet the
needs of these ABA professionals.
Modern behavior
analysis has also witnessed a massive resurgence in research and
applications related to language and cognition, with the development of Relational Frame Theory (RFT;
described as a "Post-Skinnerian account of language and cognition").
RFT also forms the empirical basis for the highly successful and data-driven Acceptance and
Commitment Therapy (ACT). In fact, researchers and practitioners in
RFT/ACT have become sufficiently prominent that they have formed their own
specialized organization that is highly behaviorally oriented, known as the Association for
Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS). It has rapidly grown in its
few years of existence to reach about 5,000 members worldwide.
Some of the current prominent
behavior analytic journals include the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis
(JABA), the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) JEAB
website, the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM), Behavior
and Social Issues (BSI), as well as the Psychological Record.
Currently, the U.S. has 14 ABAI accredited MA and PhD programs for
comprehensive study in behavior analysis.
- Behaviorism is based upon observable behaviors, so it is easier to quantify and collect data and information when conducting research.
- Effective therapeutic techniques such as intensive behavioral intervention, behavior analysis, token economies, and discrete trial training are all rooted in behaviorism. These approaches are often very useful in changing maladaptive or harmful behaviors in both children and adults.
In 1977 Willard
Day, a behavioral psychologist and founding editor of the journal Behaviorism
(which now is known as Behavior and Philosophy), published Skinner's “Why I am
not a cognitive psychologist” (Skinner 1977). Skinner began the paper by
stating that “the variables of which human behavior is a function lie in the
environment” (p. 1). Skinner ended by remarking that “cognitive constructs give
… a misleading account of what” is inside a human being (p. 10)
More than a
decade earlier, in 1966 Carl Hempel had announced his defection from
behaviorism:
In
order to characterize … behavioral patterns, propensities, or capacities … we
need not only a suitable behavioristic vocabulary, but psychological terms as
well. (p. 110)
Hempel had come
to believe that it is a mistake to imagine that human behavior can be
understood exclusively in non-mental, behavioristic terms.
Contemporary
psychology and philosophy largely share Hempel's conviction that the
explanation of behavior cannot omit invoking a creature's representation of its
world. Psychology must use psychological terms. Behavior without cognition is
blind. Psychological theorizing without reference to internal cognitive
processing is explanatorily impaired. To say this, of course, is not to a
priori preclude that behaviorism will recover some of its prominence. Just how
to conceive of cognitive processing (even where to locate it) remains a heated
subject of debate (see Melser 2004; see also Levy 2007, pp. 29–64). But if
behaviorism is to recover some of its prominence, this recovery may require a
reformulation of its doctrines that is attune to developments (like that of
neuroeconomics) in neuroscience as well as in novel therapeutic orientations.
Skinner's vantage
point on behaviorism mates the science of behavior with the language of organism/environment
interactions. But we don't just run and mate and walk and eat. We think,
classify, analyze, and theorize. In addition to our outer behavior, we have
highly complex inner lives, wherein we are active, imaginatively, in our heads,
all the while often remaining as stuck as posts, as still as stones. To figure
out how all that maps into the Country of Behaviorism remains the “ism's” still
incompletely charted territory.
- Many critics argue that behaviorism is a one-dimensional approach to understanding human behavior and that behavioral theories do not account for free will and internal influences such as moods, thoughts, and feelings.
- Behaviorism does not account for other types of learning, especially learning that occurs without the use of reinforcement and punishment.
- People and animals are able to adapt their behavior when new information is introduced, even if a previous behavior pattern has been established through reinforcement
BAIJU AYYAPPAN K
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN SOCIAL SCIENCE
CUTEC CHALAKUDY
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