Neobehaviorism

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Neobehaviorism

• Methodological behaviorism
• Gradual acceptance of Watsons ideas in the 20s
• Resistance to
• Atomism
• Rejection of purpose
• Rejection of mental operations
• Purpose
• Tolman-purpose
• Hullreinforcement as goals
• Skinnerconsequences defines behavior
• Reintroduce mental operations

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Logical Positivism

• Logical positivism
• The body of scientific propositions exhausts the
  sum of all meaningful statements.
• Observation termsobservable properties
• Theoretical termsunobservable
• Meaningful only through operational definitions
• Operationism Percy W. Bridgman
• Concept operational definition
• Consistent with behaviorism

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Neobehaviorism (ca. 19301960)

• Data animal learning
• Importance of experimentation
• Theory development and testing
• Explain observed behavior
• Positivism and operationism

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Edwin Ray Guthrie (18861959)

• Learning based on contiguity
• "a combination of stimuli which has accompanied a
  movement will on its recurrence tend to be
  followed by that movement"
• One trial learning
• Last movement in situation most strongly
  associated
• Last act produces success
• No reinforcement
• All or none no strengthening
• Actmany movements
• Movement produced stimuli
• Repetition produces better movements within act

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Edward Chace Tolman (18861959)

• Roots
• Concern with purpose
• Gestalt psychology
• Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men (1932)
• Mental states inferred from behavior
• Molar
• Behaviorpurposive, goal directed
• Observable aspect of behavior
• Consciousnessexploratory behavior

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• Learn situationmeaning
• S-S learning
• Expectancies
• Expectancy confirmation strengthens learning
• Cognitive map
• Intervening variables between stimulus and
  response
• Initiating variables
• Demand variables (motives) and cognitive
  variables (abilities such as perception and motor
  skills)
• Need systems and belief value motives
• Behavior spacescognitive maps
• Hypothetical constructs
• Learning theory
• Reward affects performance not learning
• Latent learning
• Learning expectancies
• Cognitive map

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Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men

• Maze learningexplanations?
• Stimulus response
• Frequency or reinforcement
• Fieldcognitive map
• Experiments
• Latent learning
• Blodgett (1929)
• Vicarious trial and error
• Searching for the stimulus
• Hypothesis experiments

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• Spatial orientation
• Strip versus broad maps
• Brain damage
• Inadequate environmental cues
• Over-learning
• Excessive motivation or frustration
• Regression, fixation, displacement of aggression

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Clark Leonard Hull (18841952)

• Mechanistic
• Strictly behaviorist
• Interest in quantification and formalization
• Behavior designed to reduce need
• Hypotheticodeductive theory
• Axioms and hypotheses
• Self-correcting
• Intervening variables physiological

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Hulls Behavior Equation

• Response probability
• Strength of behaviordrive and habit
• D drive, need
• Primary (innate) or secondary (learned)
• Reinforcement drive reduction
• Habit strength learning
• Between stimulus and response
• number of reinforced responses
• K incentive motivationreward quality/quantity
• Performance motivation
• V stimulus intensity dynamism
• I inhibition--fatigue

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Hulls Influence

• Strengths
• Generated much research
• Reintroduced concepts of incentives and
  motivation
• Terminology accepted
• Weaknesses
• Postulatessingle study
• Vulnerable to disproof
• Theory not robust
• Students
• Kenneth Spence (19071967) k
• Neal E. Miller (19092002) imitation and learned
  reinforcers
• Orval Hobart Mowrer (19071982) two factor theory

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B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)

• Influential
• Content of theories
• Researcher
• Polemicist
• Emphasis on application
• Project Pigeon
• Teaching Machines
• Walden Two

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Functional analysis

• Dissertation
• Reflex correlation of stimulus and response
• Functional analysis
• Relationship between stimulus and response
• Empty organism
• Strictly inductive
• Anti-theory
• Darwin
• Variable behavior selected by consequences

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Operant Conditioning

• Operant versus respondent
• Respondentreflexive
• Operants emitted alter environment
• Operant strength increases when reinforced
• Reinforcement defined by consequences

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Conditioning

• Positive (presentation reinforcing) and negative
  reinforcements (removal is reinforcing)
• Primary and secondary reinforcement (learned
  reinforcementtoken economies)
• Schedules of reinforcement
• Fixed and variable interval
• Fixed and variable ratio
• Shaping
• Discriminative stimuli
• Punishment
• Verbal Behavior

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Methodological

• Skinner boxoperant chamber
• Small n, high control designs
• Applications
• Teaching machines
• Air cribs

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Behaviorism at Fifty

• Mentalistic explantions
• Homunculus
• Public and Private
• Not really different
• Self-descriptive behavior
• Origin
• Verbal community
• Difficulty of arranging contingencies for private
  events
• Conscious contents
• Perceiving is behaving instead of assuming we
  begin with a tendency to recognize such an object
  once it is found, it is simpler to assume that we
  begin with a tendency to see it

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• Mental way stations
• Behaviorism
• Direct action of situation on behavior
• Mental states as causes
• Still function of environment
• Methodological objections
• Incomplete causal sequences
• Inaccuracies in self-description
• Order of events
• Invented causes

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Basic Features of Behaviorism

• Purposeprediction and control
• Method functional analysis
• Determinism
• Environmental control
• Evolution and reinforcement
• Selection by consequences
• Materialism
• Subject matterbehavior
• Organism changes
• Respondent and operant
• Rate of response
• Purposecontrolling variables
• Stimulus control of operant behavior
• Principles generalize