Behaviourism

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Behaviourism
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Behaviourism

• All things should be looked at from the
  perspective of behaviour.
• Behaviourism argues that there is no mind, no
  thoughts, no feelings, and the only important
  thing to consider is behaviour.

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Failure is no accident.
We teach people how to treat us.
Awareness without action is worthless.
The most you get is what you ask for.
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Failure is no accident.
Awareness without action is worthless.
We teach people how to treat us.
The most you get is what you ask for.
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Behaviourists (before Dr. Phil)

• Ivan Pavlov
• Edward Thorndike
• John B. Watson
• B.F. Skinner

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Behaviourists (before Dr. Phil)
Classic Conditioning (stimulus-response)

• Ivan Pavlov
• Edward Thorndike
• John B. Watson
• B.F. Skinner

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Behaviourists (before Dr. Phil)
Classic Conditioning (stimulus-response)

• Ivan Pavlov
• Edward Thorndike
• John B. Watson
• B.F. Skinner

Experimental approach only
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Behaviourists (before Dr. Phil)
Classic Conditioning (stimulus-response)

• Ivan Pavlov
• Edward Thorndike
• John B. Watson
• B.F. Skinner

Experimental approach only
Operand Conditioning
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Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

• Born Sept 14, 1849
• Died Feb 27, 1936
• born in Ryazan, Russia
• physiologist, psychologist, and physician
• awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
  in 1904 for research on the digestive system

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Edward Lee Thorndike

• Born August 31, 1874
• Died August 9, 1949
• Born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts
• Studied animal behaviour and the learning process
  
• led to the theory of connectionism
• Laying the foundation for modern educational
  psychology.

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Cats in Puzzle Boxes
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Cats in Puzzle Boxes

• Thorndike looked at how cats learned to escape
  from puzzle boxes
• The puzzle box experiments were motivated by
  Thorndike's dislike for statements that animals
  made use of extraordinary faculties such as
  insight in their problem solving.

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Cats in Puzzle Boxes

• Thorndike's instruments in answering this
  question were learning curves revealed by
  plotting the time it took for an animal to escape
  the box each time it was in the box
• if the animals were showing insight, then their
  time to escape would suddenly drop to a
  negligible period, which would also be shown in
  the learning curve as an abrupt drop
• while animals using a more ordinary method of
  trial and error would show gradual curves.

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Cats in Puzzle Boxes

• His finding was that cats consistently showed
  gradual learning.

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Cats in Puzzle Boxes

• So it was trial-and-error
• These led Thorndike to formulate first his
  Principles of Learning and then his Theory of
  Learning that became the foundation of modern
  educational psychology.

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Principles of Learning

• Thorndike specified three conditions that
  maximizes learning
• The Law of Effect states that the likely
  recurrence of a response is generally governed by
  its 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 Exercise stated that stimulus-response
  associations are strengthened through repetition.

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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 things
  being equal, be more firmly connected with the
  situation, so that, when it recurs, they will be
  more likely to recur those which are accompanied
  or closely followed by discomfort to the animal
  will, other things being equal, have their
  connections with that situation weakened, so
  that, when it recurs, they will be less likely to
  occur"
• Thorndike, E. L. (1911). Animal intelligence
  Experimental Studies. p. 244

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Theory of Learning

• Thorndike created 13 basic rules
• I want us to pause after each one and check if
  you think this is a universal principle.
• Also see if there is some technology or teaching
  approach you can imagine that might help support
  this rule

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Theory of Learning

• 1. The most basic form of learning is trial and
  error learning.

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Theory of Learning

• 2. Learning is incremental not insightful.

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Theory of Learning

• 3. Learning is not mediated by ideas.

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Theory of Learning

• 4. All mammals learn in the same manner.

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Theory of Learning

• 5. Law of Readiness Interference with goal
  directed behaviour causes frustration and causing
  someone to do something they do not want to do is
  also frustrating.
• a. When someone is ready to perform some act, to
  do so is satisfying.
• b. When someone is ready to perform some act, not
  to do so is annoying.
• c. When someone is not ready to perform some act
  and is forced to do so, it is annoying.

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Theory of Learning

• 6. Law of Exercise We learn by doing. We forget
  by not doing, although to a small extent only.
• a. Connections between a stimulus and a response
  are strengthened as they are used. (law of use)
• b. Connections between a stimulus and a response
  are weakened as they are not used. (law of disuse)

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Theory of Learning

• 7. Law of Effect If the response in a connection
  is followed by a satisfying state of affairs, the
  strength of the connection is considerably
  increased whereas if followed by an annoying
  state of affairs, then the strength of the
  connection is marginally decreased.

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Theory of Learning

• 8. Multiple Responses A learner would keep
  trying multiple responses to solve a problem
  before it is actually solved.

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Theory of Learning

• 9. Set or Attitude What the learner already
  possesses, like prior learning experiences,
  present state of the learner, etc., while it
  begins learning a new task.

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Theory of Learning

• 10. Prepotency of Elements Different responses
  to the same environment would be evoked by
  different perceptions of the environment which
  act as the stimulus to the responses. Different
  perceptions would be subject to the prepotency of
  different elements for different perceivers.

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Theory of Learning

• 11. Response from analogy New problems are
  solved by using solution techniques employed to
  solve analogous problems.

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Theory of Learning

• 12. Associative Shifting Let stimulus S be
  paired with response R. Now, if stimulus Q is
  presented simultaneously with stimulus S
  repeatedly, then stimulus Q is likely to get
  paired with response R.

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Theory of Learning

• 13. Belongingness If there is a natural
  relationship between the need state of an
  organism and the effect caused by a response,
  learning is more effective than if the
  relationship is unnatural.

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John Broadus Watson

• Born Jan 9, 1878
• Died Sept 25, 1958
• Born in Greenville, South Carolina
• American psychologist
• established the psychological school of
  behaviourism
• Little Albert experiment

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The Behaviorist Manifesto

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

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The Behaviorist Manifesto

• The first paragraph of the article concisely
  described Watson's behaviorist position
• Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a
  purely objective experimental branch of natural
  science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction
  and control of behavior. Introspection forms no
  essential part of its methods, nor is the
  scientific value of its data dependent upon the
  readiness with which they lend themselves to
  interpretation 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 complexity, forms
  only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of
  investigation.

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"Little Albert" experiment

• Occurred in 1920
• One of the most controversial experiments in the
  history of psychology
• It was an experiment showing empirical evidence
  of classical conditioning in humans

Rosalie Rayner Albert B. John B. Watson
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"Little Albert" experiment

• Watson and Rayner selected an infant named
  Albert, at approximately 9 months of age, he was
  tested and was judged to show no fear when
  successively observing a number of live animals
  (e.g., a rat, a rabbit, a dog, and a monkey), and
  various inanimate objects (e.g., cotton, human
  masks, a burning newspaper).

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"Little Albert" experiment

• He was, however, judged to show fear whenever a
  long steel bar was unexpectedly struck with a
  claw hammer just behind his back.

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"Little Albert" experiment

• Two months after testing Albert's apparently
  unconditioned reactions to various stimuli,
  Watson and 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 the hammer and steel bar) whenever
  Albert touched the animal. After seven pairings
  of the rat and noise (in two sessions, one week
  apart), Albert reacted with crying and avoidance
  when the rat was presented without the loud
  noise.

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However

• Ben Harris in Whatever Happened to Little
  Albert? 1979 says that critical reading of
  Watson and Rayner's (1920) report reveals little
  evidence that Albert developed a rat phobia

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Little Albert Video

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vpVt0k9IPQ-A

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Burrhus Frederic Skinner

• Born March 20, 1904
• Died August 18, 1990
• Born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania
• American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate
  for social reform and poet.
• Innovated his own philosophy of science called
  Radical Behaviorism

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Radical Behaviorism

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

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Radical Behaviorism

• Radical behaviourism seeks to understand
  behaviour as a function of environmental
  histories of reinforcing consequences.
• Reinforcement processes were emphasized by
  Skinner, and were seen as primary in the shaping
  of behaviour.
• A common misconception is that negative
  reinforcement is some form of punishment.

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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 some
  aversive event (e.g., opening and raising an
  umbrella over your head on a rainy day is
  reinforced by the cessation of rain falling on
  you).
• Both types of reinforcement strengthen behaviour,
  or increase the probability of a behaviour
  reoccurring.

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Radical Behaviorism

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

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Inventor

• Cumulative Recorder
• Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)
• Teaching Machine
• Air Crib

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Cumulative Recorder
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Cumulative Recorder

• an instrument used to automatically record
  behaviour graphically
• The needle would start at the bottom of the page
  and the drum would turn the roll of paper
  horizontally. Each response would result in the
  marking needle moving vertically along the paper
  one tick.

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Operant Conditioning Chamber
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Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)

• A box large enough to easily accommodate the
  animal being used as a subject (including lab
  rats, pigeons, and primates).
• It contains one or more levers which an animal
  can press, one or more stimulus lights and one or
  more places in which reinforcers like food can be
  delivered.
• It is often sound-proof and light-proof to avoid
  distracting stimuli.

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Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)

• In one of Skinners experiments a hungry rat was
  introduced into the box. When the lever was
  pressed by the rat a small pellet of food was
  dropped onto a tray. The rat soon learned that
  when he pressed the lever he would receive some
  food. In this experiment the lever pressing
  behaviour is reinforced by food.

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Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)
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Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)

• If pressing the lever is reinforced (the rat gets
  food) when a light is on but not when it is off,
  responses (pressing the lever) continue to be
  made in the light but seldom, if at all, in the
  dark. The rat has formed discrimination between
  light and dark. When one turns on the light, a
  response occurs, but that is not a Pavlovian
  conditioned reflex response.

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Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)

• In this experiment Skinner demonstrated the ideas
  of "operant conditioning" and "shaping
  behaviour." Unlike Pavlov's "classical
  conditioning," where an existing behaviour
  (salivating for food) is shaped by associating it
  with a new stimulus (ringing of a bell or a
  metronome), operant conditioning is the rewarding
  of an act that approaches a new desired behavior.

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Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)

• Skinner's operant chamber allowed him to explore
  the rate of response as a dependent variable, as
  well as develop his theory of schedules of
  reinforcement. The first operant chambers were
  attached to cumulative records on drums producing
  characteristic pauses, scallops, and other lines.

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How pigeons get to be superstitious
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Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)

• Skinner also used pigeons in his experiments

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Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)

• In one experiment he decided to drop food into
  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.

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Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)

• One circled counter-clockwise, another spun
  around in circles seventy-five percent of them
  exhibited some kind of odd behaviour.
• Skinner concluded that the pigeons had
  incorrectly associated their behaviour at the
  times of the food drops to the food appearing,
  and had become 'superstitious'.

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Teaching Machine
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Teaching Machine

• In 1954 B.F. Skinner embarked upon a series of
  studies designed to improve teaching methods for
  spelling, math, and other school subjects by
  using a mechanical device that would surpass the
  usual classroom experience.
• He believed the classroom had disadvantages
  because the rate of learning for different
  students was variable and reinforcement was also
  delayed due to the lack of individual attention.
• Since personal tutors for every student was
  usually unavailable, Skinner developed a theory
  of programmed learning that was to be implemented
  by teaching machines.

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Teaching Machine

• The teaching machine is composed of mainly a
  program, which is a system of combined teaching
  and test items that carries the student gradually
  through the material to be learned.
• The "machine" is composed by a fill-in-the-blank
  method on either a workbook or in a computer. If
  the subject is correct, he/she gets reinforcement
  and moves on to the next question. If the answer
  is incorrect, the subject studies the correct
  answer to increase the chance of getting
  reinforced next time.

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Teaching Machine

• The teaching machine is merely a device for
  presenting the set of frames of which the program
  is composed.
• However, it is not supplementary but
  all-inclusive. The program will do all the
  teaching through a response/reward mechanism.
• Skinner also noted that the learning process
  should be divided into a large number of very
  small steps and reinforcement 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 who composed the material it
  presented. He believed this was the best possible
  arrangement for learning because it took into
  account the rate of learning for each individual
  student.

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Skinner on Education
Skinner says that there are five main obstacles
to learning

• Give the learner immediate feedback.
• Break down the task into small steps.
• Repeat the directions as many times as possible.
• Work from the most simple to the most complex
  tasks.
• Give positive reinforcement.

• People have a fear of failure.
• The task is not broken down into small enough
  steps.
• There is a lack of directions.
• There is also a lack of clarity in the
  directions.
• Positive reinforcement is lacking.

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Skinner on Education

• Give the learner immediate feedback.
• Break down the task into small steps.
• Repeat the directions as many times as possible.
• Work from the most simple to the most complex
  tasks.
• Give positive reinforcement.

• People have a fear of failure.
• The task is not broken down into small enough
  steps.
• There is a lack of directions.
• There is also a lack of clarity in the
  directions.
• Positive reinforcement is lacking.

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Air Crib
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Air Crib

• To help his wife cope with the 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 as a 'baby tender' or
  humorously as an 'heir conditioner') is an easily
  cleaned, temperature and humidity-controlled box
  Skinner designed to assist in the raising of
  babies.

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Did you know?

• Opening Skinner's Box Great Psychological
  Experiments of the Twentieth Century by Lauren
  Slater (2004)
• In this book Slater reveals that B.F. Skinner
  raised his daughter Deborah in an operant
  conditioning chamber and subjected her to
  psychological experiments

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Did you know?

• Opening Skinner's Box Great Psychological
  Experiments of the Twentieth Century by Lauren
  Slater (2004)
• . . . caged for two full years, placing within
  her cramped square 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-one and frankly
  psychotic, she sued him for abuse in a genuine
  court of law, lost the case, and shot herself in
  a bowling alley in Billings, Montana. Boom-boom
  went the gun.

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• Wow

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• But

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• It is totally untrue

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• Deborah Skinner is alive and well, living in the
  UK. She was understandably upset about these
  stories (something of an urban legend) and wrote
  an article in The Guardian

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The Guardian, Friday 12 March 2004

• I was not a lab rat
• By Deborah Skinner Buzan

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Skinners Critics

• We will look at a few of Skinners most famous
  critics
• Harry Harlow
• Anthony Burgess
• Noam Chomsky

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Harry HarlowsWire andTerryclothmothers
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Harry Harlow

• Born October 31, 1905
• Died December 6, 1981
• Born in Fairfield, Iowa

• American psychologist best known for his
  maternal-separation and social isolation
  experiments on rhesus monkeys, which demonstrated
  the importance of care-giving and companionship
  in social and cognitive development.

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• In a well-known series of experiments conducted
  between 1957 and 1963, Harlow removed baby rhesus
  monkeys from their mothers, and offered them a
  choice between two surrogate mothers, one made of
  terrycloth, the other of wire.

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• Two groups of baby rhesus monkeys were removed
  from their mothers. In the first group, a
  terrycloth mother provided no food, while a wire
  mother did, in the form of an attached baby
  bottle containing milk.
• In the second group, a terrycloth mother provided
  food the wire mother did not.
• It was found that the young monkeys clung to the
  terrycloth mother whether or not it provided them
  with food, and that the young monkeys chose the
  wire surrogate only when it provided food.

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• Whenever a frightening stimulus was brought into
  the cage, the monkeys ran to the cloth mother for
  protection and comfort, no matter which mother
  provided them with food. This response decreased
  as the monkeys grew older.

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• Harlow's interpretation of this behaviour, which
  is still widely accepted, was that a lack of
  contact comfort is psychologically 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 spoiling children and the
  insistence of the then dominant Behaviourist
  School of Psychology that emotions were
  negligible.

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• Feeding was thought to be the most important
  factor in the formation of a mother-child bond.
• Harlow concluded, however, that nursing
  strengthened the mother-child bond because of the
  intimate body contact that it provided.

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Anthony Burgess

• John Burgess Wilson
• Born 25 February 1917
• Died 22 November 1993
• Born in Manchester, England
• An English author, poet, playwright, composer,
  linguist, translator and critic.
• The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is
  Burgess' most famous novel, though he dismissed
  it as one of his lesser works.

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Anthony Burgess

• In his novel, A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
  criticizes Skinner's theories as being immoral,
  claiming that moral choice is a necessary part of
  one's humanity.

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Anthony Burgess

• The novel's protagonist, Alex, believes he can be
  released from prison early by participating in an
  Ivan Pavlov/B.F. Skinner inspired rehabilitation
  program referred to as the "Ludovico technique,"
  which conditions criminals to become nauseous
  from the mere thought of violence.

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Anthony Burgess

• Before participating in the program the prison
  chaplain warns against it, declaring that an
  action is only good if derived from good
  intentions. Thus conditioning in any form is
  criticized for being dehumanizing and oppressive.

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Noam Chomsky

• Born December 7, 1928
• Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• An American linguist, philosopher, cognitive
  scientist, and political activist.
• One of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a
  major figure of analytic philosophy.

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Noam Chomsky

• In 1959, Chomsky published a widely influential
  review of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior, Chomsky
  broadly and aggressively challenged the
  behaviourist approaches to studies of behaviour
  dominant at the time, and contributed to the
  cognitive revolution in psychology.
• In the review Chomsky emphasized that the
  scientific application of behavioural principles
  from animal research is severely lacking in
  explanatory adequacy and is furthermore
  particularly superficial as an account of human
  verbal behaviour because a theory restricting
  itself to external conditions, to "what is
  learned", cannot adequately account for
  generative grammar.

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Noam Chomsky

• Chomsky raised the examples of rapid language
  acquisition of children, including their quickly
  developing ability to form grammatical sentences,
  and the universally creative language use of
  competent native speakers to highlight the ways
  in which Skinner's view exemplified
  under-determination of theory by evidence.
• He argued that to understand human verbal
  behaviour such as the creative aspects of
  language use and language development, one must
  first postulate a genetic linguistic endowment.
  The assumption that important aspects of language
  are the product of universal innate ability runs
  counter to Skinner's radical behaviourism.

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Noam Chomsky

• Skinner, who rarely responded directly to
  critics, never formally replied to Chomsky's
  critique. A student of Skinner, Kenneth
  MacCorquodale, wrote a reply in 1970 that was
  endorsed by Skinner.
• He claimed that Chomsky did not possess an
  adequate understanding of either behavioural
  psychology in general, or the differences between
  Skinner's behaviourism and other varieties
  consequently, it is argued that he made several
  serious errors.
• Chomsky has maintained that the review was
  directed at the way Skinner's variant of
  behavioral psychology "was being used in Quinean
  empiricism and naturalization of philosophy"

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• Thats it, thanks.