Chapter 13 The Behavioral/Social Learning Approach: Theory and Application

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Chapter 13The Behavioral/Social Learning
Approach Theory and Application
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Behaviorism
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John B. Watson (1878-1958)

• Watson was a fighter and a builder.
• In college, he was unsociable and uninterested in
  his studies.
• He switched from philosophy to psychology at the
  University of Chicago, but preferred to study
  animals rather than humans.
• After joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins
  University in 1908, he developed and promoted his
  ideas about behaviorism.
• Behaviorism swept the field following the
  publication of his paper Psychology as the
  Behaviorist Views It in 1913.
• Watsons flourishing academic career ended in
  disgrace in 1920, in the wake of his affair with
  his research associate, Rosalie Rayner.

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Watsons view of behaviorism

• Watson argued that if psychology were to be a
  science, psychologists must stop examining mental
  states and study overt, observable behavior
  instead.
• Emotions, thoughts, experiences, values,
  reasoning, insight, and the unconscious would
  therefore be off-limits to behaviorists unless
  they could be defined in terms of observable
  behaviors. For example, Watson regarded thinking
  as a variant of verbal behavior that he called
  subvocal speech.
• According to Watson, personality could be
  described as the end product of our habit
  systems.
• Watson argued that he could take a dozen healthy
  infants, well-formed and condition them to
  become any type of specialist that he chose.

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B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

• Skinner passed on joining his fathers law firm
  and studied English at Hamilton College with the
  intent of becoming a writer.
• After producing nothing of consequence in the two
  years following his graduation, he went to
  Harvard to study psychology.
• He became the new standard bearer for a view of
  behaviorism that he called radical behaviorism.
• In the 1940s, he published Walden Two, a novel
  about a utopian community based on conditioning
  principles.
• To the end, he remaining an adamant believer in
  the power of the environment, and conceded little
  to those who emphasized genetic determinants of
  behavior.

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Skinners radical behaviorism

• Skinner did not deny the existence of thoughts
  and inner experiences, but he argued that we
  often misattribute our actions to mental states
  when they should be attributed to our
  conditioning instead.
• His position maintained that we often dont know
  the reason for many of our behaviors, although we
  may think we do.
• He therefore argued that our perception that we
  are free to act as we choose is, to a large
  extent, an illusion. Instead, we act in response
  to environmental contingencies.
• Among Skinners many contributions to the study
  of conditioning are the so-called Skinner box
  and the discovery of partial reinforcement
  schedules.

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Basic Principles of Conditioning
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Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

• Ivan Pavlov was born in Ryazan, Russia. He began
  his higher education as a seminary student, but
  dropped out and enrolled at the University of
  Petersburg to study the natural sciences. He
  received his doctorate in 1879.
• In the 1890s, Pavlov was investigating the
  digestive process in dogs by externalizing a
  salivary gland so he could collect, measure, and
  analyze the saliva produced in response to food
  under different conditions.
• He noticed that the dogs tended to salivate
  before food was actually delivered to their
  mouths. He realized that this was more
  interesting than the chemistry of saliva, and
  changed the focus of his research, carrying out a
  long series of experiments in which he
  manipulated the stimuli occurring before the
  presentation of food.
• He thereby established the basic laws for the
  establishment and extinction of what he called
  "conditional reflexes" i.e., reflex responses,
  like salivation, that only occurred conditional
  upon specific previous experiences of the animal.

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Pavlovs experimental setup
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Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning (aka signal
learning)

• Classical conditioning begins with an existing
  stimulus-response (S-R) association.
• Understanding that there was an existing S-R
  association between the food (S) and the dogs
  salivation, Pavlov quickly perceived that there
  might also be a learned or conditioned
  association between cues associated with feeding
  (S) and the dogs salivation (R).
• Using the sound of either a bell or a tuning fork
  as his conditioned stimuli, Pavlov found that he
  could indeed condition the response of
  salivation to the sound of a bell or a tuning
  fork.

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Pavlovs experimental setup
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Pavlovs famous demonstration of classically
conditioned salivation in a dog
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Classical conditioning paradigm
food
saliva
Unconditioned response (UCR)
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
Conditioned stimulus (CS)
Conditioned response (CR)
tuning fork
saliva
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Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning (aka signal
learning)

• Once the new S-R association is established, it
  can be used to condition yet another S-R
  association in a process called second-order
  conditioning.
• For example, once the dog is reliably salivating
  to the sound of the tuning fork, the tuning fork
  can be paired with a green light and soon the dog
  will salivate whenever the green light comes on.
• Both first-order and second-order classical
  conditioning are subject to extinction.
• Another limitation of classical conditioning
  involves the length of the delay between the
  presentation of the CS and the presentation of
  the UCS (in general, one second is optimal).

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Operant (instrumental) conditioning (aka
consequence learning)

• Operant conditioning concerns the effect certain
  kinds of consequences have on the frequency of
  behavior.
• A consequence that increases the frequency of a
  behavior is called a reinforcement.
• A consequence that decreases the frequency of a
  behavior is called a punishment.
• Whether a consequence is reinforcing or punishing
  varies according to the person and the situation.
• There are two basic strategies for increasing the
  frequency of a behavior positive reinforcement
  and negative reinforcement.
• There are two basic strategies for decreasing the
  frequency of a behavior extinction and
  punishment.

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Edward L. Thorndike (1874-1949)

• Edward L. Thorndike graduated from Wesleyan
  University in 1895, and received his Ph.D. from
  Columbia University in 1898
• He was appointed as an instructor in genetic
  psychology at Teachers College, Columbia
  University, in 1899, and served there until 1940.
• He devised methods to measure childrens
  intelligence and their ability to learn. He also
  conducted studies in animal psychology and the
  psychology of learning. His law of effect
  addressed the phenomenon we now call
  reinforcement.
• Thorndikes books include Educational Psychology
  (1903), Mental and Social Measurements (1904),
  Animal Intelligence (1911), A Teachers Word Book
  (1921), Your City (1939), and Human Nature and
  the Social Order (1940).

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The Skinner box
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Operant (instrumental) conditioning (aka
consequence learning)

• Operant conditioning concerns the effect certain
  kinds of consequences have on the frequency of
  behavior.
• A consequence that increases the frequency of a
  behavior is called a reinforcement.
• A consequence that decreases the frequency of a
  behavior is called a punishment.
• Whether a consequence is reinforcing or punishing
  varies according to the person and the situation.
• There are two basic strategies for increasing the
  frequency of a behavior positive reinforcement
  and negative reinforcement.
• There are two basic strategies for decreasing the
  frequency of a behavior extinction and
  punishment.

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Operant conditioning procedures
Procedure Purpose Application
Positive reinforcement Increase behavior Give reward following behavior
Negative reinforcement Increase behavior Remove aversive stimulus following behavior
Extinction Decrease behavior Do not reward behavior
Punishment Decrease behavior Give aversive stimulus following behavior or take away positive stimulus
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Problems with the use of punishment

• Punishment does not teach what behavior is
  appropriate. It only teaches what behavior is
  inappropriate.
• To be effective, punishment must be delivered
  immediately and consistently.
• Punishment can have the negative side effect of
  inhibiting not only the undesirable behavior but
  also desirable behavior that is associated with
  it.
• Punishment can result in the person who is
  punished coming to fear the person who
  administers the punishment.
• Punishment may also serve as a behavior that is
  later modeled by the person being punished.
• Punishment can create strong negative emotions
  that can interfere with learning the desired
  response.
• For all of these reasons, punishment should be
  used sparingly and only when other operant
  conditioning procedures either cannot be used or
  will not work.

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Other important operant conditioning concepts

• Shaping reinforcing successive approximations of
  the desired behavior until the complete response
  is well established
• Generalization displaying the response to
  stimulus situations that resemble the one in
  which the original response was acquired
• Discrimination selectively reinforcing the
  response to help ensure that it will only occur
  in the presence of the original stimulus and not
  ones that might resemble it

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Social Learning Theory
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Julian B. Rotter (1916- )

• Julian Rotter first learned about psychology in
  the Avenue J Library in Brooklyn, where he spent
  much of his childhood and adolescence.
• Believing that he couldnt earn a living as a
  psychologist, he majored in chemistry at Brooklyn
  College.
• While still in college, he discovered that Alfred
  Adler was teaching at the Long Island School of
  Medicine and began associating with Adler and his
  colleagues.
• He then became a psychology major at the
  University of Iowa and received a Ph.D. in
  clinical psychology at the University of Indiana.
• After serving as a psychologist in the Army
  during World War II, he later taught at the Ohio
  State University and at the University of
  Connecticut.

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Key concepts in Rotters Social Learning Theory
perceptions, expectancies, and values

• Behavior potential (BP) the likelihood of a
  given behavior occurring in a particular
  situation
• Expectancy the perceived likelihood that a given
  behavior will result in a particular outcome
• Generalized expectancies beliefs about how often
  our actions typically lead to reinforcements and
  punishments
• Locus of control generalized perceptions about
  the degree to which ones outcomes are determined
  by internal versus external factors
• Reinforcement value the degree to which we
  prefer one reinforcer over another

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Rotters basic formula for predicting behavior

• Behavior potential (BP) Expectancy (E) X
  Reinforcement Value (RV)
• If either the expectancy or the
  reinforcement value is zero, then the behavior
  potential will be zero.

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Examples of calculating the behavior potentials
in an insult situation
Option Possible outcome Expectancy Value Behavior potential
Ask for apology Apology High High High
Insult back Laughter Low High Average
Yell at insulter Ugly scene High Low Average
Leave the party Feel foolish Average Low Low
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Social-Cognitive Theory
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Albert Bandura (1925- )

• Albert Bandura was raised in Alberta, Canada and
  received his bachelors degree at the University
  of British Columbia.
• He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa,
  where he was influenced by the prominent learning
  theorist Kenneth Spence.
• After a year of clinical internship in Wichita,
  he accepted a position at Stanford University.
• His career has been spent building bridges
  between traditional learning theory, cognitive
  personality theory, and clinical psychology.

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Banduras reciprocal determinism model
Behavior
External factors (Rewards,
punishments)
Internal factors (Beliefs, thoughts,
expectations)
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Features of learning and cognition that are
(relatively) unique to humans

• The use of symbols and other cognitive
  representational structures to re-create the
  outside world within our own minds
• The resulting abilities to imagine alternative
  courses of action and conduct mental stimulations
  to project what their outcomes are likely to be
• The capacity for self-regulation through the
  application of self-reward and self-punishment,
  even in the face of strong external rewards and
  punishment
• The capacity for vicarious or observational
  learning

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Observational learning

• The distinction between learning and performance
  is important not every behavior that is learned
  gets performed
• Much of our learning occurs vicariously, through
  our observation of other peoples actions, and
  the consequences of those actions.
• We are more likely to imitate a behavior we have
  seen other people display if the outcome of their
  behavior was a reward, rather than a punishment.
• In a study by Bandura (1965), nursery school
  children were more likely to model the aggressive
  behaviors of an adult who they observed in a film
  segment if they saw the model get rewarded,
  rather than punished, for his aggressive behavior.

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Mean number of aggressive responses performed
(Bandura, 1965)
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Diagram of Little Alberts classical
conditioning A conditioned phobia
Fear responses (Unconditioned
response)
Loud noise (Unconditioned
stimulus)
White rat (Conditioned stimulus)
Fear response (Conditioned
response)
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Application behavior modification

• Classical conditioning applications
• Systematic desensitization (for example, snake
  phobia)
• Aversion therapy (for example, alcoholism)
• Operant conditioning applications
• Changing behavior by changing contingencies
• Reward
• Punishment
• Extinction through nonreinforcement
• Token economy
• Biofeedback

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Application self-efficacy therapy

• The difference between an outcome expectancy and
  an efficacy expectancy.
• Four sources of efficacy expectancies
• Enactive mastery experiences
• Vicarious experiences
• Verbal persuasion (coaching)
• Physiological and affective states
• Guided mastery as a step-by-step approach to
  achieve enactive mastery experiences
• Problems that have been addressed through the
  application of self-efficacy beliefs include
  traumatic stress disorder, test anxiety, phobias,
  and bereavement.

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Behavioral observation methods

• Direct observation
• Direct observation in the field, in the
  laboratory, or in the clinic
• Analogue behavioral observation (for example,
  staging a dance for clients who are being treated
  for shyness)
• Role-play
• The importance of reliable observations
• Self-monitoring
• The importance of consistent and objective
  self-observation
• The therapeutic value of self-observation
• Observation by others (parents, teachers, nurses,
  etc.)

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Strengths and criticisms of the behavioral /
social learning approach

• Strengths
• The approach has a solid foundation in empirical
  research with humans and with infrahuman species.
• It led to the development of useful therapeutic
  procedures involving behavior modification.
  These intervention procedures, which are
  relatively quick, inexpensive, and easily
  administered, assess baseline levels of behavior
  and establish objective criteria for behavior
  change.
• The social-cognitive extensions of the behavioral
  approach have greatly expanded the range of
  phenomena that can be addressed.
• Criticisms
• The approach gives inadequate attention to the
  role of heredity.
• Not all responses can be successfully conditioned
  (e.g., fear of food).
• Rewarding intrinsically-motivated behaviors can
  sometimes reduce their frequency of occurrence.
• Reducing the problems of therapy patients to
  observable behaviors may fail to address the
  underlying problem in certain kinds of disorders.

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