Theoretical behaviorism

Last updated

Theoretical behaviorism is a framework for psychology proposed by J. E. R. Staddon as an extension of experimental psychologist B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism. [1] [2] The framework was created at Harvard in the early 1960s. [3]

Contents

Theoretical behaviorism takes the view that classical conditioning introduces repertoires of behavior, [4] which are then selected from by operant conditioning in a way analogous to natural selection.[ citation needed ]

By the late 1960s, several theoretical alternatives to radical behaviorism were proposed, such has "cognitive revolution" popularized by Ulric Neisser's Cognitive Psychology in 1967, and also ethology. [5] In the late 1980s, R. H. Ettinger and Staddon critiqued functional analysis. [6] [7]

Application of selection and variation to behaviorism

In the early 1950s, B. F. Skinner and others began to point out the similarities between the learning process and evolution through variation and selection. [8] [9] [10] More recently, models explicitly analogous to gene mutation and selection by reinforcement have been applied to operant conditioning phenomena. [11] [12] Skinner’s idea of "emitted behavior" is an example of a parallel between evolution and behaviorism: once a behavior varies, a variant that results in reward is strengthened and therefore increases in frequency. [13] When a reward is taken away or when selection is relaxed, there is an increase in variability in both natural selection and selection by reinforcement schedule. [14]

Skinner said little about the causes and types of behavior variation, believing it to be random. [15] On the other hand, Zener, Liddell and others [16] [17] argue that the variation in behaviors that psychological reinforcement acts on is not random. For example, it is different for food than for sex or a social reward. The ethologist Lorenz first identified the dog’s behavior as a particular instinctive pattern, similar to a repertoire. [18]

Repertoire of possible behaviors

A "repertoire" of behaviors involves potential behaviors that may occur under certain conditions, such as if the currently active behavior is unrewarded. The observed repertoire in a particular animal depends on the reward size and nature of the stimulus: anticipation of food will lead to a different repertoire than anticipation of electric shock. [19]

In addition to the active behavior, a repertoire includes latent possible activities. This idea of a latent response was first suggested by B.F. Skinner:

"Our basic datum…is the probability that a response will be emitted…We recognize …that … every response may be conceived of as having at any moment an assignable probability of emission... A latent response with a certain probability of emission is not directly observed. It is a scientific construct. But it can be given a respectable status, and it enormously increases our analytical power…. It is assumed that the strength of a response must reach a certain value before the response will be emitted. This value is called the threshold." [20]

Within theoretical behaviorism, the "threshold" is instead competition from other possible responses. [21] [22]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">B. F. Skinner</span> American psychologist and social philosopher (1904–1990)

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. Considered the father of Behaviorism, he was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where behaviors are modified through the association of stimuli with reinforcement or punishment. In it, operants—behaviors that affect one's environment—are conditioned to occur or not occur depending on the environmental consequences of the behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operant conditioning chamber</span> Laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior

An operant conditioning chamber is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior. The operant conditioning chamber was created by B. F. Skinner while he was a graduate student at Harvard University. The chamber can be used to study both operant conditioning and classical conditioning.

In reinforcement theory, it is argued that human behavior is a result of "contingent consequences" to human actions The publication pushes forward the idea that "you get what you reinforce" This means that behavior when given the right types of reinforcers can change employee behavior for the better and negative behavior can be weeded out.

Radical behaviorism is a "philosophy of the science of behavior" developed by B. F. Skinner. It refers to the philosophy behind behavior analysis, and is to be distinguished from methodological behaviorism—which has an intense emphasis on observable behaviors—by its inclusion of thinking, feeling, and other private events in the analysis of human and animal psychology. The research in behavior analysis is called the experimental analysis of behavior and the application of the field is called applied behavior analysis (ABA), which was originally termed "behavior modification."

Social learning is a theory of learning process social behavior which proposes that new behaviors can be acquired by observing and imitating others. It states that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur purely through observation or direct instruction, even in the absence of motor reproduction or direct reinforcement. In addition to the observation of behavior, learning also occurs through the observation of rewards and punishments, a process known as vicarious reinforcement. When a particular behavior is rewarded regularly, it will most likely persist; conversely, if a particular behavior is constantly punished, it will most likely desist. The theory expands on traditional behavioral theories, in which behavior is governed solely by reinforcements, by placing emphasis on the important roles of various internal processes in the learning individual.

The experimental analysis of behavior is a science that studies the behavior of individuals across a variety of species. A key early scientist was B. F. Skinner who discovered operant behavior, reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, contingencies of reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, intermittent schedules, discrimination, and generalization. A central method was the examination of functional relations between environment and behavior, as opposed to hypothetico-deductive learning theory that had grown up in the comparative psychology of the 1920–1950 period. Skinner's approach was characterized by observation of measurable behavior which could be predicted and controlled. It owed its early success to the effectiveness of Skinner's procedures of operant conditioning, both in the laboratory and in behavior therapy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Behaviorism</span> Systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals

Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events.

<i>Verbal Behavior</i> Psychology book

Verbal Behavior is a 1957 book by psychologist B. F. Skinner, in which he describes what he calls verbal behavior, or what was traditionally called linguistics. Skinner's work describes the controlling elements of verbal behavior with terminology invented for the analysis - echoics, mands, tacts, autoclitics and others - as well as carefully defined uses of ordinary terms such as audience.

The psychology of learning refers to theories and research on how individuals learn. There are many theories of learning. Some take on a more behaviorist approach which focuses on inputs and reinforcements. Other approaches, such as theories related to neuroscience and social cognition, focus more on how the brain's organization and structure influence learning. Some psychological approaches, such as social constructivism, focus more on one's interaction with the environment and with others. Other theories, such as those related to motivation, like the growth mindset, focus more on individuals' perceptions of ability.

John Eric Rayner Staddon is a British-born American psychologist. He has been a critic of Skinnerian behaviorism and proposed a theoretically-based "New Behaviorism". John Staddon conducted theoretical behaviorism research in adaptive function, mechanisms of learning, and optimality theories. He completed his graduate work at the Skinner Lab in Harvard in the 1960s, with Richard Herrnstein.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shaping (psychology)</span> Psychological paradigm for behavior analysis

Shaping is a conditioning paradigm used primarily in the experimental analysis of behavior. The method used is differential reinforcement of successive approximations. It was introduced by B. F. Skinner with pigeons and extended to dogs, dolphins, humans and other species. In shaping, the form of an existing response is gradually changed across successive trials towards a desired target behavior by reinforcing exact segments of behavior. Skinner's explanation of shaping was this:

We first give the bird food when it turns slightly in the direction of the spot from any part of the cage. This increases the frequency of such behavior. We then withhold reinforcement until a slight movement is made toward the spot. This again alters the general distribution of behavior without producing a new unit. We continue by reinforcing positions successively closer to the spot, then by reinforcing only when the head is moved slightly forward, and finally only when the beak actually makes contact with the spot. ... The original probability of the response in its final form is very low; in some cases it may even be zero. In this way we can build complicated operants which would never appear in the repertoire of the organism otherwise. By reinforcing a series of successive approximations, we bring a rare response to a very high probability in a short time. ... The total act of turning toward the spot from any point in the box, walking toward it, raising the head, and striking the spot may seem to be a functionally coherent unit of behavior; but it is constructed by a continual process of differential reinforcement from undifferentiated behavior, just as the sculptor shapes his figure from a lump of clay.

In psychology, mentalism refers to those branches of study that concentrate on perception and thought processes, for example: mental imagery, consciousness and cognition, as in cognitive psychology. The term mentalism has been used primarily by behaviorists who believe that scientific psychology should focus on the structure of causal relationships to reflexes and operant responses or on the functions of behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instinctive drift</span> Tendency of an animal to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviour

Instinctive drift, alternately known as instinctual drift, is the tendency of an animal to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviour that interferes with learned behaviour from operant conditioning. Instinctive drift was coined by Keller and Marian Breland, former students of B.F. Skinner at the University of Minnesota, describing the phenomenon as "a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory." B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist and father of operant conditioning, which is learning strategy that teaches the performance of an action either through reinforcement or punishment. It is through the association of the behaviour and the reward or consequence that follows that depicts whether an animal will maintain a behaviour, or if it will become extinct. Instinctive drift is a phenomenon where such conditioning erodes and an animal reverts to its natural behaviour.

Errorless learning was an instructional design introduced by psychologist Charles Ferster in the 1950s as part of his studies on what would make the most effective learning environment. B. F. Skinner was also influential in developing the technique, noting that,

...errors are not necessary for learning to occur. Errors are not a function of learning or vice versa nor are they blamed on the learner. Errors are a function of poor analysis of behavior, a poorly designed shaping program, moving too fast from step to step in the program, and the lack of the prerequisite behavior necessary for success in the program.

In behavioral psychology, stimulus control is a phenomenon in operant conditioning that occurs when an organism behaves in one way in the presence of a given stimulus and another way in its absence. A stimulus that modifies behavior in this manner is either a discriminative stimulus (Sd) or stimulus delta (S-delta). Stimulus-based control of behavior occurs when the presence or absence of an Sd or S-delta controls the performance of a particular behavior. For example, the presence of a stop sign (S-delta) at a traffic intersection alerts the driver to stop driving and increases the probability that "braking" behavior will occur. Such behavior is said to be emitted because it does not force the behavior to occur since stimulus control is a direct result of historical reinforcement contingencies, as opposed to reflexive behavior that is said to be elicited through respondent conditioning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Ferster</span>

Charles Bohris Ferster was an American behavioral psychologist. A pioneer of applied behavior analysis, he developed errorless learning and was a colleague of B.F. Skinner's at Harvard University, co-authoring the book Schedules of Reinforcement (1957).

The behavioral analysis of child development originates from John B. Watson's behaviorism.

Psychological behaviorism is a form of behaviorism — a major theory within psychology which holds that generally human behaviors are learned — proposed by Arthur W. Staats. The theory is constructed to advance from basic animal learning principles to deal with all types of human behavior, including personality, culture, and human evolution. Behaviorism was first developed by John B. Watson (1912), who coined the term "behaviorism," and then B. F. Skinner who developed what is known as "radical behaviorism." Watson and Skinner rejected the idea that psychological data could be obtained through introspection or by an attempt to describe consciousness; all psychological data, in their view, was to be derived from the observation of outward behavior. The strategy of these behaviorists was that the animal learning principles should then be used to explain human behavior. Thus, their behaviorisms were based upon research with animals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A. Charles Catania</span> American psychologist

Anthony Charles Catania is an American researcher in behavior analysis known for his theoretical, experimental, and applied work. He is an Emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where he taught and conducted research for 35 years prior to his retirement in 2008. He received a B.A. (1957) and M.A. (1958) at Columbia University in Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology at Harvard University in 1961. He remained at Harvard to conduct research as a postdoctoral researcher in B. F. Skinner's laboratory. Prior to his career at UMBC, he held a faculty position for nearly a decade at New York University (NYU).

References

  1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism#cite_note-1Staddon, J. E. R. (1975). Learning as adaptation. In W. K. Estes (Ed.), Handbook of learning and cognitive processes (Vol. 2, pp. 37-98). New York: Erlbaum.
  2. ↑ Staddon, John (2014) The New Behaviorism (2nd edition) Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.
  3. ↑ Staddon, J. The Englishman: memoirs of a psychobiologist University of Buckingham Press, 2016.
  4. ↑ Segal, E. F (1970) "Induction and the provenance of operants". In R. M Gilbert & J. R. Millenson (eds.) Reinforcement: Behavioral Analyses Academic Press.
  5. ↑ E.g., Staddon, J. E. R. (Ed.) (1980). Limits to action: The allocation of individual behavior. New York: Academic Press.
  6. ↑ Ettinger, R. H., Reid. A. K., & Staddon, J. E. R. (1987) Sensitivity to molar feedback functions: A test of molar optimality theory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 13, 366-375.
  7. ↑ Staddon, J. E. R. (2007) Is animal learning optimal? In A. Bejan & G. W. Merkx (Eds.) Constructal theory of social dynamics. Springer Verlag, pp. 161-167.
  8. ↑ Pringle, J. W. S. (1951). On the parallel between learning and evolution. Behaviour, 3, 174-215.
  9. ↑ Russell, W. M. S. (1961) Evolutionary concepts in behavioral science: III. The evolution of behavior in the individual animal, and the principle of combinatorial selection. General Systems, 6, 51-92.
  10. ↑ Skinner, B. F. The phylogeny and ontogeny of behavior. Science, 1966, 153, 1205-1213
  11. ↑ McDowell, J. J. (2013). A quantitative evolutionary theory of adaptive behavior dynamics. Psychological Review, Vol. 120, No. 4, 731–750.
  12. ↑ Edelman, G. Neural Darwinism https://www.webofstories.com/play/gerald.edelman/37;jsessionid=4B59A75EAF082B9FF369CB6D98C19671
  13. ↑ Simen, Patrick; Cohen, Jonathan D. (24 November 2009). "Explicit melioration by a neural diffusion model". Brain Research. 1299: 95–117. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2009.07.017. ISSN   0006-8993. PMC   2763966 . PMID   19646968.
  14. ↑ Staddon & Simmelhag (1971). pp. 23 et seq.
  15. ↑ Foundation, B. F. Skinner (22 March 2016). "Science and Human Behavior, Chapter 6: Shaping and Maintaining Operant Behavior, Quote 1". B. F. Skinner Foundation. Retrieved 19 June 2023.
  16. ↑ Staddon, J. E. R., & Simmelhag, V. L. The “superstition” experiment: a reexamination of its implications for the principles of adaptive behavior. Psychological Review,1971, 78, 3-43.
  17. ↑ , W. & Lucas, G. A. (1985) The basis of superstitions behavior: chance contingency, stimulus substitution, or appetitive behavior? Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 44, 276-299
  18. ↑ Stade, George (1973). "K. Lorenz, and the Dog beneath the Skin". The Hudson Review. 26 (1): 60–86. doi:10.2307/3856915. ISSN   0018-702X. JSTOR   3856915.
  19. ↑ Estes, W. K., & Skinner, B. F. Some quantitative properties of anxiety. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1941, 29, 390-400.
  20. ↑ Zilio, Diego; Carrara, Kester, eds. (2021). Contemporary Behaviorisms in Debate. Springer. p. 91. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-77395-3. ISBN   978-3-030-77394-6. S2CID   243563565.
  21. ↑ Staddon, John (2017). "Theoretical behaviorism". Behavior and Philosophy. 45: 26–44. ISSN   1053-8348. JSTOR   90018262.
  22. ↑ "Behaviorism and Mental Life". Ebrary. Retrieved 19 June 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.