Basic Psychology: Behaviorism

 Contents

Behaviorism is a method of studying human and animal behaviour in a methodical way. It is assumed that behaviour is either a reflex elicited by the combination of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a result of the individual's history, particularly reinforcement and punishment contingencies, as well as the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviourists acknowledge the importance of heredity in shaping behaviour, they place a greater emphasis on environmental factors.

It incorporates philosophical, methodological, and theoretical elements. Behaviorism arose in the early 1900s as a reaction to depth psychology and other traditional forms of psychology, which often struggled to make predictions that could be tested experimentally, but it was based on earlier research from the late 1800s, such as Edward Thorndike's pioneering of the law of effect, a procedure that used consequences to strengthen or weaken behaviour.

Varieties

The following are some of the names given to the various branches of behaviourism:

• Behavioral genetics: Francis Galton, a relative of Charles Darwin, proposed behavioural genetics in 1869.
• Interbehaviorism: Jacob Robert Kantor proposed interbehaviorism before B. F. Skinner's publications. 
• Methodological behaviourism: According to John B. Watson's behaviourism, only public occurrences (individual motor behaviours) may be objectively observed. Thoughts and feelings were still acknowledged, but they were not considered part of the science of conduct.  In the 1970s and early 1980s, it also created the theoretical groundwork for early approach behaviour change. Unlike the preceding behaviorisms of Skinner, Hull, and Tolman, 
• Psychological behaviorism: Psychological behaviourism was founded on a programme of human research incorporating diverse aspects of human behaviour, as presented by Arthur W. Staats. Psychological behaviourism proposes new learning ideas. Humans learn not only from animals, but also from specific human learning principles. These concepts are based on humans' exceptional ability to learn. Humans develop repertoires that help them master new skills. As a result, human learning is cumulative. That skill is demonstrated by no other animal, making humans unique.
• Radical behaviorism: Skinner's philosophy is an extension of Watson's form of behaviourism in that it theorises that internal processes within the organism—particularly private events like thoughts and feelings—are also part of the science of behaviour, and that environmental variables control these internal events in the same way that they control observable behaviours. Despite the fact that private events are not visible to others, they are later defined by the species' overt behaviour. The underlying idea of behaviour analysis is radical behaviourism. Many of radical behaviorism's theories were employed by Willard Van Orman Quine in his study of knowledge and language. 
• Teleological behaviorism: Post-Skinnerian, purposive, and close to microeconomics, as proposed by Howard Rachlin. Rather than cognitive processes, it focuses on objective observation.
• Theoretical behaviorism: J. E. R. Staddon's theoretical behaviourism introduces the concept of internal state to account for the impacts of context. A state, according to theoretical behaviourism, is a collection of equivalent histories, or past events in which members of the same stimulus class produce members of the same response class (i.e., B. F. Skinner's operant notion). As a result, conditioned stimuli appear to regulate neither stimulus nor response, but rather state. Skinner's class-based (generic) definition of the operant is logically extended in theoretical behaviourism.

As the intellectual underpinning of the experimental investigation of behaviour, B. F. Skinner offered radical behaviourism. This perspective differs from other approaches to behavioural research in a variety of ways, but most importantly, it contrasts with methodological behaviourism in that it accepts feelings, states of mind, and introspection as behaviours that may be studied scientifically. It rejects the reflex as a model of all behaviour, as does methodological behaviourism, and defends behaviour science as a supplement to but distinct from physiology. Other western philosophical systems, such as American pragmatism, have a lot of commonality with radical behaviourism.

Although throughout his career, John B. Watson emphasised his methodological behaviourism, Watson and Rosalie Rayner conducted the famous Little Albert experiment (1920), in which Ivan Pavlov's theory of respondent conditioning was first applied to elicit a fearful reflex of crying in a human infant, and this became the launching point for understanding covert behaviour (or private events) in radical behaviourism. Skinner, on the other hand, believed that aversive stimuli should only be tested on animals, and he chastised Watson for testing something so contentious on a human.

Skinner studied the emotions of two pigeons in 1959, observing that their feathers ruffled, making them appear angry. The pigeons were placed in an operant chamber together, where they became hostile due to past reinforcement in the environment. When Skinner turned off the green light after stimulus control and subsequent discrimination training, the pigeons realised that the food reinforcer was no longer available after each peck and responded without antagonism. Skinner came to the conclusion that humans, like other animals, learn hostility and experience such emotions (as well as other private events).

Experimental and conceptual innovations

The success of Skinner's early experimental work with rats and pigeons, documented in his works The Behavior of Organisms] and Schedules of Reinforcement, bolstered this essentially philosophical perspective.  His concept of the operant response, of which the canonical example was the rat's lever-press, was particularly important. An operant is a group of structurally diverse but functionally comparable reactions, as opposed to a physiological or reflex response. While a rat may press a lever with its left paw, right paw, or tail, all of these responses have the same effect on the world and result in the same result. Individuals differ, but the class coheres in its function-shared consequences with operants and reproductive success with species, as operants are often conceived of as species of responses. Between Skinner's theory and S–R theory, there is an obvious distinction.

The success of Skinner's early experimental work with rats and pigeons, documented in his works The Behavior of Organisms and Schedules of Reinforcement, bolstered this essentially philosophical perspective.  His concept of the operant response, of which the canonical example was the rat's lever-press, was particularly important. An operant is a group of structurally diverse but functionally comparable reactions, as opposed to a physiological or reflex response. While a rat may press a lever with its left paw, right paw, or tail, all of these responses have the same effect on the world and result in the same result. His conceptual analysis gained some credence as a result of this. It was mostly his conceptual analysis that set him apart from his peers, as evidenced by his important essay Are Theories of Learning Necessary?, in which he attacks what he saw as typical theoretical flaws in the study of psychology at the time. The Society for Quantitative Analysis of Behavior is an important descendant of experimental behaviour analysis.

Relation to language

With his 1957 book Verbal Behavior and other language-related publications, Skinner turned away from experimental work to focus on the philosophical underpinnings of a science of behaviour. Verbal Behavior laid out a vocabulary and theory for functional analysis of verbal behaviour, and was harshly criticised in a review by Noam Chomsky.

Skinner did not react in length, but argued that Chomsky did not comprehend his concepts, and the differences between the two, as well as the theories involved, were examined further. The controversial innateness theory opposes behaviourist theory, which maintains that language is a collection of habits that may be learned through training. Some argue that the behaviourist account is too slow to describe a complex phenomenon like language learning. The connection between language and overt behaviour was more significant for a behaviorist's interpretation of human behaviour than language acquisition. Skinner proposed in an essay included in his 1969 book Contingencies of Reinforcement that people could design language stimuli that would allow them to gain control over their behaviour in the same manner that external stimuli did. Because of the possibility of such "instructional control" over behaviour, reinforcement contingencies would not necessarily elicit the same effects on human behaviour as they do in other animals. As a result, the focus of a radical behaviourist analysis of human behaviour shifted to an attempt to understand the interaction between instructional control and contingency control, as well as the behavioural processes that determine what instructions are constructed and how much control they have over behaviour.

Education

Behaviourism is a school of thought that focuses on one type of learning: a change in external behaviour achieved via the use of reinforcement and repetition (Rote learning) to modify learners' behaviour. When the use of reinforcement was applied, Skinner discovered that behaviours could be shaped. Desired behaviour is rewarded, whereas undesirable behaviour is not. Bringing behaviourism into the classroom allows teachers to help their pupils achieve academic and personal success. This technique of instruction was known as the audio-lingual method in the field of language learning, and it was characterised by the entire class using choral chanting of key words, dialogues, and prompt correction.

The "teacher" is the dominating person in the classroom and has entire authority, and the teacher is the one who judges what is acceptable and wrong in the behaviourist view of learning. Within the learning process, the student is not given any opportunities for review or reflection; instead, they are simply taught what is correct or wrong. This approach to learning could be considered "superficial," because it focuses on exterior changes in behaviour and ignores the internal processes of learning that lead to behaviour change, as well as the emotions that are involved in the process.

Operant conditioning

B.F. Skinner created operant conditioning in 1937 to deal with the manipulation of environmental circumstances in order to influence behaviour. In other words, historical consequential contingencies, such as reinforcement—a stimulus that increases the likelihood of executing behaviors—and punishment—a stimulus that diminishes such likelihood—control behaviour. Consequences are either positive (providing stimuli after a response) or negative (presenting stimuli after a response) (withdrawn stimuli following a response).

The principles of four typical types of consequences in operant conditioning are explained in the following explanations.

1. Positive reinforcement: To reinforce desired actions, provide a stimulus that an individual appreciates, seeks, or needs. When teaching a dog to sit, for example, the command "sit" is paired with a treat. The reward is a form of positive reinforcement for the seated behaviour. The key to achieving positive reinforcement is to reward the behaviour as soon as possible.
2. Negative reinforcement: Taking away a stimulus that a person does not like to promote desired behaviour. A child, for example, despises being nagged to clean his room. His mother reinforces his room cleaning by removing the unfavourable stimulus of nagging after he has completed the task. Applying sunscreen before going outside is another example. The negative impact is being sunburned, hence the activity in this situation is putting on sunscreen to avoid the stimulus of getting sunburned.
3. Positive punishment: To reduce unwanted actions, provide a stimulus that an individual does not want. Spanking is a good example of this. If a child does something for which they have been warned, the parent may slap them. The spanking would be the undesirable stimulus, and by adding this stimulation, the purpose is to prevent that behaviour. The key to this strategy is that, despite the term, the meaning of positive in this context is "to add to." As a result, the parent provides the negative stimulus to halt the activity (spanking). The major issue with this sort of training is that it usually teaches the learner to avoid the punisher rather than learning the desired behaviour.
4. Negative punishment: Removing a stimulus that a person enjoys in order to reduce unwanted behaviour. Grounding a child for failing a test is an example of this. In this case, grounding entails removing the child's ability to play video games. This is negative punishment as long as it is apparent that the opportunity to play video games was taken away because they failed a test. The connection between the behaviour and the outcome of the behaviour is crucial.

The Skinner Box, also known as the "puzzle box" or operant conditioning chamber, is a classic operant conditioning experiment used to evaluate the effects of operant conditioning principles on rats, cats, and other animals. Skinner discovered that if rats were provided with food on a regular basis, they learned far more efficiently. Skinner also found that he could change the rats' behaviour through the use of rewards, which might, in turn, be applied to human learning as well.

In contrast to responder conditioning, where antecedent stimuli evoke reflexive response, operant activity is just emitted and hence does not force its occurrence. The following controlled stimuli are included:

• Discriminative stimulus (Sd): An antecedent stimulation that encourages an organism to engage in a behaviour. This happened in Skinner's laboratory, for example. When the green light (Sd) appeared, it prompted the pigeon to peck because it had learned in the past that pecking resulted in food being offered (the positive reinforcing stimulus).
• Stimulus delta a (S-delta): An antecedent stimulus that instructs the organism not to repeat a behaviour that has previously been suppressed or punished. One famous example is when a driver comes to a complete stop as soon as the traffic light turns red (S-delta). However, if the person chooses to go past the red light but then receives a speeding ticket (the positive punitive stimulus), the behaviour is unlikely to recur once the S-delta is present.

Respondent conditioning

Although operant conditioning is the most commonly discussed behavioural mechanism, responder conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or classical conditioning) is a significant behavior-analytic process that does not require mental or other internal processes to be considered. The most well-known example of the classical conditioning process is Pavlov's work with dogs. The dog was initially given meat to eat (an unconditioned stimulus, or UCS, is a stimulus that normally elicits an uncontrollable response), which resulted in increased salivation (unconditioned response, UCR, which means that a response is naturally caused by UCS).  Following that, the dog was given a bell ring as well as food. Despite the fact that the bell ring was a neutral stimulus (NS, meaning it had no impact), the dog began to salivate after a few pairs. The neutral stimulus (bell ring) was eventually conditioned. As a result, salivation was triggered as a conditioned response (the same as an unconditioned response), and it was paired with meat (the conditioned stimulus). Although Pavlov postulated some possible physiological processes involved in classical conditioning, they have yet to be validated. The concept of classical conditioning aided behaviourist John Watson in discovering the key process underlying how humans learn their actions, which is the discovery of a natural reflex that creates the desired behaviour.

In philosophy

In contrast to philosophy of mind, behaviourism is a psychological movement. The study of behaviour should be a natural science, such as chemistry or physics, according to behaviorism's primary principle. Initially, behaviourism rejected any reference to hypothetical inner states of creatures as reasons of their behaviour, but radical behaviourism argued for the study of thoughts and feelings as behaviours susceptible to the same mechanisms as exterior behaviour. Behaviorism looks at behaviour from a functional standpoint. 

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.

Law of effect and trace conditioning

Behavior analysis has become more common as massive behavioural data and applications have grown in popularity. Understanding behaviour from the perspective of informatics and computing is becoming increasingly important for a comprehensive understanding of what, why, and how behaviours are generated, interact, evolve, change, and influence business and decision-making. Behavior informatics and behaviour computing are two terms that are used interchangeably.  investigate behaviour intelligence and behavioural insights from the perspectives of informatics and computing.

Criticisms and limitations