The Behavioral Learning Theory

What is it?

Behavioral Learning theory attempts to formulate explanations of learning that focus on external events as the cause of changes in observable behaviors.

Advocates and Theorists

The famous theorists are By B.F. Skinner, Ivan Pavlov.

B.F Skinner;

He was born on March, 20, 1904. Died on August 18, 1990. In his childhood, as a boy he enjoyed in building and inventing things. He received a B.A. in English literature In 1926 from Hamilton College, and spent some time as a struggling writer before discovering the writings of Watson and Pavlov. Inspired by these works, Skinner decided to abandon his career as a novelist and entered the psychology graduate program at Harvard University. In 1945, B.F. Skinner moved to Bloomington, Indiana and became Psychology Department Chair and the University of Indiana. In 1948, he joined the psychology department at Harvard University where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known for operant conditioning and schedules of reinforcement.

Click this link to know more about B.F Skinner Childhood and Early career

Theory formulation

Project Pigeon

In 1936, then 32 years old, Skinner married Yvonne Blue and the couple moved to Minnesota where Skinner had his first teaching job.

Busy with teaching and his new family, he did little to advance the science he had started. But that was to change with the war. In 1944 World War II was in full swing. Airplanes and bombs were common, but there were no missile guidance systems. Anxious to help, Skinner sought funding for a top secret project to train pigeons to guide bombs. Working intently, he trained pigeons to keep pecking a target that would hold a missile onto a target. The pigeons pecked reliably, even when falling rapidly and working with warlike noise all around them. While Project Pigeon was discontinued (because of another top secret project unknown to Skinner - radar), the work was useful. Pigeons behave more rapidly than rats, allowing more rapid discoveries of the effect of new contingencies. As Skinner put it, "the research that I described in The Behavior of Organisms appeared in a new light. It was no longer merely an experimental analysis. It had given rise to a technology." Skinner never again worked with rats. Skinner described Project Pigeon in an article with the same name. The article is in Cumulative Record.

Ivan Pavlov

A Russian Physiologist who was trying to determine how long it took a dog to secret digestive juices after it had been fed. Ivan Pavlov was a Russian psychologist famous for his concept of "conditioned reflex," conditioning a responsive behavior through repetition. His now famous experiment trained a hungry dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, which he had previously associated with food. His findings not only greatly influenced science, but also popular culture.  

(born Sept. 14 [Sept. 26, New Style], 1849, Ryazan, Russia—died Feb. 27, 1936, Leningrad [now St. Petersburg]) Russian physiologist known chiefly for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex. In a now-classic experiment, he trained a hungry dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, which was previously associated with the sight of food. He developed a similar conceptual approach, emphasizing the importance of conditioning, in his pioneering studies relating human behaviour to the nervous system. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for his work on digestive secretions.

Theory Formulation

Dog Experiment

The three important words in this theory are Stimuli, Behavior and Response.

At first, the dogs salivated as expected while they were being fed. Then the dogs began to salivate as soon as they show the food and then as soon as they heard the scientists working towards the lab/ ring of a bell.

Classical Conditioning:

It is association of automatic responses with new stimuli. It was discovered in the 1920s by Ivan Pavlov. Through the process of classical conditioning, humans and animals can be trained to react involuntarily to a stimulus that previously had no effect – or a very different effect – on them.

Application in Learning and Teaching (Classical Conditioning)

1.      Associate positive, pleasant events with learning tasks.

Eg. Encouraging group competition and cooperation over individual competiton.

2.      Help students to risk-anxiety producing situations voluntarily and successfully.

Eg. 1.Give ungraded tests often daily and weekly to students who tend to “freeze” in test situations.

-         If the student is afraid of speaking in front of class, let the student to read a report to a small group while seated, then read it while standing, then give the report from notes instead of reading it from verbatim. Next, move in stages toward having a student giving report to the whole class.

3.      Help students to recognize differences and similarities among situations so they can discriminate and generalize appropriately.

Eg. Assure students who are anxious about taking college entrance exams that this test is like all the other achievement tests they have taken.

Basic assumptions of behavioral learning theory;

1.      Learning is the acquisition of new behavior through conditioning.

2.      Learning is manifested by a change in behavior.

3.      The environment shapes behavior.

4.      The principles of contiguity and reinforcement are central to explaining the learning process. (the difficult things are learned by stage by stage)

Application in Learning and Teaching

B.F Skinner’s Operant Conditioning:

Not all human learning is so unintentional and not all behaviors are so automatic. People actively “operate” on their environment. These deliberate actions are called operants. The learning process involved in operant behavior is called operant conditioning because we learn to behave in certain ways as we operate on the environment.

Skinner began with belief that the principles of classical conditioning account for only small portion of learned behaviors. Many human behaviors are operants, no respondents. Classical conditioning only describes how existing responses can be paired with new stimuli: it does not explain how new operant behaviors are occurred.

Operant Conditioning: Learning in which voluntary behavior is strengthened or weakened by consequences or antecedents

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Assumptions for Operant Conditioning:

1.      Voluntary responses are strengthened or weakened as a result of their consequences

2.      Reinforcement of the behavior by a reward or a punishment

Operant Conditioning Concepts:

Reinforcement

The process of reinforcement is as;

Behavior                       Reinforcer                                Strengthened or repeated behavior      CONSEQUENCE                                        EFFECT

 

Positive reinforcement

Strengthening (increasing) a behavior by presenting a positive stimulus immediately after the behavior has occurred.

Negative reinforcement

Strengthening (increasing) a behavior by removing a negative stimulus immediately after the behavior has occurred.

Punishment:  Process that weakens or suppresses behavior. The process of punishment is as;

Behavior                       Punisher                                   Weakened or decreased behavior      CONSEQUENCE                                        EFFECT

 

Using punishment

1.      Try to structure the situation so that you can use negative reinforcement rather than punishment.

2.      If you do use punishment – keep it mild and brief – then pair it doing with right thing.

3.      Focus on student’s action not on student’s personal qualities.

4.      Adapt the punishment to the infraction.

5.      Be consistent in the application of punishment.

Figure shows Kinds of Reinforcement and Punishment.

Behavioral Approaches to Teaching

1. It is a system for specifying the learning objectives

2. Direct Instruction

3. Group consequences

4. Contingency contracts

5. Token reinforcement

1. Breaking down the skills and information to be learned into small units.

2. Checking student's work regularly and providing feedback as well as encouragement (reinforcement).

3. Teaching "out of context." Behaviorists generally believe that students can be taught best when the focus is directly on the content to be taught.

4.  Direct or "teacher centered" instruction.

-Lectures, tutorials, drills, demonstrations, and other forms of teacher controlled teaching tend to dominate behavioral classrooms.

                           (Major Types Programs – Grab and Grab 2004)

B.F Skinner’s Schedules of Reinforcement:

Selection of Reinforcers;

Premeck Principle named after David Premeck (1965) – Grandma’s Rule

Premeck Principle: It states that a more-preferred activity can serve as a reinforcer for a less-preferred activity.

Why Behaviourism is criticized as a Learning Theory?

Behavavioural Learning theories/ methods are stimulus response associationist theories and methods in general. This can well be interpreted as learning in terms of the change in behavior of the learner brought about by the association of the response to a series of stimuli. The exponents who supported this theory are;

1)      Edward L.Thorndike (1874-1949)

2)      John B. Watson (1878-1958)

3)      Evan Petrovich Pavlov (1935-1949)

4)      Burhus Frederic Skinner (1904)

The modern educationists and thinkers of socio-cultural learning theory and cognitive learning theory leveled the following criticisms against behavioural learning methods adopting in class rooms.

1)      When we only use behavioral methods in classrooms it only assumes that outcome of learning is change in behavior and it emphasize the effects of external events on the individuals. Eventhough thinking, intentions and other internal mental events can not been seen or studied rigorously and scientifically, they have utmost effect on the learning process. (the ignorance of “mentalisms”) and therefore, internalized reasoning may not be an outcome. For example, a student might act respectful but he/she might not show respect to teachers and parents.

2)      2) In Behavioural learning theories great philosopher Aristotle’s Assumption principles of contiguity is not very realistic in some times. According to Aristotle it is easy to remember and learn when two events are associated and this can be done through repeated pairing. This method may ignore the application of knowledge and may restrict the ability of thinking in the children.

3)      3) Again E.P Pavlov’s classical conditioning prepositions are not very applicable in modern arena. Through process of classical conditioning, humans and animals can be trained to react involuntarily to a stimulus that previously had no effect. Therefore, more chances of students learning bad behaviours from this.

4)      4) Adopting behavioral learning methods in classes also create white coat syndrome. The phrase “white coat syndrome” is used to illustrate the stress, anxiety and tension among learners. It is reported that behavioural learning methods in class rooms sometimes creates sweat palms, trembling of hands etc...

5)      I believe fear, love and hatred towards different subjects are created through conditioning. For instance, a mathematics teacher, with his defective methods of teaching or improper behavior may be disliked by students. If he, (without caring to know the basic reason) always rebukes and punishes the child while assessing his assignments, the child gradually begins to fear his assignments gradually.

The fear of extinction

6)       In reinforcement principles (positive and negative reinforcement and punishments) there is the fear of extinction. In classical conditioning the conditioned response is extinguished (disappears) when the conditioned stimulus appears, but the unconditioned stimulus does not follow (tone, but no food). In operant conditioning, a person or an animal will not persist in certain behavior if the usual reinforces is withheld long enough. The behavior will eventually be extinguished (stop). For example, if you repeatedly-email a professor but never get a reply, you may give up. Similarly if your teacher asks to attend for an evening classes on all Tuesdays a week, but if she repeatedly did not turn up, then even you may not turn up. Removal of reinforcement altogether leads to extinction.

7)       Again antecedents (events proceeding behavior) may lead to unpleasant consequences as positive consequences. Skinner only tested the pecking of pigeon when the light is on. But when the light is off, the experiment was not tested.  For instance, if the child was trained only to use pencils in writing at lower grades and higher grades altogether, then the child will think writing with pen is prohibited even in higher grades. 

8)      In behaviorism, more chance for learners in adapting to a poor environment. For instance, a student adapts to a classroom where other students’ behaviors are negative and destructive to the learning environment.

9)      Another limitation in Behaviorism is Behavior measured may not be a true picture of understanding. For instance, taking a true or false test with the assurance of retaking it until the student gets it right can lead to guessing for the correct answers. 

10)  Last but not least the Behaviorists approach in learning is more conventional and old and restricts the cognitive aspects of learning – the student is not made aware about using his/her thinking and students who learn in this methods lacks reasoning and critical thinking.

To sum up, what Bandura had said supporting social learning theories and observational learning, i.e. we all may know more than what we show is the major criticism in using behavioral learning methods in class rooms?