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Contributions of behaviorism
Contributions of behaviorism
B.F. Skinner discusses Operant Conditioning
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Background and Description of Behaviorism in Relation to Learning
The background of behaviorism is associated with many scientists. Behaviorism started back in 400 BC with Aristotle. Aristotle believed in association and that "the objects being associated are similar, or opposite, or near each other". Then, behaviorism came into play with Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist. He studied the behavior of dogs and how they would salivating (conditioned reflex) when shown just the food dish without food (conditioned stimulus or conditioned response). Next, John B. Watson wrote a book called Behavior, where he described psychology as the process where behavior can be predicted and controlled. Watson also studied how learning can be achieved through a repeated stimulus and specific responses. Edward Thorndike described behaviorism as "a description of a man’s mind is that it is his connection system, adapting the responses of thought, feeling, and action that he makes to the situation that he meets". Thorndike also studied how the "law of effect" and "law of exercise" affects a person’s learning abilities. In other words, if an individual is positively reinforced, without punishment, and if a stimulus was followed by a response with repeated practice, stronger learning would take place. One of the main behaviorist that will be discussed is B.F. Skinner.
Skinner studied what individuals "do and don’t do" in relation to behavior. He also believed that the actions that people take are in response to whatever happened to them in their past. Skinner came up with the idea of "operant conditioning". In operant conditioning, the organism’s behavior (response) is controlled by the use of positive reinforcement (stimulus) (Behaviorism As a ...
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Nnedu, Cordelia. (1997, November 19) Auburn University: Educational Foundations, Leaderships, and Technology. EM 600 Behaviorism. Retrieved on October 29, 1999 from the World Wide Web: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/eflt/beh.html
Ormrod, Jeanne, E. (1995). Human Learning. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Shrock, Sharon, A.(1995). A Brief History of Instructional Development. In G. Anglin (Ed.), Instructional technology: Past, Present and Future (p. 15-16). Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc.
White, Andy. (1995) Theorist of Behaviorism. Retrieved on October 29, 1999 from the World Wide Web: http://www.coe.missouri.edu/~t377/btheorists.html
UHCL Home Page: Behaviorism As A Learning Theory. (1995, June 13) Retrieved on October 29, 1999 from the World Wide Web: http://inst.cl.uh.edu/inst5931/Behaviorism.html
One of the seven duties is the Chief of State, this role is very important to the citizens in America and even in foreign countries to see that the leader of our country is a genuine, caring person. Th...
Bachata is a creolized music, meaning that there is both European and African influence. It is also a descendent of a few different Dominican Republic and Cuban forms of music – primarily son, but also merengue and ranchera. Son is music of the African diaspora, commonly involved in debates of African retention. Elements of African music, such as call-and-response and preference for polyrhythm survived the middle passage and are deeply rooted in Caribbean tradition. Stringed instruments are believed to have been part of the European influence on the area, as well as harmonic patterns, as well as verse-chorus structure and prominent duple meter. Modern groups consist of two electric acoustic guitars, an electric bass guitar, a guira (A Dominican Republic percussion instrument), and bongos (Hutchinson). Bachata is thought to have originated in the rural areas, being the music of choice at rural friendly gatherings, similar to son’s roots. Bachata then migrated to the cities with the impoverished as they looked for work. With this move the music transformed into something entirely different from its romantic, seren...
...ds, ‘Boleros’, Dominican merengue and more recently, modern genres favored by youth, such as Rap and Reggaeton. This last one, originated in Puerto Rico and rapidly became popular worldwide. Puerto Rican music has had and still has a projection with internationally renowned artists, while still developing through educational institutions and programs that promote it.
In New York, Puerto Rican musical traditions evolved in accordance with societal change. This was necessary in a society, as Glasser describes “where Puerto Ricans lived among a constellation of constantly changing ethnic groups within a protean social environment”(Glasser, 7). In Puerto Rico there are diverse groups, with different traditions of politics, economics, and music. When Puerto Ricans migrate to the United States, they unite under an identity as “Puerto Ricans” but there is still diversity within. Furthermore, I believe it is the Ameri...
Behaviorism is a foundational theory in the world of psychology. However, behaviorism though it was a flourishing influential idea during the beginnings of psychology, it suffered a decline when other aspects of scientific research entered the psychology practice. Behaviorism was the scientific study of behavior. A plethora of great thinkers have made their marks with discoveries in behaviorism but B.F. Skinner was one of the most influential thinkers during the decline of behaviorism and the rise of experimental psychology.
Bachata originated from the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century. During dictator Trujillo’s rule, Merengue was the official music to the nation. Because many Dominicans did not accept their African roots, their dances and rhythms were oppressed. Bachata, with its African influences, was considered crude and lower class, only played by campesinos- peasants. It was only popular in the rural parts of the Dominican Republic. However beginning in the early 60s, bachata was steady becoming tolerated, and eventually loved. (Pacini)
Behaviorism is a branch of psychology that has a theoretical approach that gives emphasis to the study of behavior in place of the subject of the mind or the physiological correlates of one's behavior. Behavior is the externally visible response to a stimulus of an animal or human (Weidman). B.F. Skinner is one of the most prominent psychologists of the study of behaviorism. Skinner was on the advance of behaviorism. B.F. Skinner created a group of theories that set out to prove that subjective impetus is not what behavior in humans and animals is so much based on but that behavior is more based on possible reward received and chastisement applied to the animal or human (Newsmakers). Skinner entered into the branch of behaviorism in the 1920s. Behaviorism was still a fairly new branch to psychology at this time. However, Skinner's experiments in his libratory were broadly consideration to be electrifying and ground-breaking, illuminating an knowledge of human behavior and logistics (Newsmakers). Skinner called such behavior based on possible reward received and chastisement that was followed by the repetition of that behavior operant.
The school of psychological thought that B.F. Skinner is most well known for is that of behaviorism. Behaviorism is the psychological theory that individuals are born as blank slates, and that all actions are essentially learned responses to environmental stimuli. Before Skinner, behaviorism had its roots in scientists and psychologists such as John Watson, Ivan Pavlov, and Edward Thorndike. Their theories and experiments of conditioning responses to external stimuli based on other stimuli were very convincing to Skinner, who began developing the school of behaviorism into an applicable ideology.
Behaviorism is a theory that states that humans and animals can be explained in terms of their behavior without reference to their thoughts and feelings. How a person behaves tells us about the person and thoughts and feelings are meaningless without outward expression. There are two kinds of behaviorism that I will discuss in this essay, Psychological Behaviorism and Logical Behaviorism.
6. Kieter, Richard. “On the Front Line: Law enforcement views on the Death Penalty.” Feb. 1995. http://www.essential.org/dpic/dpic.r03.html (5 Feb. 1999).
Many psychologists have contributed to behaviorism becoming the approach that is today. Behaviorism was first presented by the American psychologist John B.Watson. The new concept that Watson presented perceived behavior as a physiological response to environmental stimuli. He disagreed with the belief that mental processes could not be studied scientifically (Behaviorism, 2013). Watson sought to make psychology “a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science,” with conditioning as one of its chief methods (Irvine, 2007). Watson took an extreme standpoint on environmentalism and stated that personality can be created (Irvine, 2007).
Traditional herbal medicine comes from many different areas of the world (Indian, Chinese, African, Western, Native American herbs, Ayurvedic and other indigenous medicines) and in most all of them they are still b...
Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of the mind. Behavior can be described and explained without making reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind). Behaviorism is a doctrine, or a set of doctrines, about human and nonhuman animal behavior. An important component of many psychological theories in the late nineteenth century were introspection, the study of the mind by analysis of one's own thought processes. It was in reaction to this trend that behaviorism arose, claiming that the causes of behavior need not be sought in the depths of the mind but could be observed in the immediate environment, in stimuli that elicited, reinforced, and punished certain responses. The explanation, in other words, lay in learning, the process whereby behavior changes in response to the environment. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that the scientist began to uncover the actual mechanism of learning, thereby laying the theoretical foundation for behaviorism. The contributions of four particular scientists are Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, Edward Lee Thorndike, and B.F. Skinner.
“Behavior theory consists of ideas about how human actions and emotions develop, are sustained, and are extinguished through principles of learning” (Walsh, 2010). Positive and negative reinforcement is used to help manipulate the behaviors of the individual. The theory has been used to help eliminate unwanted behaviors. In addition, behavior theory has been use primarily with children, and persons with developmental disabilities. According to Walsh (2010) behavior theory evolved in the 1960s from a field of philosophy to the field of science. Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning, which plays a major role in behavioral theory. Classical conditioning is the process of learning through ones surroundings, conditioned, and unconditioned stimuli and response. B. F. Skinner discovered operant conditioning the process of learning to influence the future responses to the environment (Clark, 2004). The two concepts has been used throughout the behavior theory to help assist clients with unacceptable behaviors that is occurring. The combination of the two concepts has been a very helpful aspect to the behavior theory. Both concepts offer a different approach or solution to the behavior of the client.
Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be researched scientifically without recourse to inner mental states. It is a form of materialism, denying any independent significance for mind. Its significance for psychological treatment has been profound, making it one of the pillars of pharmacological therapy. One of the assumptions of behaviorist thought is that free will is illusory, and that all behavior is determined by the environment either through association or reinforcement.