Behaviorism - A study (Part 1)

When we think about Radical behaviorism, we remember two prominent theorists, J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner. The idea of behaviorism was introduced by John B. Watson. According to him, psychology should be concerned only with the objective data of behavior. Skinner believed that behavior could be fully understood in terms of environmental cues and results. His black box metaphor of behaviorism he consider Learner as a black box and nothing is known about what goes on inside. Knowing what’s inside is us not essential for determining how behavior is governed by its environmental antecedents and consequences. For him learning as more or less permanent change in behavior that can be detected by observing over a period of time. He distinguished two classes of behavior, respondent and operant.

Respondent behavior from Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiments refers to behavior that is elicited involuntarily in reaction to stimulus. Dog’s salivating to food is an example. But operant behavior is emitted by organism. Student raising his hand is an example. As per skinner’s argument, a dog will vary its behavior if it got a stung by the bee when put its nose in a bees nest.

Behavior is more likely to reoccur if it has been rewarded, or reinforced. Similarly response is less likely to occur again if its consequence has been aversive.

Skinner says that, contingent stimulus determines what happens to the response, whether it is reinforced or lost.

(Psychology of Learning for Instruction Marcy P. Driscoll, 06/14/2006 10:30 pm)