week 4 behaviourism

Learning TheoryBEHAVIOURISM

Syamsul Nor Azlan Mohamad

ADE605 Theory & Approaches in Art Education

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students will be able to:

1. define learning

2. understand the behavioral theories of learning by

Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike and Skinner

3. apply the theories in classroom setting

DEFINITIONS OF LEARNING

a. Kimble (1961): Learning is……

“….. a relatively permanent change in behavioral potentiality that occurs as a result of reinforced practice”.

Key concepts:

1. Learning is indexed by a change in behavior

2. The behavioral change is relatively permanent

3. The change in behavior need not occur immediately following the learning experience.

4. The change in behavior (or behavior potentiality) results from experience or practice.

5. The experience, or practice, must be reinforced


b. Woolfolk (2004): Learning….

“……occurs when experience causes relatively permanent change in an individual’s knowledge or behavior.”

Key concepts:

1. The change may be deliberate (intentional) or unintentional, for better or worse, correct or incorrect, and conscious or unconscious.

2. To qualify as learning, this change must be brought about by experience – by the interaction of a person with his or her environment.


b. Woolfolk (cont)

Key concepts:

3. Changes simply caused by maturation – such as growing taller do not qualify as learning.

4. Temporary changes resulting from illness, fatigue, or hunger are also excluded from a general definition of learning.

5. This definition specifies that the changes resulting from learning are in the individual’s knowledge and behavior.


Fontana (1995):Learning is ...

a relatively persistent change in an individual’s potential behaviour due to experience

Key concepts:

1) learning must change the individual in some way

- can be at a relatively simple level eg: tying a shoelace or a more complex one eg: applying theories of learning in teaching.

2) this change comes about as a result of experience

- change must come about as a result of experience. This therefore excludes the kinds of changes that occur from maturation and physical development, or other reasons.


Fontana (cont)

Key concepts:

3) it is a change in his/ her potential behaviour

- it is a change in potential rather than necessary in actual performance. We may learn something, but give no hint of this learning in actual performance.

THEORIES OF LEARNING – BEHAVIORISM

One of the earliest explanations of learning came from Aristotle (384-322 B.C.).

He said that we remember things together:- When they are similar

- When they contrast

- When they are contiguous

This last principle is the most important, because it is included in all explanations of learning by associations.

BEHAVIORISM – CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

Overview :

Focuses on the learning of involuntary emotional or physiological responses such as fear, increased muscle tension, salivation, or sweating.

These sometimes are called respondents because they are automatic responses to stimuli.

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.

BEHAVIORISM – CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

Overview (cont):

The stimulus comes to elicit, or bring forth, the response automatically.

In understanding the process of classical conditioning, the works of Pavlov and Watson are the two most influential theories of learning to be considered.

1. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: PAVLOV

• Classical conditioning was discovered (accidentally) by Pavlov in the 1920’s.

• In his laboratory, Pavlov carried out experiments on the digestive system of dogs.

• He was trying to determine how long it took a dog to secrete digestive juices after it had been fed, but the intervals of time kept changing.

• At first, the dogs salivated in the expected manner while they were being fed.

• Then the dogs began to salivate as soon as they saw the food.


• Finally, they salivated as soon as they saw the scientists enter the room.

• The white coats of the scientists and the sounds of their footsteps all elicited salivation.

• Pavlov decided to make a detour from his original experiments and examine these unexpected interferences in his work.

• In one of his experiments, Pavlov began by sounding a bell and recording a dog’s response.

• As expected, there was no salivation.

• At this point, the sound of the bell was a neutral stimulus (NS) because it brought forth no salivation.


• Then Pavlov fed the dogs. The response was salivation.

• The food was an unconditional stimulus (UCS) because no prior training or conditioning was needed to establish the natural connection between food and salivation.

• The salivation was an unconditional response (UCR), again because it occurred automatically – no conditioning required.

• Using these three elements – the food, the salivation, and the sounds of the bell, Pavlov demonstrated that a dog could be conditioned to salivate after hearing the sound of bell.


• He did this by contiguous pairing of the sound with food.

• At the beginning of the experiment, he sounded the bell and then quickly fed the dog.

• After Pavlov repeated this several times, the dog began to salivate after hearing the sound but before receiving food.

• Now the sound had become a conditioned stimulus (CS) that could bring forth salivation by itself.

• The response of salivating after the tone was now a conditioned response (CR).

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: PAVLOV

Unconditional Unconditional Stimulus Response

Before

Result in


=== === Unconditional Conditional Unconditional Stimulus Stimulus Response

During Conditioning:

Result in

====== paired with


Conditional Conditional Stimulus Response

After Conditioning:

Result in

d. Other Processes in Classical Conditioning

i. Generalization

• Responding in the same way to similar stimuli

• E.g. After the dogs learned to salivate in response to hearing one particular sound,

they would also salivate after hearing similar tomes that were slightly higher or lower.


ii. Discrimination

• Responding differently to similar, but not identical stimuli.

• E.g. Pavlov could also teach the dogs to respond to one tone, by making sure that food always followed only one tone, not any others.


iii. Extinction

• Gradual disappearance of a learned response

• Occurs when a conditioned stimulus (a particular tone) is presented repeatedly but is not followed by the unconditioned stimulus (the food).

• The conditioned response (salivating) gradually fades away and finally is “extinguished” – it disappears altogether.

2. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: WATSON

b. Basic Concepts

• To Watson, personality was a collection of conditioned reflexes.

• Human emotion was a product of both heredity and experiences.

• According to Watson, we inherit three emotions – fear, rage and love.


Basic concept (cont)

• Through the conditioning process, these basic emotions become attached to different things for different people.

> Speech is behavior that results from the movement of the muscles in the throat.

> Thinking is implicit speech

• Watson was also a radical environmental determinists – he believed that as humans, at birth, we are equipped with a few reflexes and a few basic emotions.

• Through classical conditioning, these reflexes become paired with a variety of stimuli.

• He opposed to the idea that we are born with any mental abilities.


• Watson’s famous statement (1926):

“ Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant, chief, and yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors”.

c. Watson’s Experiment With Little Albert

• To demonstrate how inborn emotional reflexes become conditioned to neural stimuli, Watson and Rosalie Rayner (1920) performed an experiment on an 1-month-old infant called Albert.

• In addition to Albert, the other ingredients in the experiment were a white rat, a steel bar, and a hammer.

• At the onset of the study, Albert showed no fear of the rat. He even reached out and tried to touch it.

• During the initial part of the experiment, when Albert saw the rat and reached for it, the experimenter took the hammer and struck the steel bar behind the infant, making a loud noise.


• In response to the noise, Albert jumped violently, and fell forward.

• Again, Albert saw the rat and reached for it, and again, just as his hand touched the rat, the bar was struck, making a loud noise.

• Again, Albert jumped violently, and began to whimper.

• Because of Albert’s emotional sate, the experiment was suspended for one week so Albert would not become too disturbed.

• After a week, the rat was again presented to Albert. This time Albert was very cautious of the animal and watched it very carefully.


• At one point, when the rat came into contact with his hand, Albert withdrew his hand immediately.

• There were several more pairings between the rat and the sound, and eventually Albert developed strong fear of the rat.

• Now when the rat was presented to Albert again, he began to cry and almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away rapidly.

• It was also shown that Albert’s fear generalized to a variety of objects that were not feared at the onset of the experiment: a rabbit, fur coat, cotton, and Santa Claus mask.


• Thus, Watson showed that our emotional reactions can be rearranged through classical conditioning.

• In this experiment, the loud noise was the US, fear produced by the noise was the UR, the rat was the CS, and the fear of the rat was the CR.

• Albert’s fear of all white and furry objects showed that generalization also took place.

d. Summary of Watson’s Experiment

Before Conditioning:

Unconditional Stimulus Unconditional Response

“Results in”


During Conditioning:

==== Conditional Unconditional UnconditionalStimulus Stimulus Response

“Results in”

======= “Paired with”


After Conditioning:

Conditional Stimulus Conditional Response

“Results in”

BEHAVIORISM – OPERANT CONDITIONING

So far we have concentrated on automatic conditioning in involuntary responses such as salivation and fear.

Clearly, not all human learning is so automatic and unintentional.

Most behaviors are not elicited (brought out) by stimuli; they are emitted (produced) or voluntarily enacted.

People actively “operate” on their environment to produce different kind of consequences.

These deliberate actions are called operants.

BEHAVIORISM – OPERANT CONDITIONING

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.

Thorndike and Skinner both played major roles in developing knowledge of operant conditioning.

1. OPERANT CONDITIONING: THORNDIKE

Thorndike’s (1913) early work involved cats that he placed in puzzle boxes.

To escape from the box and reach food outside, the cats had to pull a bolt or perform some other task; they had to act on their environment.

During the frantic movements that followed the closing of the door, the cats eventually made the correct movement to escape, usually by accident.

After repeating the process several times, the cats learned to make the correct response almost immediately.


On the basis of these experiments, Thorndike formulated several laws of learning.

i. Laws of Learning

> Thorndike’s conception was that some nerve pathway had been established in the brain of the learning animals.

> So that when a particular stimulus was registered by the sense organs, it became

connected by this pathway to the organs that produced the response that had proven to be effective.


ii. Law of Exercise

> The link between a given stimulus and response becomes stronger, the more the

pathway is activated.

> In other word, the more the behavior is practiced or exercised, the more strongly it will be established or “learned”.

> E.g. The more times the cat practices escaping from the box, the better it will be

able to do it.


iii. Law of Effect

> Stated that if the response to a stimulus has a pleasing effect, then the probability

would increase of the learner repeating that response when confronted with the same stimulus.

> E.g. If the response – the escaping – has pleasant consequences, such as

access to fish, then if the cat is placed in the same stimulus situation gain, it is more likely to repeat the rewarded response.

c. Thorndike on Education

Educational practices should be studied scientifically.

There should be a close relationship between the knowledge of the learning process and teaching practices.

The lecture technique of teaching is not suitable for classroom learning “as telling is not teaching”.

Good teaching involves knowing what you want to teach – if you do not know exactly what is it you want to teach you will not know what material to present, what responses to look for, and when to apply.

c. Thorndike on Education

• Thorndike (1922) suggest seven rules for teaching:

i. Consider the situation the pupil faces

ii. Consider the response you wish to connect with it.

iii. Form the bond between the two

iv. Do not form bond that will have to be broken.

v. Do not form two or three bond when one will serve.

vi. Form bonds in the way that they are required later to act.

vii. Favor the situations which life itself will offer, and the responses which life

itself will demand

OPERANT CONDITIONING: Skinner

Overview :

Learning is a function of change in overt behavior

Changes in behavior are the result of an individual's response to events (stimuli) that occur in the environment.

The distinctive characteristic of operant conditioning is that the organism can emit responses instead of only eliciting response due to an external stimulus.

Reinforcement is the key element in Skinner's S-R theory.


Overview :

A reinforcer is anything that strengthens the desired response e.g. verbal praise, a good grade or a feeling of accomplishment or satisfaction

negative reinforcers - any stimulus that results in the increased frequency of a response when it is withdrawn (different from adversive stimuli - punishment)

schedules of reinforcement (e.g. interval versus ratio) has effects on establishing and maintaining behavior


Implication in education :

Question (stimulus) - answer (response) shd be practised gradually

the learner shd be given immediate feedback Maintain a gradual step in the difficulty of the

questions so, the response is always correct and hence a positive reinforcement

good performance in the lesson is paired with secondary reinforcers such as verbal praise, prizes and good grades


Principles :

Behavior that is positively reinforced will reoccur; intermittent reinforcement is particularly effective.

Information should be presented in small amounts so that responses can be reinforced ("shaping").

Reinforcements will generalize across similar stimuli ("stimulus generalization") producing secondary conditioning.

The quality of the consequence influences further actions.


Reinforcements :

The principle of reinforcement is, when a given act is followed closely by a reinforcer, the organism tends to increase the frequency of that act under the same or similar conditions.

Reinforcer - the object or the event which increases the frequency of the performance it follows.


E.g. two students are offered a set amount of money for every hour that they study after school.

- If there is no increase in the frequency of studying after

school, the money is considered a reward.

- If the student increases the hours of study, the money is

considered a positive reinforcer.


Models of Reinforcement :

i. - Positive Reinforcement

- Negative Reinforcement


i. Positive Reinforcement :

The goal of positive reinforcement is to increase the target behavior through the presentation of a (usually appetative) stimulus.

Positive reinforcement occurs when a stimulus tends to maintain or accelerate the behavior that it follows.

Skinner claims that positive reinforcement is the most effective control and its ethical use is the best means for producing a happy and productive society.


>Examples of Positive Reinforcement :

> The rat will continue to go through the maze and press the bar for food. The rat knows

that it will receive food each time it presses the bar.

> A child that is beginning to talk will receive positive attention from his parents when he begins to say mamma or daddy. The child experiences a satisfying fact by producing a certain verbal sound, thus the child will repeat the sound.


ii. Negative Reinforcement :

NR occurs when the rate of a behavior is observed to increase following the removal of a stimuli.

The termination or removal of an aversive stimulus is likely to increase the target behavior.

NR is also associated with escape or avoidance behaviors. The target behavior increases in order to escape or avoid the possible aversive consequences.


Both positive and negative reinforcements strengthen the associated behavior.

Negative reinforcement is not the same as punishment with which it is often confused.


Examples of NR:

The rat will increase the frequency of pressing the bar when it has learned that this will remove the electric shock.

A child picks up her clothes in order to stop her parents from nagging.

A person who first experiences a headache and by taking aspirin succeeds in getting rid of the pain, will take another aspirin upon later occurrence of a headache.

The mediocre teacher tellsThe good teacher explainsThe superior teacher demonstratesThe great teacher inspires.

William Arthur Ward

week 4 behaviourism

Education

increased

albert jumped

behaviorism

behaviorism

called respondentsbecause

operant conditioning

classical

verbal praise