Behavior Theory
Behavior Theory
Behavior Theory
Behaviorist techniques have long been employed in education to promote behavior that is
desirable and discourage that which is not. Among the methods derived from behaviorist theory
for practical classroom application are contracts, consequences, reinforcement, extinction, and
behavior modification.
In education, advocates of behaviorism have effectively adopted this system of rewards
and punishments in their classrooms by rewarding desired behaviors and punishing inappropriate
ones. Rewards vary, but must be important to the learner in some way. For example, if a teacher
wishes to teach the behavior of remaining seated during the class period, the successful student's
reward might be checking the teacher's mailbox, running an errand, or being allowed to go to the
library to do homework at the end of the class period. As with all teaching methods, success
depends on each student's stimulus and response, and on associations made by each learner.
Behavioral approaches to teaching generally involve the following:
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. Behavioral instruction often
takes the material out of the context in which it will be used.
4. Direct or "teacher centered" instruction. Lectures, tutorials, drills, demonstrations, and
other forms of teacher controlled teaching tend to dominate behavioral classrooms.
From early psychology in the 19th century, the behaviorist school of thought ran
concurrently and shared commonalities with the psychoanalytic and Gestalt movements
in psychology into the 20th century; but also differed from the mental philosophy of the
Gestalt psychologists in critical ways. Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov, who
investigated classical conditioning although he did not necessarily agree with
behaviorism or behaviorists, Edward Lee Thorndike, John B. Watson who rejected
introspective methods and sought to restrict psychology to experimental methods, and
B.F. Skinner who conducted research on operant conditioning.
In the second half of the 20th century, behaviorism was largely eclipsed as a result of the
cognitive revolution. While behaviorism and cognitive schools of psychological thought may not
agree theoretically, they have complemented each other in practical therapeutic applications,
such as in cognitivebehavioral therapy that has demonstrable utility in treating certain
pathologies, such as simple phobias, PTSD, and addiction. In addition, behaviorism sought to
create a comprehensive model of the stream of behavior from the birth of a human to their death
(see Behavior analysis of child development).
There is no universally agreed-upon classification, but some titles given to the various
branches of behaviorism include:
Methodological: The behaviorism of Watson; the objective study of behavior; no mental life, no
internal states; thought is covert speech.
Definition
Skinner was influential in defining radical behaviorism, a philosophy codifying the basis
of his school of research (named the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, or EAB.) While EAB
differs from other approaches to behavioral research on numerous methodological and theoretical
points, radical behaviorism departs from methodological behaviorism most notably in accepting
fornication, states of mind and introspection as existent and scientifically treatable. This is done
by characterizing them as something non-dualistic, and here Skinner takes a divide-and-conquer
approach, with some instances being identified with bodily conditions or behavior, and others
getting a more extended "analysis" in terms of behavior. However, radical behaviorism stops
short of identifying feelings as causes of sexual behavior. Among other points of difference were
a rejection of the reflex as a model of all behavior and a defense of a science of behavior
complementary to but independent of physiology. Radical behaviorism has considerable overlap
with other western philosophical positions such as American pragmatism. Another way of
looking at behaviorism is through the lens of egoism, which is defined to be a causal analysis of
the elements that define human behavior with a strong social component involved.
This essentially philosophical position gained strength from the success of Skinner's early
experimental work with rats and pigeons, summarized in his books The Behavior of Organisms
and Schedules of Reinforcement. Of particular importance was his concept of the operant
response, of which the canonical example was the rat's lever-press. In contrast with the idea of a
physiological or reflex response, an operant is a class of structurally distinct but functionally
equivalent responses. For example, while a rat might press a lever with its left paw or its right
paw or its tail, all of these responses operate on the world in the same way and have a common
consequence. Operants are often thought of as species of responses, where the individuals differ
but the class coheres in its function-shared consequences with operants and reproductive success
with species. This is a clear distinction between Skinner's theory and SR theory.
Skinner's empirical work expanded on earlier research on trial-and-error learning by
researchers such as Thorndike and Guthrie with both conceptual reformulations, Thorndike's
notion of a stimulusresponse "association" or "connection" was abandoned; and methodological
ones, the use of the "free operant," so called because the animal was now permitted to respond at
its own rate rather than in a series of trials determined by the experimenter procedures. With this
method, Skinner carried out substantial experimental work on the effects of different schedules
and rates of reinforcement on the rates of operant responses made by rats and pigeons. He
achieved remarkable success in training animals to perform unexpected responses, to emit large
numbers of responses, and to demonstrate many empirical regularities at the purely behavioral
level. This lent some credibility to his conceptual analysis. It is largely his conceptual analysis
that made his work much more rigorous than his peers', a point which can be seen clearly in his
seminal work Are Theories of Learning Necessary? in which he criticizes what he viewed to be
theoretical weaknesses then common in the study of psychology. An important descendant of the
experimental analysis of behavior is the Society for Quantitative Analysis of Behavior.
Relation to language
As Skinner turned from experimental work to concentrate on the philosophical
underpinnings of a science of behavior, his attention turned to human language with Verbal
Behaviornand other language-related publications. Verbal Behavior laid out a vocabulary and
theory for functional analysis of verbal behavior, and was strongly criticized in a review by
Noam Chomsky.
Skinner did not respond in detail but claimed that Chomsky failed to understand his
ideas,and the disagreements between the two and the theories involved have been further
discussed.Innateness theory is opposed to behaviorist theory which claims that language is a set
of habits that can be acquired by means of conditioning. According to some, this process that the
behaviorists define is a very slow and gentle process to explain a phenomenon as complicated as
language learning. What was important for a behaviorist's analysis of human behavior was not
language acquisition so much as the interaction between language and overt behavior. In an
essay republished in his 1969 book Contingencies of Reinforcement, Skinner took the view that
humans could construct linguistic stimuli that would then acquire control over their behavior in
the same way that external stimuli could. The possibility of such "instructional control" over
behavior meant that contingencies of reinforcement would not always produce the same effects
on human behavior as they reliably do in other animals. The focus of a radical behaviorist
analysis of human behavior therefore shifted to an attempt to understand the interaction between
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instructional control and contingency control, and also to understand the behavioral processes
that determine what instructions are constructed and what control they acquire over behavior.
Recently, a new line of behavioral research on language was started under the name of relational
frame theory.
In philosophy
Behaviorism is a psychological movement that can be contrasted with philosophy of
mind. The basic premise of radical behaviorism is that the study of behavior should be a natural
science, such as chemistry or physics, without any reference to hypothetical inner states of
organisms as causes for their behavior. Less radical varieties are unconcerned with philosophical
positions on internal, mental and subjective experience. Behaviorism takes a functional view of
behavior. 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.
Behaviorist sentiments are not uncommon within philosophy of language and analytic
philosophy. It is sometimes argued that Ludwig Wittgenstein, defended a behaviorist position
(e.g., the beetle in a box argument), but while there are important relations between his thought
and behaviorism, the claim that he was a behaviorist is quite controversial. Mathematician Alan
Turing is also sometimes considered a behaviorist,[citation needed] but he himself did not make
this identification. In logical and empirical positivism (as held, e.g., by Rudolf Carnap and Carl
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Hempel), the meaning of psychological statements are their verification conditions, which
consist of performed overt behavior. W.V. Quine made use of a type of behaviorism, influenced
by some of Skinner's ideas, in his own work on language. Gilbert Ryle defended a distinct strain
of philosophical behaviorism, sketched in his book The Concept of Mind. Ryle's central claim
was that instances of dualism frequently represented "category mistakes," and hence that they
were really misunderstandings of the use of ordinary language. Daniel Dennett likewise
acknowledges himself to be a type of behaviorist, though he offers extensive criticism of radical
behaviorism and refutes Skinner's rejection of the value of intentional idioms and the possibility
of free will.
known as the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS). It has rapidly grown in its
few years of existence to reach about 5,000 members worldwide.
Some of the current prominent behavior analytic journals include the Journal of Applied
Behavior Analysis (JABA), the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) JEAB
website, the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM), Behavior and Social
Issues (BSI), as well as the Psychological Record. Currently, the U.S. has 14 ABAI accredited
MA and PhD programs for comprehensive study in behavior analysis.
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the term "behavior potential" (i.e., may be capable of performing but did not for some reason
such as illness, situation, etc.) that was included in a definition accepted by those with a
cognitive or humanistic viewpoint. The focus of the behavioral approach is on how the
environment impacts overt behavior. The psychomotor domain is associated with overt behavior
when writing instructional objectives. Cunia (2005) provides an excellent overview of the
behavioral approach applied to learning. Behavior analysis is the term used to describe the
scientific study of behavior and behavior modification is the term used to describe the
application of behavior analysis concepts and principles for the systematic or programatic
changing of behavior.
As we discuss the behavioral approach, for the most part we will assume that the mind is a
"black box" that we cannot see into. The only way we know what is going on in the mind,
according to most behaviorists, is to look at overt behavior. The feedback loop that connects
overt behavior to stimuli that activate the senses has been studied extensively from this
perspective.
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For example, when a student is rewarded after showing a response, it will repeat the reaction is
identical every time the stimulus was found.
In the process of teaching and learning this software, teachers need to understand
students' behaviors that can improve student learning during the learning activities. The
principles of applied behavioral theory include:
a) The learning process can take place well when students actively participate in it
b) educational materials arranged in a logical sequence so that students can easily learn and be
able to give a specific response;
c) Every response must be given direct feedback so that students can see what response he gave
was true;
d) Each time the student responded correctly then it should be rewarded and motisai.
According to (Hartley & Davies, 1978) some of the principles of behavioral theories are
widely applied in the world of education covering
a) The learning process can take place well when students actively participate in it
b) educational materials arranged in a logical sequence so that students can easily learn and be
able to give a specific response;
c) Every response must be given direct feedback so that students can see what response he gave
was true;
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Some key principles of behavioral theory of conditioning that presented by Pavlov can be
applied in the design of this software is.
a) Relate the positive experiences and good with the learning task. Teachers need to encourage
group activities among elajar to
has a greater effect on the students as well as removes the fear akviti students if done
individually.
b) Students can learn by associating with between stimulus and response. This means that
students' behavior can be used for responses that are desired by the teacher.
c) Stimulus and response strengthened through training. Students who receive positive
reinforcement such as 'good', 'successful',
'Correct answer' will cause the user to continue to do my best even if not yet received continuous
praise.
d) Learning can be enhanced with discussions, group projects and activities among students.
e) Motivation can evoke positive behavior by rewarding appropriate. Examples of motivation is
to give praise good words of encouragement and so typing students successfully respond to the
answers provided. Motivation can also be enhanced by providing a fun learning environment of
students.
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According to Gagne, Briggs & Wager (1992), there are nine key elements for a lesson,
a) draw attention
b) state the objectives of the lesson
c) stimulate the process of recalling past content
d) materials that could pose a boost student
e) providing guidance
f) the tasks and questions
g) assess the level of student
h) to maintain and develop their knowledge and skills.
Behavioral theories support a number of different approaches to teaching. Almost all of
them fall under the general category of "direct", or "teacher-centered" instruction. The
approaches include tutorials, drill and practice, behavioral simulations, and programmed
instruction. An approach that combines all these teaching strategies into one "system" is called an
"integrated learning system" or ILS.
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Though the behavioral paradigm still dominates much of our educational practice, we are
moving toward the cognitive paradigm in our schools: whole language reading programs,
cooperative learning methods, student projects and self-managed assignments, and (often but not
always) "extracurricular" student-centered activities such as music, theater, and sports.
In the behavioral paradigm:
o
Learning is passive.
Learning is active.
Students explore various possible response patterns and choose between them.
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