Please choose an individual who you think has made a contribution to Behaviorism, Behavior Modification, Conditioning & Learning (or someone you have read about in the chapters) and find at least three quality sources of information on the internet and write about that person. Who you write about, how you write about them, etc. is up to you, however your post should be informative to the first time reader. For example, suppose you when home for spring break and someone in your family asks you about who you have been learning about in your class, they are not going to know the terms and terminology so you need to use the terms but use them in a way that individual can understand.
The of course at the end, please include working URLs for the three websites, and make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any question,
--Dr. M
The of course at the end, please include working URLs for the three websites, and make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any question,
--Dr. M
In 1913, in one of the most famous lectures in the history of psychology, John Broadus Watson (1878-1958) an "animal behaviorist" from Johns Hopkins University called for a radical provisioning of the scope and method of psychological research:
"Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely an objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation."
Watson is deemed a major contributor to the psychological scope of behaviorism; he is one of five major contributors to the discipline. He introduced it to the mainstream, if you will, but unlike what you might read, which entails great response and support; he in fact received great resistance from the public.
Watson believed, as stated above, that introspection (observation of one’s mental and emotional state) had no validity in the behaviorist paradigm (theory). Behaviorist thought, in general, that environment could be controlled and that environment would elicit and ultimately emit worth worthwhile behaviors from society’s members, but in order to support his hypothesis, Watson had to start with babies, even though Watson personally didn’t like children.
Watson’s most known research involved one baby known as “Little Albert”. He chose little Albert because of his lack of fear to different stimuli presented to him, which included, a rabbit, a white rat, masks with and without hair, a dog, a monkey, burning newspapers, cotton, wool, etc. Albert had no fears, but Watson along with an assistant managed to elicit (provoke) a fear in Little Albert, he was afraid of loud noises, so emitting the striking of a metal object with a hammer like device, Albert would start to cry. Watson continued with this and presented a white rat each time the bang of the metal was heard. He would start crying at the sight of the white rat, now a deemed a conditioned stimulus (object that provokes the crying) the crying now is what called a stimulus response, anything with fur, such as the rabbit, would also create the crying. Watson had successfully trained Little Albert to be fearful of fury animals and fur based items. Albert was using what is called Generalization, which all things fury was no longer safe, and he wanted nothing to with them. Watson then sent Albert home for the duration of one month, when Albert returned, he had maintained his fear. This research is important because it helped people understand the fears that people have about random things, we call them phobias. Watson believed that they are conditioned responses.
Not knowing if he maintained such fear, I believe that if Albert were still alive today, a trained psychotherapist could’ve used what’s known as Systematic Desensitization, a behavioral method used to help people with phobias of all types. Relaxation Techniques such as Yoga, Visualization accompanied with therapeutic meditation, and other techniques, may have also been utilized. (Section 3.4)
In conclusion, Watson was eventually dismissed from the university because of an affair with Rayner, (his assistant).
Little Albert's fate and identity have been a recurring question among psychology scholars, including Appalachian State University psychologist Hall P. Beck, PhD, who, with a team of colleagues and students, sought answers. For seven years, Beck and his associates scoured historical materials, conferred with facial recognition experts, met with relatives of the boy they theorized was Albert.
Eventually, the pieces of the puzzle came together. The attributes of Douglas and his mother matched virtually everything that was known about Albert and his mother. Like Albert's mother, Douglas's mother worked at a pediatric hospital on campus called the Harriet Lane Home. Like Albert, Douglas was a white male who left the home in the early 1920s and was born at the same time of year as Albert. What's more, a comparison of a picture of Albert with Douglas' portrait revealed facial similarities.
Sadly, the team also discovered that Douglas died at age 6 of hydrocephalus(water on the brain), believed the result of having contracted meningitis three years prior, and was unable to determine if Douglas' fear of furry objects persisted after he left Hopkins. It is believed that Albert’s mother (a wet nurse at the the local hospital in Maryland) later pulled him from Watson’s experiment because of the family’s relocating. Douglas Mariette aka Little Albert, aka Albert D. (as Watson called him) 1919-1925.
Terms: Emit Elicit, Behavior (ism), conditioned stimulus, stimulus response, stimuli, generalization, and systematic desensitization.
http://www.brynmawr.edu/psychology/rwozniak/behaviorism.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/01/little-albert.aspx
The person I chose to do my research on is Harry Harlow because he actually studies the importance of comfort in a human being without risking the lives of little babies and instead used the most human-like animal out there, monkeys. Harry Harlow is an american psychologist whom, as I said before, conducted many experiments dealing with social necessity and maternal needs using monkeys. Harry first studied at Stanford, and then began working under Lewis Terman after graduating, another psychologist who helped Harlow shape his future as a psychologist. After a while Harlow then became a professor at University of Wisconsin. The monkey studies began in 1957 and lasted throughtout until 1963; he isolated baby monkeys from their mothers and environment up until they were 24 months. These studies were very controversial because once the monkeys were resubmitted back in to the wild, they were reported acting seriously disturbed after being confined for so long. Only after experimenting with monkeys did Harlow begin using children in his experiences; his experiments not only evolved science in attachment and loss but also in love and development in human beings. The reason Harlow had orginially started any of his experiments or ideas is because he was truly fascinated with the emotion of love. He then began to expand his fascination by looking into mothers feeding their young and how the love factor plays. Harlow began using monkeys first because baby monekys are much more mature than baby humans and therefore show much more variety in emotion. In his main study,the baby monkeys were taken away from their real mothers and then given to either a cloth mother or a wire mother. (comfort vs. discomfort) Harlow was curious as to what behavior the monkeys would emit when givin the option of two stimuli, a wire mother and food or the cloth mother with no food and he found that the monkey would only go to the wire mother when he/she needed food. Another intriguing aspect Harlow found in his study was the fact that the monkey that were stuck with the wire monkey had learned to play and interact with other monkeys to fulfill thier comfort and social needs that was being deprived from their mother which then reinforced them happiness because their needs were being met, whereas the cloth mother monkey tended to stay with its mother most of the time; this then resulted in the wire mother monkeys to develop their social skills approximately a year earlier than the cloth mother monkeys had developed theirs.
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow
2) http://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/studies/HarlowMLE.htm
3)http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhharl.html
Terms: Emit, Elicit, Deprived, Reinforced, Stimuli
Thorndike
After writing about both Watson and Skinner I decided to take a look at Thorndike and do a little more research into his contributions to behaviorism. Thorndike initially got interested in psychology after reading William James Principles of Psychology. This led him to eventually enroll at Harvard University to study under James. His initial research was tied to children, but quickly proved to be of little worth. So Thorndike developed research projects that looked at learning in animals. He completed a study looking at how chicks could learn to get through a maze. However, after completing this research he left Harvard before obtaining his doctorate. He was then invited to Columbia University by Cattell. Thorndike continued his animal learning research, but on cats and dogs this time. He made use of his puzzle boxes that he had created and went on to receive his doctorate for concluding that an experimental approach is the only way to understand learning. He also established his most famous discovery The Law of Effect. While working up to this discovery he used his puzzle boxes to demonstrate instrumental conditioning. This concept was extremely close to operant conditioning because it was based on the fact that the animal makes a response and if it is rewarded the response would be learned. If the response is not reward than the response will disappear. He did this by placing cats in a box that required the cat to push a button or pull a string to escape. At first he found that the cats escaped simply by trial and error. However, as time went on the cats started to escape rather quickly. He came to the conclusion that the cats did only realize what it had to do to escape, but it made the connection between the situation and the response that it had to emit to escape was stamped into the cat. This became the basis for the Law of Effects. He stated that stimuli responses can become connected or dissociated from each other. He found that when the response was followed by pleasure that it was stamped in and if it was followed by pain that it tended to be stamped out. This research led Thorndike to conclude that animals learn by reward and punishment. He then applied this concept to humans learn anything. He stated that learning involves the formation of connections and connections were either strengthened by positive results or weakened by aversive results. He also went on to define intelligence as the ability to form connections, which led him to state that humans were the most intelligent animal because of the number of connections that they could make. After completing this research he went back to his initial interest of education psychology. He eventually ended up at the Teachers College at Columbia University where he finished his career. In 1912 he became the president of the American Psychological Association. He retired in 1939 and then died in 1949. Thorndike was an important figure in American Psychology and he laid the ground work for much of Skinners work on operant conditioning.
http://www-distance.syr.edu/pvitaelt.html
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/ethorndike.shtml
Terms: Instrumental Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, Reward, Punish, Law of Effects, Emit, Aversive
John Broadus Watson was born in 1978 to Emma and Pickens Watson. He grew up poor in Greenville, South Carolina where his mother was very religious. He was closer to his father until he left in 1891 after numerous extra marital affairs. Watson was very upset at his father’s leaving and turned violent often misbehaving in school and at home. A professor at his college helped him get his life back on track and he married a woman named Mary Ikes with whom he had two children, Mary and John. According to Watson parents could condition children into whatever they wanted to and like his father he had many extra marital affairs. Eventually he left his wife to marry his research assistant, Rosalie Rayner. He received his degree from the University of Chicago in 1903 and became a professor at Johns Hopkins afterwards. There was a lot of controversy about psychology and how it should be studied before Watson made a proposal speech. He believed that psychologist should not be studied through introspection, or looking at how a person perceives there experience, and the conscious but rather through observing peoples behaviors. This became the theory of behaviorist. Watson believed he could control and predict peoples behaviors and there were many studies done with this theory. Although the studies differed they had a common theme and that was adjustment had a function dependent on stimulus conditions in the environment. Watsons study for behaviorism was known as the Little Albert experiment. Watson wanted to prove that children had three basic emotions; love, rage, and fear. He set out to show that he could artificially induce these reactions in Little Albert through conditioning or exposing him to something he was afraid of while exposing him to something he wasn’t afraid of.
The study started when Albert was about 9 months old. This is when they discovered Albert would emit a fear response in the presence of a loud noise. They then presented him with objects that could potentially elicit a fear response like a white rat, a rabbit, and burning newspaper. They chose Albert because he never seemed to cry and did not show a fear response to any of the stimuli presented to him. When Albert was 11 months and 3 days old the conditioning started.
Albert was presented with a white rat and he immediately reached for it wanting to play. When he touched it the researchers struck a bar directly behind his head and he jumped, fell forward, and buried his head in the mattress. He did not cry at this point in time. When he touched the rat again they struck the bar and he had the same reaction except this time he whimpered. They decided to continue on another day. At 11 months and 10 days old Albert was brought back to the laboratory and when presented with the rat he did not reach for it. The rat was moved closer and Albert withdrew when it touched him. He tried to reach for it again but withdrew before he touched it. Albert was then given bocks to check his emotional status and he readily played with them. They then took the blocks away and presented the rat and sound several times. Albert would fall over and turn his head to the other direction but he would not cry. Eventually they presented the rat by itself and Albert whimpered and pulled back. A few more times of presenting the rat and the sound and Albert was violently crying and quickly crawling away. They allowed him to go home after this however they brought him back five days later to see if his fear had been transferred to other stimuli. They started with the blocks which Albert readily played with gurgling and happy. When they presented the rat for the first time he whimpered and turned away so they gave him the blocks back. He was happy and played with the blocks until they presented him with the rat again and he pulled back as far as he could fell over and crawled away. They gave him the blocks back until they presented him with a rabbit. When presented with the rabbit, which did not produce a fear response before, he pulled away, whimpered, and cried. When they touched him with the rabbit he crawled away crying. They gave him his blocks back and it was noted he played with them more vigorously than he ever had before. They then presented him with a dog to which his reaction was not as bad as the other animals at first. He was quiet when he couldn’t see the dog but as soon as it came over to touch him he fell over and cried. He was again given the blocks to play with until he was calmer then he was presented with a fur coat to which he withdrew. The closer the coat came the more he cried until he eventually tried to crawl away. They also presented him with some cotton wool sticking out of a paper bag to which he kicked away. Eventually he played with the paper but wouldn’t touch the cotton wool. After an amount of time his fear for the cotton wool was not as great. At 11 months and 20 days they brought Albert back again and his fear response to the rat, rabbit, and dog had lessoned a little so they decided to pair them again with the striking of the bar. They wanted to make sure that the responses occurred other places so they moved him to a brighter lecture room. His fear responses were not as great in this room until they were again produced with the striking of the bar and eventually the barking of the dog. At 1 year and 21 days Albert was brought back to the lab and presented the same stimuli as before. At first Albert did not emit as great a fear response to the animals as before but eventually with some prodding he would turn away, cry, and suck his thumb. This was the last experiment that took place with Little Albert. His mother left before he could be “unconditioned” and people wondered who little Albert actually was. Researchers tried to track him down and it is believed that his actual name was Douglas Merritte. Douglas was born to Arvilla Merritte who lived and worked at a campus hospital at the time of the experiment. Sadly if Douglas really was little Albert it would have been unlikely to find out if his fears persisted much longer because he died at the age of 6 from hydrocephalus.
The study that Watson conducted with Little Albert showed that people can be conditioned to fear certain stimuli and that fear can transfer to other stimuli that resemble it. It was also discovered that whenever Albert was afraid he would suck his thumb and that would potentially block the fear he felt. Watson believed that people are reinforced to emit certain behaviors because it helps them deal with emotion producing stimuli.
After the little Albert study Watson’s affair with Rayner became public knowledge and he was asked to leave Johns Hopkins. He married her and they had two children, named William and James! He continued to publish books on psychology but his main focus had shifted to advertisement. After Rayners death it was said his already poor relationship with his children deteriorated even more and he burnt all his unpublished works and died a short time later.
Terms used: introspection, conscious, behaviors, behaviorist, function, stimulus conditions, conditioning, emit, response, 3 basic emotions, elicit, stimuli, unconditioned, reinforced
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=24&editionID=200&ArticleID=1841
Although Burrhus Frederic Skinner described his life, growing up in Pennsylvania as “warm and stable” he later became a writer and entered into a time that he called the “dark years”. During this time, Skinner wrote a dozen newspaper articles and eventually escaped to New York, where he worked as a bookstore clerk. It was at this point that he came across book written by Ivan Pavlov and John Watson, two men very well known in the field of psychology. Skinner soon became extremely interested in their behaviorist ways and enrolled in the Psychology Department of Harvard University. It was here that William Crozier became his mentor, and got him further interested in the study of behavior. Due to Skinner’s enthusiasm for building, it wasn’t long before he had created the cumulative recorder, a recording mechanism used to measure each response as an upward movement on a horizontal line. Skinner then used his machine to study a rat’s behavior. The rat would be elicited to press a bar down. Skinner found that the rate the rat would press the bar depended solely on what happened after it pressed it. It was with this experiment that he discovered operant behavior. During operant behavior, we see the rat’s response is elicited after a stimulus. Skinner spent the next five years studying the effect of consequence and the schedules of reinforcement.
Skinner was also known for his Pigeon Project. During World War I people became very afraid of air raids. Skinner, being anxious to help, pushed for a secret project to train pigeons to guide bombs. Although Skinner was unaware that radar was about to become popular, he worked hard to train his pigeons to peck at a target that would hold a missile. It was quite amazing that the pigeons were able to do this, even when working in a highly noise-concentrated area.
The Baby Tender was Skinner’s next big claim to fame. In 1943, now living in Minnesota, Skinner’s wife, Yvonne, became pregnant again. The couple did not want to deal with as much hassle as their last child, and Skinner decided to build a crib-like gadget for the new baby. The Baby Tender was made to be safer than the typical crib, it plexiglass windows so the baby could be seen, was heated so the baby would not have to wear much clothing, was large enough that the baby could play, and had a filtration system in the bottom for when the baby relieves herself. The “Skinner Box” soon became very controversial. Lady’s Home Journal wrote a less then pleasant article about it and many people though it was horrifying. Although untrue, rumors began going around that Deborah had committed suicide due to this Baby Tender.
The creation of the Baby Tender was not the only controversial thing that Skinner did in his lifetime. He also wrote the book Walden Two in 1948. The book was about a utopia that focused on the benefit and behavior of the community as a whole, and not the individual. All aspects of this community were planned and jobs earned work credits. People were both intrigued but horrified at the thought of such a place.
B.F. Skinner was also credited with the creation of the Schedules of Reinforcement, which included fixed-ratio, variable-ratio, fixed-interval, and variable interval. These schedules basically stated when or how often a target behavior would be reinforced.
B.F Skinner was one of the great psychologists. His studies and inventions have helped shape psychology and behaviorist theories as we know them. B.F. Skinner was credited with many awards including, the National Medal of Science from President Johnson, Gold Medal of the American Psychological Foundation, Human of the Year Award, and Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology.
Terms: Operant behavior, elicited, stimulus, schedules of reinforcement, target behavior, fixed-ration, variable-ratio, fixed-interval, variable-interval
http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/AboutSkinner.html
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_skinner.htm
http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Skinner__BF.html
My pyschologist of interest is Kurt Lewin. He is renouned as one of the top ten most influencial psychologist ever and led a very intersting life. I was most interested in his work because he focuses on social behaviors and studied how different leadership styles influence how we interact and get things done. Also I wanted to do something different than everyone else, of course.
Kurt Lewin was born in Prussia to a middle class Jewish family in September 9 1890. He moved to Berlin to be closer and be able to attend gymnaisum. In 1909 he enrolled in the university of Frieberg to study medican. Then tranfered to the university of Munich to continue his study of biology. He eventually completed a doctorite degree at the university of Berlin. During this time of study he became interested in the study of psychology and when world war 1 broke out he joined the german army. He was injured but throught this expereince his first start on his theories of group dynamics and social behaviors. Lewis became so popular from his lecutres he was invited to speak at standford and after that emigrated to the United States to work at University of Iowa.
While Lewin emphasized the importance of theory, he also believed that theories needed to have practical applications. He began applying his research to the war effort, working for the U.S. government. Throught this research he made know his famous The Lewin, Lippitt, and White Study. In this study, schoolchildren were assigned to either authoritarian, democratic or laissez-fair leadership groups. It was demonstrated that democratic leadership was superior to authoritarian and laissez-faire leadership.
Lewis also came up with Field theory that emphasized the importance of individual personalities, interpersonal conflict and situational variables. Lewin's Field Theory proposed that behavior is the result of the individual and the environment. This theory had a major impact on social psychology, supporting the notion that our individual traits and the environment interact to cause behavior. This obviously support the conditioned learning and behaviorms side which interacts with the environment and how they are brought up.
Lewis was important because he was one of the first psychologists to systematically test human behavior, influencing experimental psychology, social psychology and personality psychology. He wrote many books over his theory ranging up to 80 articles.
Lewin is known as the father of modern social psychology because of his pioneering work that utilized scientific methods and experimentation to look as social behavior. Lewin was a great theorist that had enduring impact on psychology makeing him one of the preeminent psychologists of the twentieth century.
Terms: behavior, behaviorism, social behavior, social psychology, scientific method, experimenatal, ssystematic test, group dynamics, enviromental interactions,
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_lewin.htm
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/lewin.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Lewin
Edward L. Thorndike (1874-1949)
Edward L. Thorndike was a great psychologist who was best known for his Cat in a Box Experiment (his study of trial and error learning), and establishing operant conditioning in behaviorism. Like psychologists Watson, Skinner and Pavlov, Thorndike is one who is still talked about in psychology classes.
Thorndike grew up in a time where scientific psychology was being established in academic institutions and attracting college students such as himself. He became interested in the field of psychology after he had read "Principles of Psychology" by William Jame. After he had graduate from Wesleyan College, Thorndike enrolled in Harvard Graduate School.
At Harvard, Thorndike became interested in research on children. He tried to research "mind reading" in children initially, but due to issues he was no longer allowed to continue. It was from there that Thorndike became interested in the learning of animals. He created a number of projects to study the learning of animals but to also fulfill degree requirements. He completed a study maze which was used to study the learning in chicks. However, for personal reasons, Thorndike left Harvard, but continued his studies on animal learning at Columbia.
While studying at Columbia, Thorndike became less interested in studying learning of chicks and more interested in studying learning of dogs and cats. It was this change of interest that led him to create his Cat in a Box experiment. After being awarded his doctorate in 1898 for his thesis "Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals," Thorndike concluded that the only way possible to study and understand learning. It was that that he created his famous "Law of Effect".
After he graduated from Columbia, Thorndike returned to his initial interest of Educational Psychology. After an unhappy year of his initial employment at a school, Thorndike started teaching at Teachers College at Columbia University. This is where he remained for the rest of his career. While there he studied mental testing, education and human learning. He developed psychological connectionism.
Thorndike believed that "through experience of neural bonds or connections were formed between perceived stimuli and emitted responses; therefore, intellect facilitated the formation of neural bonds." In other words, those people who were of a higher intellect could not only form bonds, but form them more easily than those people who had a lower intellect. He believed that "the ability to form bonds was rooted in genetic potential...”.
After Thorndike retired in 1939, Thorndike still continued to work until he died in 1949.
Thorndike was known not only for his Trial and Error learning and Operant Conditioning, but for pioneering investigations in the field of both human and animal learning. He had a stellar 55 year long career where he published where he published 500 books and articles on a diverse number of topics. One thing many people may not know about him is that he constructed a scale to measure the handwriting of children and a table of word-frequency in English.
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/ethorndike.shtml
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesmz/p/edward-thorndike.htm
Terms Used: operant conditioning, behaviorism, trial and error learning, Law of Effect, human learning, animal learning, Pavlov, Watson, Skinner, connectionism, stimuli, emitted responses.
B.F. Skinner
Skinner was a very brilliant man. Skinner emitted his interest in inventing things at an early age. One example that was given was when he was young he and a friend gathered elderberries to sell them door to door. Skinner had built a system that would allow the ripened berries float to the top to sell and the green berries would separate from them.
Upon completing high school, Skinner developed an interest in writing. After discovering he did not had very salient feelings about being a writer, he later emitted to study psychology, but was mostly involved in philosophy.
Skinner’s inventions were sometimes strange, but although it is easy to pass judgment of being inhuman, the particular invention that sticks out to me is the “baby box”. When I first emit to read about the baby box, I was appalled. I thought it seemed as though there was no love and nurturing involved, it seemed as though the baby was neglected. However, the invention was a box for an infant that would maintain a “perfect” temperature, which allowed the child to be minimally clothed allowing the child to not be as confined. Skinner’s thoughts were that if with the right environment we can predict and control the behavior. This was social engineering.
Skinner also invented operant conditioning. Operant conditioning means, changing the behavior by using reinforcement which is emitted when the target behavior is presented. For example, Skinner also invented the “Skinner box”, which was a box that had a water spout, food hopper, lights, electric floor bars, and levers. The water and the food hopper served as the reinforcers, the lever was also called the manipulanda because that was what the animal in the box would manipulate. The bars on the floor served as the punisher when the electrical current was administered to shape the animal into no emitting particular behaviors. When the target behavior was emitted then the animal was reinforced with either water or food. The reinforcers would shape the animal into continue to elicit the target behavior because of the conditioning. Skinner showed with these boxes that positive reinforcement worked. With these boxes, Skinner also showed that negative reinforcement also emitted a target behavior. For example, when he placed a rat in the box and sent an aversive shock to the floor, it caused the rat to hit the lever, which then it was reinforced by receiving reinforcement. The consequence has shown the rat that to emit pushing the lever prior to getting the shock.
Terms: emit, social engineering, operant conditioning, reinforcement, behavior, target behavior, elicit, manipulanda, punisher, consequence, aversive, negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement, salient.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm
http://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/proj/nru/opcond.html
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA&feature=player_embedded
Edward Tolman is someone we haven’t talked about in behavior modification but I had a little background information presented to me in another class and decided to look up more. Tolman was an electrochemistry major at MIT before reading William James “The Principles”. This book gave his life a new direction to the field of neobehaviorism. The neobehaviorist movement said the following things: the laws of behavior that apply to one species should apply to another, learning was central to the understanding of behavior, and was focused on the manner in which learning occurred.
Tolman was very active in the molar versus molecular behavior debate. He took the side of molar behavior because he believed that the study of psychology had to be larger than the molecular muscle movements or neurological responses that other psychologists were studying. This shows one of the basic components of neobehaviorism because he was more concerned about how learning was occurring and not on the physical reaction of the test animal. Tolman provided proof of his molar theory when he discovered that rats taught to swim a maze could run it later on in his study. This says that the animal must have come to some general understanding of the pattern of the maze. A related topic to his swimming rat study is what Tolman called field theory. Field theory basically says that during learning, an animal develops a “field map” of the environment.
Tolman’s most important contribution to the field of psychology would be his work on latent learning. Latent learning is learning that occurs without apparent reinforcement but is not demonstrated until such time as reinforcement occurs. What this says is that reinforcement was not necessary for learning to occur.
His study to back up this assumption dealt with rats and mazes like his other studies. In this study he had three groups of rats that were given different levels of the independent variable (food as reinforcement). The first group got reinforced every time they emitted the behavior of finishing the maze while the second group never received food. The third group did not receive reinforcement until the eleventh day of the study.
The results of the study were pretty straightforward for the first two groups. The first group showed steady improvement in performance in running the maze while the second group showed a pretty constant amount of errors. The third group however showed drastic improvement after the eleventh day of the study when reinforcement was given for completing the maze. To Tolman, this said that the rats did in fact learn the maze in the first ten days even though the learning was not reflected in performance. That is, the learning was latent and reinforcement was not needed in order for the learning to occur.
Edward Tolman, neobehaviorism, molar behavior, field theory, latent learning, reinforcement, emit
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/behaviorism/Tolman.html
http://www.latentlearning.com/
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/tolman.htm
John Broadus Watson was born to a poor family in South Carolina to an extremely religious mother and a ne'er-do-well father who had many exta-marital affairs and left when Watson 13 years old. Because Watson was closer to his father than his mother he was deeply effected by his father's absence. Watson turned to violence, developed a deep resentment towards his father, and rebelled against his mother. A teacher at Furman University helped Watson get back on track and was able to go to the University of Chicago where he got his PhD in psychology.
In 1913 Watson gave a lecture entitled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" at Columbia. In it he coined the term "behaviorism" and believed it was better than Introspection. Watson believed that psychology was about studying the behaviors elicited by individuals and develop the ability to predict and manipulate those actions. Behaviorism is supposed to explain the relationships between a stimulus, response behavior, and the consequence. It was the beginning of the idea of behavior modification and getting a person under a stimulus control. However, his theory was considered a radical reduction of thinking and focused on a simplistic reliance on conditioned responses.
Early on Watson used animal subject in the lab to study comparative psychology. He wrote about the relation between behavior in a white rat and the growth of the nervous system. Much of this work was inspired by Pavlov.
Later on in his career Watson turned his studies to human behaviors and emotions. Watson's goal was to develop techniques to allow him to condition and control the emotions of humans. This lead to the Little Albert Study in which he stove to prove that fear, rage, and love could be artificially conditioned in children.
In 1924 Watson became vice president of the J Walter Thompson Agency where he attempted to improve advertisement. While here he wrote books about the control of human emotions. In an article he argued that thinking was nothing more than subvocal speaking and involved no overt behavior at all. He later retracted this statement.
Watson defined the study of behavior. He anticipated, and probably inspired Skinner's work and his emphasis on operant conditioning. He also emphasized the importance of learning and environmental influences in human development.
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2543/Watson-John-B-1878-1958.html
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/behaviorism/Watson.html
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm
Terms: Operant Conditioning, Skinner, Introspection, Behaviorism, elicited, stimulus, response behavior, consequence, Pavlov
B.F. Skinner was a prominent behaviorist, whose life and work interests me because he came to psychology almost by accident, was interested in literature and philosophy, and used his own life experiences to drive his research interests. Skinner’s approach to changing behavior is embodied in his quote: “The consequences of behavior determine the probability that the behavior will occur again.”
Skinner lived from 1904 through 1990. He grew up in Pennsylvania and taught at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, where he experimented with pigeons. He spent two periods of time at Harvard, first as a student and later as a psychology professor.
Skinner studied the work of Watson and Pavlov in classical conditioning, in which behavior could be modified by a preceding stimulus. But Skinner concentrated his experiments on the idea that behaviors depend upon what happens after the response, a phenomenon he called operant conditioning. He also worked with negative reinforcement and developed schedules of reinforcement, including fixed ratio and variable ratio schedules and the method of shaping behavior gradually. Skinner was a tinkerer and an inventor and built the air crib for infants and the box he used for experiments.
Skinner wrote The Behavior of Organisms in 1938, at the University of Minnesota, where he was teaching. He discussed in that book the principles of operant behavior and tracing behavior to reinforcing contingencies after the behavior rather than to previous stimuli. Skinner believed that these behaviorist principles could be used to create a utopian community, and wrote about that in his book Walden Two. He returned to some of these ideas in the early 1970’s in his controversial work Beyond Freedom and Dignity which prioritizes the goals of an ideal society over individual freedoms.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhskin.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_skinner.htm
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm
Terms: behaviorist, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, reinforcing contingencies, negative reinforcement, schedules of reinforcement, fixed ratio, variable ratio, stimulus, shaping
Ivan Pavlov:
Introduction: Ivan Pavlov was the researcher that I chose to look at further. I find his work fascinating and I have high respect for the way in which he conducted his research. Pavlov is my favorite so far because he was so highly organized and detailed with his work that he could find novel ways to take his research. I have high respect for all of the contributions he has made to science and believe that because of his strict research and attention to details, he was able to come up with some great theories.
Background: Pavlov was a Russian physiologist from Ryazan, Russia born in 1849. Ryazan is a town in central Russia, which is quite small, so when it was discovered Pavlov had strong intellectual abilities he was sent to St. Petersberg to further develop his scientific prosperity. He was concerned a very hard worker, very dedicated and paid great attention to detail; traits quite similar to his father.
Schooling: At the University of St. Petersburg, Pavlov received his doctorate degree in 1879 in chemistry and physiology. He found science very interesting and continued his studies in physiology by doing research at the university. He emphasized on circulation and digestion. Though he is most known for his work housed in modern psychology Pavlov’s initial interest was indeed physiology and he was a well-trained physiologist at that. Though it is not what he is well known for today, his contributions to digestion have impacted modern medicine as he went on to produce significant findings and receive high caliber awards for his work in the field.
Studies: The majority of Pavlov’s research was conducted from 1891-1900 Pavlov studied physiology initially and he was more interested in the topic as opposed to psychology, despite being so well known for his contributions to the field today.
Digestion: Pavlov’s research on digestion was looking at the link between salivation and the stomach. He used dogs as his research subjects looking at the link between the prior mentioned as being linked by reflexes in the Autonomic Nervous System. Reflexes are uncontrolled, unconditioned responses that are ‘built in’ (i.e. drooling). When Pavlov was studying his dogs he noticed that they were emitting this particular response.
Findings and Theories: The theory Pavlov created is often called Pavlovian conditioning or classical conditioning. It is a learning theory, which is not associated with any reinforcement or punishment terms. His work was seen with his dogs used for physiological studies on salivation. He noticed that when the dogs saw food that they salivated, a typical unconditioned response. At the same time the dog saw the food a bell tone was played. After repetition of this over and over Pavlov found that the dogs would salivate when only the bell tone was present; the bell became a conditioned stimulus and the salivation a conditioned response.
Prize: Pavlov’s work in conditioning was well recognized throughout Russia and the US. Even though it is what he is most recognized for by the majority of today’s society his main focus was on digestion. Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904 in Medicine for the work he did on how the digestive system works; leading the way for the topic in this field.
Summary of his contribution to psychology: Pavlov’s work gives us a good sense of how we can modify behavior. Even more so, Pavlov’s work went on to play a large role in theories of John Watson and many other behaviorists in the years to follow him. His work has been applied to various circumstances in today’s world. From in the realm of psychological treatment to the business world. Examples range from anti-phobia treatments to commercial advertising.
Terms: Pavlov, Physiology, digestion, Pavlovian conditioning, classical conditioning, reinforcement, punishment, unconditioned response, conditioned response, conditioned stimulus, John Watson, behaviorists, modify behavior
Links:
http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/pavlov.htm
http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/pavlov/readmore.html
http://www.psychologicalharassment.com/ivan_pavlov.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhpavl.html
Mary Cover Jones (1896-1987)
Mary Cover Jones had many contributions to behavioral modification and is best known for her work with a three-year-old boy named Peter and his successful desensitization to rabbits. She is sometimes referenced when Watson’s Little Albert experiment comes up. While many other psychologists (Watson and Pavlov and his dogs) seemed to have little regard for their subjects Jones incorporated a maternal touch into her research and earned the title ‘the mother of behavior therapy’.
Watson’s claim to fame was at the expense of a nine year old baby whose mother needed the money. The child was exposed to various animals, masks, and burning newspaper; then conditioned to view them all as aversive by being punished with a loud noise when trying to touch one of the stimuli. The boy was eventually removed from the experiment without giving Watson the opportunity to desensitize him, which is assuming it could be done.
Jones’ research was less for personal gain and more for the advancement and understanding of behavior modification. Understanding that people are very calm while eating Jones used this and presented Peter with food (unconditioned stimulus) and then eased the rabbit (conditioned stimulus) nearer and nearer to him until the phobia no longer existed. This method is called systematic desensitization, the gradual introduction of the phobia, and is still used today.
http://www.psych.yorku.ca/femhop/Cover%20Jones.htm
http://www.uni.edu/~maclino/bm/book/sec3.4.pdf
http://www.feministvoices.com/mary-cover-jones/
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Little%20Albert.htm
Terms used: Mary Cover Jones, behavior modification, desensitized, Watson, Pavlov, Little Albert experiment, conditioned, punished, aversive, stimuli, desensitize, unconditioned stimulus, conditioned stimulus, systematic desensitization, phobia.
So far this semester, one guy who has really caught my attention is B.F. Skinner. I know his name is sort of common for any person who has taken an intro to psychology class and his study on pigeons is pretty well known, but he has done tons of other cool things. In a 2002 survey, he was named the most influental psychologist of the 20th century. He didn't start out as a psychologist though, he was elicited, or felt right in being a psychologist after he had been a novelist. He emitted, or did this, by reading some of Ivan Pavlov's works and becoming interested in classical conditioning or a way of maniuplating behavior by using a stimulus to get a response, like food makes a dog salivate. Once he became a psychologist, he founded operant conditioning which is sort of like the reverse of classical conditioning. Now, people were thinking or response that foresee a stimulus like you work for a paycheck. Without knowing you would receive a paycheck, you wouldn't work. All of Skinner's work led to four awards in his life time, one including the Human of the Year Award in 1972.
Skinner also has a few famous quotes, probably derived from his writing career. Some quotes of his are, "A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying." and "The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do."
As you can see, Skinner was a creative dude. He made this electric and plexiglass baby crib that was influenced by his wife. She wanted a safer environment for their baby than a normal crib. The baby in a box crib as they called it could adjust temperature so there was no need for clothes or blankets really which cause unnatural aversive sleeping positions and bed sores. Skinner found by adjusting the temperature a degree or two would effect the infants behavior either calming or more irritable. Many people wouldn't agree with this, but it wasn't harmful to the child, and she even turned out fine supposedly.
These are just a few pieces of Skinner to mention, but there are tons more to be researched. Some people might think he's some really old boring guy, but really he just passed away 11 years ago. We learn more about Isaac Newton and even further back to guys like Plato, Skinner is pretty recent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_skinner.htm
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/b_f_skinner.html
Terms: Skinner, psychology, elicted, emitted, Pavlov, classical conditioning, manipulating, behvior, stimulus, response, operant conditioning, aversive, baby in a box
John B. Watson was a very influential man in the history of psychology. He was born January 9, 1878 and died in 1958. Watson got his degree in psychology in Chicago in 1903. A few years later he started to teach at John Hopkins University he really focused on shaping ones behaviors. He believed one was able to have someone elicit a response he wanted. He thought he could make anyone anything possible. He also discovered the behavioral school of psychology.
His most famous study is a study called Little Albert. Little Albert was a study he conducted in the 1920's. Albert was a young child that grew up in a hospital setting for a lot of the beginning of his life. Watson first present Little Albert with objects that were not adversive to him(have a negative effect). Little Albert wasn't afraid of many things at all. He was presented with fire, a monkey, a dog, a rabbit and a rat. When the experimenter discovered that Albert really liked the rat they started conditioning. They wanted to turn something Albert saw as positive into something negative. They decided to pair the rat with a loud noise every time he saw the rat a loud noise would be sounded with it. This was than considered classical conditioning. Albert was than conditioned to hear a loud bang every time he was presented with a rat. Soon Albert was conditioned and began to emitt a crying behavior every time he was presented with an animal that was fuzzy. The loud noise was no longer presented with the fuzzy things, and little Albert would still become uncomfortable or begin to emitt a crying behavior.
Watson made a very well known remark. Watson claimed that if you were to present him with 12 healthy infants he should shape them into whomever he wanted. He claimed he could make doctors, lawyers, artists and many more. Watson also wrote many books about behaviorism and child-rearing magazines and books, but most people don't know these things. Watson conditioned Little Albert to fear more than just simply the rat, and this study is still remembered today.
Shaping, elicit, adversive, conditioning, classical conditioning, conditioned, emitt, behaviorism
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/watson.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/John_B._Watson
John B. Watson was a very influential man in the history of psychology. He was born January 9, 1878 and died in 1958. Watson got his degree in psychology in Chicago in 1903. A few years later he started to teach at John Hopkins University he really focused on shaping ones behaviors. He believed one was able to have someone elicit a response he wanted. He thought he could make anyone anything possible. He also discovered the behavioral school of psychology.
His most famous study is a study called Little Albert. Little Albert was a study he conducted in the 1920's. Albert was a young child that grew up in a hospital setting for a lot of the beginning of his life. Watson first present Little Albert with objects that were not adversive to him(have a negative effect). Little Albert wasn't afraid of many things at all. He was presented with fire, a monkey, a dog, a rabbit and a rat. When the experimenter discovered that Albert really liked the rat they started conditioning. They wanted to turn something Albert saw as positive into something negative. They decided to pair the rat with a loud noise every time he saw the rat a loud noise would be sounded with it. This was than considered classical conditioning. Albert was than conditioned to hear a loud bang every time he was presented with a rat. Soon Albert was conditioned and began to emitt a crying behavior every time he was presented with an animal that was fuzzy. The loud noise was no longer presented with the fuzzy things, and little Albert would still become uncomfortable or begin to emitt a crying behavior.
Watson made a very well known remark. Watson claimed that if you were to present him with 12 healthy infants he should shape them into whomever he wanted. He claimed he could make doctors, lawyers, artists and many more. Watson also wrote many books about behaviorism and child-rearing magazines and books, but most people don't know these things. Watson conditioned Little Albert to fear more than just simply the rat, and this study is still remembered today.
Shaping, elicit, adversive, conditioning, classical conditioning, conditioned, emitt, behaviorism
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/watson.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/John_B._Watson
When I read about B.F. Skinner, what caught my attention was the focus that put upon manipulation of environment. This reminded of a medical doctor I have learned about, whose name is Dr. William Thomas. To begin with, his eventual residing in the field of Psychology is very much like Pavlov's discovery of Classical Conditioning... on accident.
William H. Thomas was born in 1959. During his childhood, Thomas reports that he was frequently at his grandparents' house. This caused him to reflect on the valuableness of the elderly in his life. He received his B.S. in Biology from the State University College at Cortland. From there he went on to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Although his immediate interest after schooling was to work in emergency medicine, Thomas was offered a part time position as a medical director of a nursing facility in a small town. His experience here led him to become a permanent part of the nursing care community.
The reason that Dr. Thomas is relevant to this class is that he went on to develop a "post-institution" philosophy for how to integrate the elderly community back into a relevant and tangible part of the overall society. While beginning his time at the small nursing home in New Berlin, NY, Dr. Thomas began to notice that many of the elderly residents of the long-term care center were emitting qualitative symptoms that seemed to be elicited by the facility itself. What he noticed was a proliferation of the symptoms of loneliness, helplessness, and boredom. As he began to notice this more and more, he realized that these three symptoms could be minimized if the environment were to be manipulated. Dr. Thomas began to develop a philosophy of how care for the elderly should be, and the result is what is now called The Eden Alternative. The Eden Alternative is a philosophy and and actual type of long-term care facility. Some modifications that Dr. Thomas made to manipulate the facility environment were: allowing residents to serve themselves food, cook for themselves, each resident is allowed an animal to be cared for, nursing staff encouraged to bring in family pets, and the elderly also participate in after-school child-care when school is out. The facility environment also had the addition of a communal garden, as well as individual plants in each room for the residents to care for.
There are many, many other examples of environmental manipulation that Dr. Thomas incorporates into his philosophical model. What strikes me is that this is an adaptation of what Skinner was proving. In Walden II, Skinner fantasizes about a neohuman race that lives by the principles of behaviorism...many ideas that raised people's eyebrows. Skinner believed that we should manipulate the environment around us in order to advance the human race. Dr. Thomas has sought to prove that the elderly community has much to offer the younger generations, and that it is beneficial to humanity that we figure out how to better care for the elderly, and also seek them out for how to better live too.
http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2007/10/dr-william-h-th.html
Thomas, W.H. (1996). Life worth living: How someone you love can still enjoy life in a nursing home. Acton, MA: VanderWyk & Burnham.
Bergman-Evans, B. (2004). Beyond the Basics: Effects of the Eden Alternative model on quality of life issues. Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 30, 27-34.
Terms: manipulation, environment, Pavlov, Classical Conditioning, emitting, eliciting
“By careful cultural design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave-- the motives, desires, the wishes.” The renowned behaviorist, B.F. suggested this in his book, Walden Two, published in 1948. Skinner had many ideas about society and how it should be ran. Many of these ideas were influenced by his studies in the behavioral sciences. He is arguably the most influential behaviorist, because of his discoveries in the process of operant conditioning.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in the small town of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Skinner received his BA in English from Hamilton College in upstate New York where he interestingly took no courses in psychology. While working towards his BA at Hamilton, Skinner did not fit in well with the rest of his peers. He was an atheist while the school required mandatory daily chapel attendance. After his graduation in 1925, Skinner built a study in his parents’ attic to focus on his writings, but didn’t feel as this was the best option for himself. Ultimately, he resigned himself to writing newspaper articles on labor problems, and lived for a while in Greenwich Village in New York City. After some time spent traveling, he decided to go back to school at Harvard University. There, he obtained his masters in psychology in 1930 and then his doctorate in 1931.
This time at Harvard greatly influenced him after reading about Pavlov and Watson’s experimental work in the area of behavioral psychology. Despite Watson and Pavlov’s great influence, Skinner focused more on operant behaviors and conditioning rather than classical conditioning. In classical conditioning, a respondent behavior is elicited by specific observable stimuli. Contrastingly, in operant conditioning, an operant behavior occurs without an observable external stimulus. Skinner felt that this type of learning is more representative of the learning that we demonstrate on a daily basis. “All we need to know in order to describe and explain behavior is this: actions followed by good outcomes are likely to recur, and actions followed by bad outcomes are less likely to recur.” During his studies of operant conditioning, Skinner’s main foci were the role of punishment in response to acquisition, schedules of reinforcement, extinction, secondary reinforcement, and generalization.
Due to his ample interest in operant behavior, B.F. Skinner invented many contraptions to demonstrate this form of learning. As a matter of fact, he invented most all of the equipment used in his operant conditioning. These include the operant chamber and the cumulative recorder. An operant chamber, also called the Skinner Box, is a secured chamber where a laboratory animal such as a rat or pigeon is placed to study reinforcement and punishment animals. The main features of the operant chamber are the speaker, light, water spout, food hopper, and bar (for lever pressing). The water spout and the food hopper allow for the delivery of the reinforcer (the food).The food hopper is attached to a computerized mechanism which is attached to a canister of food pellets. When the desired number of presses has occurred, the computer opens a small gate and a pellet falls into the food hopper for the rat to eat. Bars on the floor of the Skinner Box serve two purposes. They allow the animal’s waste to be removed from the operant chamber and they can also function as a punisher. Electrical current can be administered through the metal bars in the floor to shock the rat.
Skinner displays his beliefs in Walden Two. Here, he applies his principles of learning to create a utopian society of the ideal world. In this society, everyone is happy and is regularly positively reinforced. Skinner’s logic for the society to run smoothly is that if you view something in the community as not working, then change it. People aren’t forced to stay at Walden Two, but are rather fid it positively reinforcing to stay there. Punishment is never used in Walden Two, because punishment is unpredictable in its effects, and has unwanted side effects.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/
www.webster.edu/~woolflm/personalityskinner.ppt
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/skinner.html
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/31631.B_F_Skinner
http://www.uni.edu/~maclino/bm/book/sec3.5.pdf
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/huff/classes/Intro/Skinner.html
I chose to look at Skinner a little more. B.F. Skinner is one of the most famous Psychologists because of his findings on nurture. He was very well educated. He got his Ph. D. from Harvard and ended up teaching there for most of his career as well. He made many contributions, his biggest contribution being Operant Conditioning.
One of the biggest, if not the biggest debate in psychology is if nurture, our surroundings and environment has the biggest influence on our lives, or if nature, our biology is more influential. Skinner's book "Walden Two" Addressed this issue hands on. His "Utopia" was all based on operant conditioning. Operant conditioning uses reinforcement and punishment. A reinforcement is when a behavior is increased as a result of removing something bad or aversive (negative reinforcement), or adding something good or pleasurable (positive reinforcement. As for punishment that is a decrease in a behavior as a result or removing something good (negative punishment), or adding something bad (positive punishment). In this "Utopia" Skinner had created, he could control the behaviors people did (emitted) through operant conditioning. However in Walden Two they did not receive punishment, only reinforcement, but in the "real world" we receive both. It was very controversial at the time. Although it is controversial when I was looking up information about Walden Two, I noticed that some people now have utopias that are modeled after Walden Two.
He believed through Operant Conditioning that behavior is determined by the consequences. So if we are punished, it decreases behavior and the likelihood that we will do it again. If we are reinforced it increases the likelihood that we will emit (do) that behavior again. These techniques can help treat phobias, addicts, can be used for child-rearing, and also in the classroom. These are seen everywhere and our behavior is constantly being modified by operant conditioning, and thanks to Skinner we know what it is called.
Terms: Behavior, Emit, Operant Conditioning, aversive, pleasurable, reinforcement, punishment, positive punishment, negative punishment, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, consequences
I chose to look at Skinner a little more. B.F. Skinner is one of the most famous Psychologists because of his findings on nurture. He was very well educated. He got his Ph. D. from Harvard and ended up teaching there for most of his career as well. He made many contributions, his biggest contribution being Operant Conditioning.
One of the biggest, if not the biggest debate in psychology is if nurture, our surroundings and environment has the biggest influence on our lives, or if nature, our biology is more influential. Skinner's book "Walden Two" Addressed this issue hands on. His "Utopia" was all based on operant conditioning. Operant conditioning uses reinforcement and punishment. A reinforcement is when a behavior is increased as a result of removing something bad or aversive (negative reinforcement), or adding something good or pleasurable (positive reinforcement. As for punishment that is a decrease in a behavior as a result or removing something good (negative punishment), or adding something bad (positive punishment). In this "Utopia" Skinner had created, he could control the behaviors people did (emitted) through operant conditioning. However in Walden Two they did not receive punishment, only reinforcement, but in the "real world" we receive both. It was very controversial at the time. Although it is controversial when I was looking up information about Walden Two, I noticed that some people now have utopias that are modeled after Walden Two.
He believed through Operant Conditioning that behavior is determined by the consequences. So if we are punished, it decreases behavior and the likelihood that we will do it again. If we are reinforced it increases the likelihood that we will emit (do) that behavior again. These techniques can help treat phobias, addicts, can be used for child-rearing, and also in the classroom. These are seen everywhere and our behavior is constantly being modified by operant conditioning, and thanks to Skinner we know what it is called.
Terms: Behavior, Emit, Operant Conditioning, aversive, pleasurable, reinforcement, punishment, positive punishment, negative punishment, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, consequences
http://www.biography.com/people/bf-skinner-9485671
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/huff/classes/Intro/Skinner.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/297/000022231/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cover_Jones
http://www.psych.yorku.ca/femhop/Cover%20Jones.htm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17615966/A-Biography-of-Mary-Cover-Jones
Since we talked so much about the four main behaviorists in class on Tuesday, I wanted to write about someone else. She was mentioned very briefly in one of our chapters before, so I decided to look deeper into what she did.
I love a good, strong female, so I chose to do this week’s topical blog on her and how she became the strong psychologist she is known to be. Jones started her psychology career by attending Vassar. I discovered in one of my websites that she took every single psychology course offered at the university. I loved reading that because that’s how I am as well. I have taken so many psychology classes and plan on taking so many more that by the time I graduate I will be very close to taking all of the psychology courses offered at UNI. Right around the time she graduated she also started attending lectures by John B. Watson. In these lectures Watson discussed how a Vassar grad student (who actually happened to be one of her friends) had helped him in his Little Albert experiment, which inspired Jones to obtain her masters. So Mary went on to attend Columbia University for her graduate work. Here she got married and conducted one of her more famous experiments, her work with Peter. John B. Watson was the supervisor of her research, a very prestigious honor. Here she was concerned with reducing his fears of a white rabbit. Peter was an ideal candidate when selecting subjects to research on. This is due to the fact that unfortunately his fear was closer to a phobia. He found white rabbits so aversive and was so frightened of these small, white rabbits that any progress what so ever would easily be detected. This study is obviously very linked to Watson’s study with Little Albert. However instead of eliciting a fear, we are trying to extinguish the emitted fearful behaviors. It makes you wonder if Watson wanted to be a part of this experiment because he felt like he needed to make up for something. As we’ve all discussed before in at least one of our psychology classes, the Little Albert experiment would no way be considered ethical now. So maybe he was trying to make up for the damage he inflicted on that small child. Her most successful approach was direct conditioning in her systematic desensitization. She presented a positive stimulus with the rabbit until she conditioned Peter to not fear the small animal. Another technique in direct conditioning was placing Peter in a room with other children who were not afraid of the rabbit; they placed the rabbit in this room as well. Her systematic desensitization worked, and eventually she was in one session something remarkable. Peter was put in a room with another child, and he was afraid of the rabbit. However, Peter remained calm because he had been conditioned to no longer fear the rabbit. After she completed her Masters degree, she moved out west and started to work with her husband at a research institute. Here she worked on the Oakland Growth Study which catapulted the rest of her career.
I really loved this because it helped me see the importance of graduate school, even way back then.
I do NOT want to go to grad school (glad I’m a psychology major) but the more and more I think about it I realize I do not have much of a choice, and it’d benefit my career in ways unimaginable.
Terminology
Elicit, emit, systematic desensitization, behavior, direct conditioning, positive stimulus, aversive,
B.F. Skinner was the behaviorist psychologist credited with discovering and naming operant conditioning. He studied both psychology and physiology at Harvard. He was a behaviorist psychologist because of his studies on affecting behavior. His form of behavior modification is sometimes referred to as Radical behaviorism.
Skinner was very handy with building all types of gadgets for his psychological studies, which lead him to realize that certain things in the created environment could elicit certain behavior from rats. The fact that the stimulus for the behavior came after the behavior differed from classical conditioning, where the stimulus comes before the behavior and is deliberately added to elicit a response. Operant conditioning is more naturalistic, in that the rat or subject emits a behavior, is reinforced or punished, and then adjusts its behavior. Form this he experimented with changing the length of time between a stimulus and behavior, manipulation behaviors based on pleasurable and aversive stimuli. He published this research in his book called The Behavior of Organisms.
Skinner often used a device known as a skinner box to condition his test subjects with. He first used rats, but then switched to pigeons. The Skinner box was a small room built for the animal, it was used as a discriminate stimulus to let the animal know that its behavior was likely to be reinforced, if it emitted the desired, target behavior. An example common example, is that Skinner wanted to condition a rat to push a lever. The rat would amble about the Skinner box until it accidently pushed the lever. Immediately a pellet of food would appear. Soon the rat would figure out that by pushing the lever, it could obtain food, which was the reinforcement. After the target behavior was established, he would change the amount of lever pushes until the rat received the food, to further the conditioning.
He also researched what would happen if the reinforcement suddenly stopped following the behavior. The rat would panic and try a variety of behaviors, which became known as an extinction burst. We’ve all seen this when a child used to getting there way is told ‘no’. They throw a fit. If a behavior stopped being reinforced, the rat stopped emitting the behavior and the behavior became extinct. These principles are often used to train dogs, and other animals.
One example of a real application for his studies takes place during World War II. Skinner manipulated pigeons to emit continuous pecking. He had them peck a button which he linked up missiles. The result was that the pigeons were able to keep the missiles on track through their constant pecking at the button.
He also designed a crib for babies, where their environment was carefully controlled with care for the baby and convenience for the Mother I mind. The crib was called an air crib or baby tender. The baby was in a left in a box that had its own temperature, so the baby did not need clothes, which can entangle the baby and create laundry. Skinner applied the experiment to his own daughter and deemed it a success. I feel that there probably was some creator bias, because of course Skinner would want his idea to succeed, and he would be more inclined to see results in a favorable light. This idea did not catch on, and is often initially met with outrage, and opposition.
This seems to be one of the first experiments that lead Skinner to larger ideas about conditioning children from birth to be whatever the conditioner wanted. Skinner envisioned utopias, of satisfied people living in harmony and applying the principle of behavior modification for good. He wrote about these ideas in his book Walden II. Of course, if behavior modification was that widely used in a society it would only be a matter of time before those in charge of condition turned things so they benefited at the cost of the people. The world would probably turn out closer a model of Brave New world, than a Utopia. There was lots of classical conditioning used in that futuristic society.
His bases for behavior modification revolved around the concept of a reinforcer. The reinforce was the consequence of the target behavior and it determined whether, the behavior would happen again or not. If the consequence was pleasurable the behavior was likely to be repeated. This was referred to as reinforcement. If the consequence was aversive, the behavior was likely to decrease. This he referred to as punishment. Skinner’s book, Walden II, applies these principles to society as a whole. Skinner was certain that he could take any child and condition them into what he wanted them to be, based on his operant conditioning and classical conditioning.
Today his work is widely used in clinical settings.
aversive, pleasurable, emit, elicit, operant condition, classical conditioning, reinforce, reinforcement, punishment, extinction burst, extinction, target behavior, discriminate stimulus, stimulus,
http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/AboutSkinner.html
http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/operant-conditioning.html
http://genetics.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/behavior/learning/SkinnerBox.html
I chose to do more research on Edward Thorndike. He initially emitted his interest in psychology after reading a “Principals of Psychology” by William James. After graduating he attended Harvard University to study alongside of William James. Thorndike study went unfinished at Harvard but was asked to attend Columbia University by Cattell where he continued his animal research. He has gone from using chicks to using cats and dogs in his studies. He was awarded the doctorate from his thesis on animal testing. His thesis concluded that experimental approach is the only way to understand learning, from this came his famous “law of effect.” Thorndike’s law of effect suggests that responses closely followed by satisfaction will become firmly attached to the situation and be more likely to reoccur when the situation is repeated.
Thorndike invented what is called the “puzzle box.” This is used to study animal intelligence by using instrumental conditioning. The animal elicits a response then that means the response is learned. If the animal elicits a response and is not rewarded then the animal’s response is extinguished. Thorndike would place a hungry cat into this box and watched how long it would it take the cat to elicit the response of escaping the box. The animals that were tested had shortened time every time they went through. The animals not only understood what they had to do to escape but the connection between the response and situation was stamped in. After this study he concluded that the law of effect was the immediate consequence of a mental connection can work its way back up to strengthen it. This study showed that animals learn by trial and error or reinforcement or punishment.
Thorndike developed what is called psychological connection. Thorndike thought that from experience there was a connection between perceived stimuli and emitted responses; simply meaning that people’s intelligence formed the connection bonds. He also believed that the more intellectual a person was the more connections they could make and the easier they would be to make. He believed that there were 4 dimensions of abstract intelligence. 1) Altitude: the difficulty of tasks someone can perform. 2) Width: the variety of tasks of a give difficulty. 3) Area: a function of width and altitude. 4) Speed: the number of tasks one can complete in a given time. Thorndike’s 4 dimensions of intelligence lead to others debating of the levels of intelligence.
Thorndike had two other “laws” in addition to his “law of effect.” The first one “Law of Exercise” means that the bonds between stimuli and responses are strengthened through being exercised frequently, recently and vigorously. If the responses are repetitive and intense it will become associated with one another, now referred to as conditioning. The second one is “Law of Readiness” which is when certain behaviors are more likely to be learned than others are. When a conduction unit is ready to conduct, to do so is satisfying and not to do so is annoying, then a conduction unit is not ready to conduct being forced to do so is annoying.
Terms: emitted, law of effect, response, puzzle box, condition, elicits, extinguished, stamped in, reinforcement, punishment, perceived stimuli, emitted responses, stimuli, responses, law of exercise, law of readiness.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/ethorndike.shtml
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vjgroome/
John Watson
John Watson became interested in comparative psychology and studying animals while at the University of Chicago where he receive his PhD in 1903. Watson saw psychology as a way to study actions and from that he could predict and manipulate behaviors. This is known as behaviorism.
Watson believed that the most effective way to studying learning was in a controlled laboratory. In the controlled laboratory Watson could manipulate the environment to condition animals or humans to emit the behaviors he wanted. The “Little Albert” study is what Watson is most famous for. Watson used a 9 month old boy (Little Albert) and paired a neutral stimulus (furry white animal) with a loud noise (unconditioned stimulus). At first playing with the furry animal was pleasurable but when the furry animal was paired with the loud noise it became aversive (he cried) every time the furry animal was placed in front of him. The study showed that behaviors can be conditioned through manipulating the environment. This experiment led Watson to believe that if you gave him 12 healthy infants he could make them into whatever kind of professional he wanted. With that being said Watson also noted that “I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing so for many thousands of years." That quote is in response to other earlier psychologist who believed that one’s heredity was the only influence on development and learning.
After leaving John Hopkins (where he was a psychology professor), because of an affair with his graduate assistant, Watson got into the advertising business and used his knowledge of behaviors to achieve some success. Watson had a poor relationship with his children and for the last few years of his life he lived alone on a farm. Interestingly, a short time before Watson’s death in 1958 he burnt all of his unpublished work. That made me wonder what kind of findings he could have possibly had that could have helped the study of behaviorism
Terms:behaviorism, emit, pleasurable, averisve, neutral stimulus, unconditioned stimulus
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2543/Watson-John-B-1878-1958.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/watson.htm
I chose to write about Pavlov. He is very important in psychology and his study about salivation and dogs is taught in almost every psychology class. Pavlov emitted experiments that elicited classical conditioning, and also focused on netrual stimuli. Instead of just calling many things neutral stimulus, he created that something had to stand out in the environment. He called this stimuli salient, and we can see salient stimuli all over in our day to day actions.
Pavlov was a Russian
Ivan Pavlov also emitted creating an innate and conditioned reflex. He explained an innate reflex to be instinctive, and also unlearned. An example would be when somebody jumps out and scares you, you usually scream. Your not conditioned to emit screaming, it just happens. A conditioned reflex is when you are reinforced or punished for emitting a target behavior. If you are presented a reinforcer every time you emit a target behavior, you will increase the frequency of that behavior to elicit reinforcement. If you are punished for a target behavior, you will more than likely quit the behavior so you are not punished anymore.
Pavlov went deeper into conditioning and created classical conditioning. It is a learning process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a natural stimulus. Pavlov would place the neutral signal before the natural response. His famous experiment is with the dogs; he produced a tone with the food, and eventually could play the tone and the dogs would salivate.
Pavlov was a very big part in psychology. He has won the nobel prize, and his finding are still being taught today. He emitted a huge experiment with dogs that has had a lasting effect in the psychology today. He created classical conditioning, and we would not study the effect of stimuli today if it wasn't for him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqumfpxuzI
http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/classcond.htm
http://www.ivanpavlov.com/
terms:emitted, elicited, neutral stimulus, classical conditioning, conditioning, association, salient, innate reflex, conditioned reflex, reinforced, punished, reinforcer, frequency, target behavior
After learning about some of the historical figures in class, I chose to research and write more about John Watson. I have always been interested in him and his work. I’ve always really enjoyed behaviorism, and the little Albert study.
John Broadus Watson was born to Emma and Pickens Watson, in Greenville South Carolina. His mother was a very religious person and his father was completely different. He was a very heavy drinker, and had many extra marital affairs. Later his father ended up leaving the family in 1891. John married Mary Ikes who he met when he studied at the University of Chicago. They had two children together. Watson got appointed to the head of the psychology department at the University of Johns Hopkins. Rosali Rayner was a graduate student of Watson at Hopkins. These two developed an affair. It was found out later at a dinner party with the Rayners and Watson and his wife. His wife found a love letter at Rosali’s home. They later got divorced and John and Rosali married and had two children of their own. Rosali and Watson did a very controversial and famous study called the Little Albert Study. This experiment was to show classical conditioning. This was after Pavlov’s experiment with Dogs and salvation. Watson wanted to take that research further and combine that with people’s emotions. John Watson thought there was only three instinct emotions. fear, rage and love. He wanted to prove that these three reactions could be artificially conditioned in children. “Watson and Raynor exposed the child to a series of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks and burning newspapers and observed the boy's reactions. The boy initially showed no fear of any of the objects he was shown. The next time Albert was exposed the rat, Watson made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer. Naturally, the child began to cry after hearing the loud noise. After repeatedly pairing the white rat with the loud noise, Albert began to cry simply after seeing the rat.”( http://psychology.about.com/od/classicpsychologystudies/a/little-albert-experiment.htm) anytime after that the child would emit a behavior of fear whenever he saw anything that was furry and white.
Because of the publicity surrounding the fact that Watson had an affair with his graduate student, Watson was fired from Johns Hopkins. Watson then went into marketing. Watson had quickly risen back up from being fired, and became the vice president at Thompson. He headed a large number of high-profile advertising campaigns. He has been credited with re-introducing the ‘testimonial’. An advertising tool that had fallen out of favor. He had come very successful and made two times the money than his academic salary .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/classicpsychologystudies/a/little-albert-experiment.htm
John Broadus Watson was an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism. He was born to a vey religious mother, Emma Watson and his father, Pickens Watson who left his family when John was only thirteen years old. He was born in the town of Travelers West, South Carolina. Later John attended Greenville College in South Carolina. He worked very hard and entered college when he was sixteen years old and left with a masters at the age of twenty one. John got married and had two children with a lady named Mary Ikes. A little while after that John had been teaching at Johns Hopkins, but was asked to leave because his affair with one of us students. After the scandal broke out Mary divorced John and John married Rosalie Rayner, his graduate assistant and they had two kids of their own. John did not have a very strong relationship with his children and concentrated a lot on his work so he didn't have much time for other things.
Watson was a brilliant psychologist and believed that learning was most effective if studied in a laboratory. He was most famous for his "Little Albert" experiment. Watson used a nine month year old baby, Little Albert, a furry white animal, and a loud noise which was used to frighten Little Albert when the animal approached him. Watson became very interested in experimenting with animals and their behavior after learning about Pavlov's classical conditioning experiment with the dog salivating. Watson tried to the experiment at first with just the baby reaching for the furry animal, but later in the experiment he added the loud noise whenever the baby would reach for the animal which startled the baby. After a while Little Albert learned to not like to furry animal because whenever he reached in to grab the animal the loud noise would emit. After this experiment Watson felt that he could mold or shape any infant into being whatever you want it to be. He took his work into a lot of other studies and became very consumed in his work. Watson would manipulate the experiments to get the children to like or dislike things to prove his point of molding or shaping the infants into anything that they want them to be. I didn't agree with his ideas however because I don't believe you can mold or shape any child into being what you want them to be. Every child is born with a behavior and that behavior will stay with them until they die.
Watson died alone. Towards the end of his life he was living in an old farm house all alone. He also burnt all of his undiscovered inventions or ideas because he didn't want anyone else to read them or steal them. I wonder what Watson would be like today if he was still alive and how far he could take behaviorism with the help of the technology that we have today. He could come up with some great things and could take behaviorism to the next level.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/watson.htm
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/behaviorism/Watson.html
Terms: behavior, behaviorism, consequence, classical conditioning, emit, elicit, reinforce, stimulus, target behavior.
Edward Thorndike
Although we did talk about him in class he was definately the one that I knew the least about. I feel as though he emitted the least amount of contributions to psychology because I had never heard of him. Little did I know that he had a lot to do with all of the basics involved in todays behaviorism.
One of the first things that I found interesting was that he was the one to come up with the law of recency, a familiar principle that we all emit (do) quite regularly but we don't seem to realize it all the time. The law of recency states that the most recent reponse to a stimulus is the one that is most likely to occur. This means that if you learn something on a tuesday and then learn something different on that friday, on saturday you are more likely to remember the thing you learned friday instaed of Tuesday because Tuesday was further away. Now many of us may think of this as common sense in todays world but when Thorndike discovered this phenomenon it was a big deal in his time.
Thorndike also came up with the Theory of use and the theory of disuse. The theory of use states that the more an association is elicited or emitted from a subject, the stronger that association becomes. And the exact opposite is the Theory of disuse in which the less an association is emitted or elicited the weaker the association becomes. For example, if everytime you emitted (did) the behavior of ringing a doorbell and your consequence was getting a cookie, the more times you rang the doorbell and got a cookie the more you would come to associate that doorbell with the you-getting-a-cookie response (The theory of use). However if you go ahead and pick a different antecedent, meaning in this case a different doorbell and you recieve no cookie in response to ringing it, eventually you would stop thinking you would get a cookie if you ring a doorbell (the theory of disuse). This is another one of Thorndike's ideas that we may think of as common knowledge today but it helped shape how we see human's behaviors.
One of the final things I found interesting about Thorndike is that he was the one who originally created the concept that all animals learn the same way. This is something that even today people have disputed and this may be one of the most important and well known things Thorndike has come up with. Most people know how Thorndike created a puzzle box for cats and the recorded the time it took for the cat to elicit the target behavior (getting out of the box). He did this again and again and found that the more times the cat had been in the box the less time it took for it to get out the next time. It had learned the puzzle through trial and error, a common way that humans learn too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thorndike
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/ethorndike.shtml
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm
Terms: elicit, emit, behavior, behaviorism, law of recency, stimulus, response, theory of use, theory of disuse, association, consequence, antecedent, target behavior, trial and error
I decided to research a behavioral psychologist that was not one of the four we learned about in class, Albert Bandura. To start with some background, Albert Bandura was born in Mundare, Canada in 1925. He was raised in a small farming community in Canada. He received his B.A. degree from the University of the British Columbia in 1949. In 1952, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While he was studying at the University Iowa, he developed the social learning theory, which I will talk about later. Also while studying at the University of Iowa, Bandura believed that psychologists should "conceptualize clinical phenomena in ways that would make them amenable to experimental tests". Bandura believed that psychological research should be conducted in a laboratory to control factors that determined behavior. In 1953, Albert Bandura accepted a position as a psychology professor at the University of Stanford.
Albert Bandura proposed the most comprehensive and widely accepted theory of modeling which he called the Social Learning Theory. According to this theory, children learn social behaviors by observing the actions of important people in their lives, such as their parents. By doing this, he rejected the view of the S--> R perspective. Instead, his central theme was called “reciprocal determinism”, a process by which personal factors, the environment, and behavior all operate as interlocking determinants of each other. In Social Learning Theory, neither is the primary determinant of behavior change.
Bandura proposed that there are four elements of Social Learning Theory: attention, retention, production, and motivation and reinforcement. In order to learn through observations, the student must obviously be paying attention. Bandura thought that we usually tend to pay more attention to people who are attractive, popular, competent, or admired. Next, in order for a student to imitate the modeled behavior, the student must be able to remember it. Retention involves representing the model’s actions mentally. Third, practicing the behavior can help reproduce the behavior of the model. Lastly, a student is more likely to perform a behavior if they have incentive to do so. Reinforcement, or something pleasurable for the student is motivation to increase the likelihood of the behavior occurring.
One of Bandura's more well-known and famous experiments dealing with modeling is his study with Bobo dolls. In one particular experiment Bandura showed a video to children that showed an adult beating up a doll, calling it names, etc. Bandura divided the children into three groups, and each group watched a video with a different ending.
The first video showed the adult being rewarded for their behavior, the second video showed the adult being punished for their behavior, and the third video showed no consequences for the behavior. He then studied the differences between how male children and female children reacted to this video in regard to whether they imitated the observed behavior or not. The results show that males in all cases imitated the viewed behavior more so than females. The results also show that the children who watched the video where the person was rewarded for his actions duplicated the behaviors more so than when the person was punished or did not receive either a punishment or reinforcement. This was consistent in both male and female children, supporting Bandura's argument that people learn from observing others.
Terminology: social learning theory, behavior, stimulus, response, reciprocal determinism, reinforcement, punished, pleasurable
http://academics.rmu.edu/~tomei/ed711psy/b_bandu.htm
https://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/bandura.htm
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/bandura.htm
John Broadus Watson was born in 1878 in South Carolina. He grew up with a very strict mother who wanted him to be a religious Christian, and a father who always drank and was in trouble with the law. John became a troubled boy and didn’t care about academics much until he was accepted to Furman University. He took classes there and then went on to study philosophy at the University of Chicago. He wasn’t impressed with philosophy, so he began to work in animal psychology and earned a PhD. He became a teacher at the University of Chicago and later married one of his students and had a couple kids. He then started dating other women on campus which became a huge issure with the University. To avoid future problems, he left the university and went on to teach at Johns Hopkins University. While teaching there, he did a variety of psychological experiments dealing with animal behavior. He believed that psychology was a science of human behavior that was much like animal behavior and it needed to be studied under lab conditions. He started using the term behaviorist in 1912. He then became the present of the American Psychological Association in 1915.
It wasn’t until 1920 that Watson conducted his most famous experiment. This study is what he is best known for. This study is the Little Albert Study. Watson believed that he could condition a fear response. Little Albert was an 11 month old boy. Watson gave Albert a rat to play with and Albert wasn’t afraid at all. He then clanged metal with a hammer behind Albert’s head and Albert began to cry because this was very aversive for him. Watson then clanged the metal everything Albert was in contact with the rat. Over a couple weeks, Albert would begin to cry at the sight of the rat. He also would cry at the sight of any furry object. Albert learned to associate fear with the rat from the clanging of the metal. It was from this study that he came to believe that all behavior is learned. This began the era of behaviorism. John Watson is considered the founder of Behaviorism. It was widely accepted among psychologists and the public from the 1920-60s.
He was very interested in children behavior. He did many observations/experiments with infants to distinguish learned and unlearned behaviors. He became an popular child rearing expert. He said mothers should give out too much love and they should have strict routines and a tight control over the child’s environment and behavior. He believed that by controlling a child’s environment, he could train them to become anything he wanted.
A year before he passed away, he received a gold medal from the American Psychological Association for his contributions to psychology.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/johnbroaduswatson.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0006/ai_2699000650/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh13wa.html
Terms: condition, response, aversive, associate,
Edward Thorndike
I really wanted to cover Thorndike in this blog. I don't think I know enough about him. I also feel like he got drowned out by Skinner when I was reading through chapter three. So here goes:
Edward Thorndike was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was inspired to get involved in psychology by William James. I found out that early in his career he tried a some sort of mind reading experiment with children. Apparently this caused a controversy because he wasn't allowed to work with kids again. This is how he started experimenting with animals. He created his famous puzzle box while studying at Columbia, where he received his doctorate in 1898.
Thorndike's puzzle box was a self-made tool he used to study behavior and learning. He conducted an experiment in which he put the cat in the puzzle box and closed the lid. The cat could open the door to the box by pressing the right levers. Thorndike observed the behavior of the cat and came up with his Laws of Learning
In his doctorate thesis, he wrote about his Law of Effect. The Law of Effect states that, while conditioning an organism, stimuli create a connection between the stimulus and the response. Pleasurable stimuli will strengthen this connection, while aversive stimuli will weaken it. Thorndike suggested that the organism will choose which behaviors it will learn based on whether an experience is satisfying or not. This is interesting because Thorndike discovered a way to make learning more effective in humans and animals. By making the learning satisfying to the organism, you can ensure the subject will be learned by the organism more effectively.
Thorndike came up with two other laws around the same time: The Law of Exercise and the Law of Readiness. Thorndike came up with these laws while experimenting with cats in his puzzle box. The Law of Exercise says that the more times the organism performs a task, the better they learn it. n other words, repetition reinforces behaviors. I think it is interesting that Thorndike talks about a "use it or lose it" principle attached to this law. Basically he says that behaviors an organism emits frequently will be reinforced, while those emitted infrequently will be punished. Eventually, the organism ceases to emit the behavior at all. This qualifies as extinction because the behavior was, at one time, reinforced but no longer. The Law of Readiness simply states that the organism must be willing to learn for its learning to be effective.
I read on the Connectionism website, listed below in my sources, that Thorndike wanted to apply his learning theory to many aspects of education, not just use it to modify behavior. He wanted his theory to used to teach math, spelling and reading. He also thought it could be used to test intelligence.
I like Thorndike's ideas. I think he is far more important to behavioral psychology, and psychology in general, than I first thought.
http://dgwaymade.blogspot.com/2010/10/thorndikes-laws-of-learning-and-its.html
http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/connectionism.html
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm
Terms: Law of Effect, conditioning, pleasurable stimuli, response, aversive stimuli, reinforcement, behaviors, emit, punishment, extinction, Law of Exercise, and Law of Readiness.
B. F. Skinner made many contributions to our understanding of behavior. It is hard to image the field of behavior modification without him. There were many others who studied learning and conditioning, like Pavlov and Thorndike, but Skinner created his own science of behavior that “touched on all aspects of human functioning and culture”. With all that he developed, it is strange that he did not begin his career as a psychologist. His undergraduate degree was in English and he wanted to become a writer. After he finished college he tried writing for a year, but he said he found that he had “nothing to say.” And that the one thing that a writer needs is something to say. He had read some psychology books: one was by John Watson and another was by Ivan Pavlov. With this limited background, and all of it in behaviorism, he decided to go to graduate school in psychology at Harvard University.
There were no behaviorists at Harvard at that time, so Skinner was very much on his own. He at one point said that he learned very little psychology (of the traditional kind) and that he spent most of his time trying to find a way to relate behavior to changes in the environment. He used the term behavior very literally; he meant exactly what the organism was doing. One of his first studies related the path that an ant made across a piece of paper as the angle of the paper was changed from flat to elevated. This showed the influence of gravity on the movement of the ant: the beginnings of viewing behavior and environment together.
Skinner eventually developed the operant chamber as a way of studying the relationship between behavior and environmental reinforcers and punishers. He also introduced the idea of antecedent control, that is the discriminative stimulus. And of course, he is well known for the idea of schedules of reinforcement or the relation between how many responses (fixed or varied) or how much time (fixed or varied intervals) must occur before a response is reinforced. After completing his doctorial degree Skinner stayed on at Harvard and did research. These studies were reported in his first book, The Behavior of Organisms, which developed the idea of operant conditioning.
Skinner then taught at the University of Minnesota (this is where he invented the Air Bed), and wrote a novel, called Walden Two, that described a utopian community based on the principles of behaviorism. Every part of the culture of Walden Two was a matter of experimentation to see what worked best for the people living in the community. Skinner returned to Harvard as a Professor and taught there for many years. He wrote a number of other books, the most controversial was Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Skinner thought that we could no longer afford the concept of freedom if we were to survive. He believed that all behavior is controlled by the environment. He stated that, if we examine what is controlling us (what Skinner called self-knowledge), we might then be able to makes changes that would improve all aspects of our culture: education, daily life, health care, relationships, work, etc...
While I don’t understand all his concepts completely, I do think his impact and influence on psychology in general,and the field of behavior modification specifically, has been huge.
http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/Home.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_skinner.htm
Terms: behavior, behaviorism, learning, conditioning, organism, environment, reinforcers, punishers, antecedent control, discriminative stimulus, schedules of reinforcement, responses (fixed and varied), reinforced, operant conditioning, experimentation, fixed or varied intervals, psychology,behavior modification
John Watson
According to John Watson, psychology should be the science of observable behavior. "Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness," he explained (1913).
Watson is most famous for his study with Little Albert. Ivan Pavlov had conducted experiments demonstrating the conditioning process in dogs. Watson was interested in taking Pavlov's research further to show that emotional reactions could be classically conditioned in people. His experiments helped open new doors for other psychologists. The experiment was too condition the boy too fear the rats. Similar to Pavlov's experiment it can open doors with the possibilities of conditioning more than just dogs and babies.
There was a an article released recently that make the argument that Little Albert from Watson's experiment was not a healthy baby and was "impaired" which would have affected the experiment profoundly. The results of the experiment could have been completely different or were greatly affected by Albert's condition. But those are only assumptions and guesses.
The definitive statement of Watson’s position appears in his major work, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919), in which he sought the principles and methods of comparative psychology to the study of human beings and advocated the use of conditioning in research. His association with academic psychology ended abruptly. He entered the advertising business in 1921 and has since been a vital part of advertisement psychology.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/watson.htm
http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/a-new-twist-in-the-sad-saga-of-little-albert/28423
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/637615/John-B-Watson
John B. Watson:
John Watson is an American Psychologist who had a rough beginning to life, but took the bull by the horns and came to be a profound contributor within the study of psychology. Watson received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago. In 1913, Watson gave a lecture on his position of behaviorism and how he believed that human behavior is observable in that the behavioral actions can be predicted and controlled. In the beginning, Watson studied behavior such as reflexes and conditioned responses in animals. Watson believed that all animal behavior was conditioned through experience. On the other hand, Watson’s main interest in the study of humans was the control and regulation of emotions. Watson considered the emotions of fear, love, and rage to be the three most important human emotions in children, and his goal was to prove that they could be conditioned in children through their environment. Watson tested this claim in his infamous “Little Albert” experiment.
The “Little Albert” experiment conducted by Watson was highly controversial in that Watson conditioned a child named Albert to fear a white rat by pairing the white rat with a loud noise in order to elicit or provoke a fearful emotional response out of the child. At first, Albert did not elicit any emotional signs of fear, although, as soon as Watson coupled the rat with a loud clanging noise, the child became upset. Throughout the entirety of the experiment, Watson continues to emit the clanging behavior while the rat walks around Albert. In the conclusion of the study, Little Albert becomes conditioned to fear all furry things as a response even without the loud clanging noise present. To Watson, this experiment was a success in proving that emotions such as fear can be conditioned and they are not just purely innate. On the other hand, due to the aversive nature of this experiment, Watson received an abundance of criticism due to the child’s fear never being deconditioned.
Although John B. Watson received a large amount of criticism for his “Little Albert” experiment, the contribution that it provided to behaviorism within psychology is remarkable. Many of the concepts and principles of Watson’s theories behind behaviorism are still used today within therapy and training in behavior modification.
Terms Used: Response, conditioned, elicit, emit, aversive, behavior modification, and behaviorism.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhwats.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/watson.htm
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm
B.F. Skinner
I decided to emit my response to this weeks blog topic with an in depth look at the psychologist B.F. Skinner. In my opinion, Skinner is one of the most influential and important contributors to the field of behavioral psychology.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20th, 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Skinner originally attended Hamilton College, in New York and planned on being a writer. However, after an encounter with John Watson, the founder of the behaviorist view of psychology, Skinner changed paths and decided on graduate study of psychology. This choice led him to develop his own form of operant behaviorism.
While in graduate school, Skinner developed arguably his most important invention, the Skinner Box. The Skinner box is a chamber that contains a bar our key that can be pecked or pushed in order to receive some sort of reinforcement. Skinner would place a rat or pigeon inside the box and would record the animals responses to various schedules of reinforcement with another invention of his called the cumulative recorder. Using these inventions, researchers could study and test the animals operant behavior in a controlled environment. Skinner also used this method to try an train pigeons to guide missiles in an experiment called Project Pigeon.
Another invention of Skinner's was his Baby Box. This was essentially an air crib with solid see through walls instead of bars. In this crib was a temperature controlling device that would keep the inside of the crib one stable temperature. This cut back on the need to keep the baby constricted in tight blankets and allowed the baby to be most comfortable. There was also a movable cloth on the baby's cushion for easy changing. Skinner developed this invention as a means to make child rearing easier on both the parents and children.
Skinner also contributed to psychology in the form of writing. He wrote a very influential book titled Walden Two. In it he fantasizes about a Utopian society based of off behaviorism techniques. It sparked many inquiries about the full extent that behaviorism can be used and applied to every day life.
On top of these great inventions and contributions to psychology, Skinner was also a professor, teaching at the Universities of Minnesota, Indian, and Harvard. Here he was a shaper of young minds, spreading psychology and its principles on to the next generations. All of these things add to Skinner's accomplishments, making him one of the most influential psychologist in behaviorism.
http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/AboutSkinner.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA
Terms: B.F. Skinner, Emit, John Watson, Reinforcement, Schedules of Reinforcement, Skinner Box, Cumulative Recorder, Operant behavior, Baby Box
An individual that I think has made significant contributions to behaviorism, behavior modification, and conditioning & learning is B.F. Skinner. Skinner received his PhD from Harvard in 1931 and remained there as a researcher until 1936. From there Skinner went on to teach at the University of Minnesota, and then later Indiana University where he was the head of the psychology department from 1946-1947. After leaving Indiana University Skinner returned to Harvard in 1948 until his retirement where he was the Edgar Pierce Professor of psychology at Harvard. I feel Skinner’s ideas and inventions, although I may not like some of those inventions such as the airbed, have opened the door and put the wheel in motion for the development of behavior modification. During Skinner’s career he invented many different apparatuses, some of the main inventions are the air crib, the operant conditioning chamber, the cumulative recorder, and the teaching machine.
The airbed is a baby bed that is made to be about waist high, it had air that flows through the mattress and a clean canvas sheet that periodically changes to freshen the surface in the bed. The child is placed in the bed unclothed to prevent the child with the aversive feeling of cloths binding, and the child over heating. The temperature is controlled in the insulated chamber to insure the child does not get to hot or cold. He implemented a schedule of when the child is to be removed from the crib, thus keeping the child germ free from lack of constant exposure to the outside environment.
The operant conditioning chamber, or also know as the Skinner box, is used to measure a subjects response to different stimuli in the environment. An example is when he used a rat and rewarded the rat every time it emits the target behavior of pressing the lever to receive the pellet of food. He would use this to see if you could teach different behaviors over time by rewarding the as well as in some cases by using punishment.
The cumulative recorder was used to automatically record behavior graphically. The machine was made up of a rotating drum of paper that has a marking needle. The needle starts at the bottom of the page and the drum turns the paper horizontally. Skinner primarily used this apparatus to measure the rat’s behavior in the Skinner box.
The teaching machine was a devise that was used to administer a curriculum of programmed instruction. The machine would produce questions and every time the subject answers the question correct, they get rewarded. The machine was developed to help gain the interest of students, so he developed this machine to grab their attention by making it a little bit more interesting to learn for the student.
Skinner’s inventions revolutionized the way people thought about behavior modification. Skinner did have a few criticisms from some of his inventions, namely the baby airbed. The criticisms for the airbed was that it was inhumane, and robbed children of human contact, but you can’t argue with the results from his study. I agree that his inventions were strange, but he was willing to think outside the box and made behavior modification what it is today.
Terms- Behaviorism, behavior modification, aversive, stimuli, reward, emit, target behavior, and punishment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bf_skinner
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/skinner.html
Albert Bandura
Prior to reading the Wikipedia article on Albert
Bandura, I had no idea that he received his masters from the University of Iowa! I recognize that Wikipedia is NOT a valid source but as I was searching for a behaviorist to learn more about, Wiki happened to be the first website to pop up.
Bandura is most well-known for his work with the BOBO doll study and modeling in children. Bandura place a BOBO doll in a room with a young child and a caregiver or adult. In the experimental group, the adult treated the BOBO doll very roughly, tossing it in the air and hitting it with various objects. In the control group the adult was not aggressive towards the BOBO doll. In the experimental group, the children were more likely to be aggressive with the BOBO doll, copying the behavior of the adult. This gave way to the theory of modeling. This suggests that simple reinforcement and punishment are not enough to form the basic frame work of behaviorism. He believed in modeling, which means that people in particular learn by watching others and copying their behavior.
Bandura has four theories that he pioneered, Social Learning Theory, Social Cognitive Theory, Social Foundations of Thought and Action, and Self-Efficacy. Social Learning Theory is also called modeling and really focuses on the effect of social interaction on behavior. Social Cognitive Theory is very similar to Social Learning Theory and in fact reminds me of the concept of a discriminative stimulus. The Social Foundations of Thought and Action is based on the idea that outside or environmental interactions alone with not predict or modify behavior. Behavior is also subjective to internal influence and cannot be explained solely by social interaction. Self-Efficacy is an interesting topic, and focuses on how in control of a situation we feel. I really enjoy the concept of self-efficacy and locus of control because its one more layer to the ever expanding field of behaviorism.
Bandura is also famous for his work in phobias. Similar to Watson’s Little Albert experiment, Bandura worked with infants and snakes. Until the caregiver or adult showed a negative or fearful reaction of the snake, the child did not show any negative reactions to the animal. After watching the others fear the snake, the child then began to show fear and react negatively to the snake.
I personally am interested in phobias because I find them to be extremely interesting. I have an extreme fear of snakes but I don’t actually know why. When I was in junior high, I didn’t have fear of them really and in fact I even held one. Ever high school I have had an overwhelming fear of the snakes and I don’t know where this fear came from. I hope it’s just a mind over matter issue but the research by Bandura has really given me some food for thought.
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/bandurabio.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_bandura.htm
http://www.learning-theories.com/social-learning-theory-bandura.html
terms: reinforcement, punishment, behaviorism, modeling, behavior, social learning theory, social cognitive theory, social foundations of thought and action, self-efficacy, discriminative stimulus, locus of control
Ivan Pavlov is a person I think has made major contribution to psychology, he founded some major discoveries in understanding behavior that was pasted down from generation to generation.
Ivan Pavlov was born September 14, 1849 at Ryazan, he was educated at the church school in Ryazan and then are the theological seminary there. He abandoned his family’s religious ways and devoted his life to science, which he enrolled in physics and mathematics faculty. Pavlov found a great interest in physiology, which is what he, surrounded his research around. In his career he was appointed to organize and direct the Department of Physiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, which he spent 45 years of his life doing research. He died at the age of 86 of pneumonia, his laboratory are being preserved as a museum in his honor.
He did one of his researches on dogs, (which he thought that human and dogs are one of the same), he studied the gastric function on dogs by measuring the time it takes the dog to see the food to when the dog salivates as a respond to the food. Eventually Pavlov had the dogs conditioned to salivate before the stimulus of the food is presented to it, according to Pavlov this was called “psychic secretion”. He was given a lot of slack for doing this research but was given permission by the government to continue his research. Another research Pavlov did another research on reflex and conditioning. He wrote a book that was published called The Work of the Digestive Glands, this experiment and research of over 12 years caused him to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1904. These experiments are done on the digestive glands; he used surgical methods, which enables various functions of the organs. This opened the way to new advances and other researched to modern medicine, because he found relations between an organism and its external environment.
Pavlov left a legacy with his research on conditioning and he influenced other researchers to study behavior that evolved classical and operant conditioning, and ultimately the study of behavior and behavior modification.
URL’s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1904/pavlov-bio.html
http://www.ivanpavlov.com/
Terms
Emit, behavior, behavior modification, classical conditioning, operant conditioning,
The individual that I chose to concentrate on is Burrhus Frederic (B.F) Skinner. Skinner developed many contraptions and came up with many ideas about behaviorism which had a great effect and continue to effect psychology and especially behavior modification.
Skinner originally graduated from college with a major in literature and attempted to be a writer. He became very frustrated and decided that he really did not have anything important to say so he went back to college to get his Ph. D. in psychology.
With the social environment in a sort of turmoil, the Great Depression has just been overcome, and the fighting of a war, Skinner decided to concentrate on Behaviorism because he believed that a better knowledge of human behavior would help solve all problems.
The thing Skinner is most remembered for is his development of schedules of reinforcement and the process that came to be known as operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which an organism modifies the frequency of its behaviors due to the consequences of the behaviors. You made have heard of classical conditioning as is associated with Pavlov as well. The only difference between the two is that classical conditioning deals with the conditioning of reflexive behaviors which are elicited by certain antecedent situations (like jumping when you hear a loud noise and then also jumping when seeing the car that is associated with the loud noise) and operant conditioning deals with the modification of voluntary behavior. I found these very confusing at first but after some practice they have become very easy to tell apart.
Most of what Skinner learned about the topic of operant conditioning came from experiments using rats in operant chambers. An operant chamber is a special cage that has a bar or lever on one wall that, when pressed, causes a mechanism to release a food pellet. At the beginning, the rat is running around the cage not knowing what to do and it accidentally presses the bar and receives a food pellet. In no time, the rat learns to associate pressing the bar with receiving food and it begins to frantically press the lever. During operant conditioning, the organism can encounter one of two types of stimuli, a reinforcing stimulus or an aversive stimulus. First, the organism may encounter a reinforcing stimulus, which is the same thing as a reinforcer. The reinforcer, like the food pellet, has the effect of increasing the operant, which is just a fancy word for the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. However, if a behavior no longer is followed by a reinforcer, then there will likely be a decrease in the frequency of the target behavior occurring in the future and extinction may occur. Extinction is when a previously reinforced behavior is no longer reinforced and therefore the organism eventually stops emitting the target behavior. The aversive stimulus, on the other hand, is something that we find unpleasant, such as a shock when it comes to the studies on rats. When a behavior is followed by an aversive stimulus, the frequency of that behavior occurring again in the future will decrease. For example, if the rat were to get shocked for sitting on all fours instead of standing on its hind legs, the frequency with which it would sit on all fours would decrease.
Along with operant conditioning is Skinner’s idea of schedules of reinforcement. According to one website, Skinner accidentally came across the different schedules of reinforcement that he developed. It all started when he began running low on food pellets in the lab. So in order to make them last longer, he decided to reduce the number of reinforcements he gave his rats, he no longer reinforced them for each and every lever press. To his surprise, the rats kept up their operant behaviors of pressing the lever at a stable rate. From this observation, Skinner developed several different schedules of reinforcement. First of all, continuous reinforcement is what Skinner initially used. This is when the rat or organism in general receives a reinforcer every time they emit the behavior. Then there is a fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement. This was the first intermittent schedule that Skinner discovered. In this schedule, the rat must press the lever a specific number of times before it is reinforced. It is fixed because the number does not change. So, for example the rat may receive a pellet after every five lever presses. Another schedule of reinforcement is the fixed interval schedule. This is when you use a timing device of some sort and the organism is reinforced after a specific period of time. For example, the rat may receive a food pellet every thirty seconds, regardless of the number of times it presses the lever. Skinner also looked at variable schedules of reinforcement. Variable schedules just mean that the amount of time between reinforcers is not constant, it varies, like in variable interval schedules, or the number of lever presses varies, as in variable ratio schedules.
Another invention of Skinner’s that is related closely to operant condition is his idea of shaping, or the method of successive approximations. This is the process by which Skinner believed you could train animals to emit complex behaviors. Basically, the process involves first reinforcing a behavior that is only vaguely similar to the desired one. Once that is established, the researcher looks for variations in the behavior that are closer to the desired behavior. The researcher then reinforces the behavior that is more similar to the behavior he or she is looking for and no longer reinforces the more vague behavior. This continues until the organism is only reinforced for emitting the target behavior that the researcher was looking for in the first place.
The invention that I thought I was most interesting was the air bed that Skinner raised his second daughter in. This invention was based upon the belief that by controlling the infant’s environment, you could control the behaviors that the child emitted. The air bed was like a crib with walls made of plexiglass so that the child could see what was happening around it. There was a temperature control on it so that the parents could directly manipulate the temperature and therefore make the crib warm enough so that the child did not have to wear any clothing that would restrict them from moving and fully exploring their environment. By manipulating the temperature of the air crib, the parents could keep the child from unnecessarily crying. For example, though trial and error learning Skinner learned that he could stop his daughter’s crying by slightly decreasing the temperature in the air bed. Although the idea of such a contraption sounded horrible to me at first, I realized that it was actually a very creative idea that did not seem to have any negative effects on the child.
Although I am actually have a good time with this blog and could write like ten more pages on him, I won’t for the sanity of the TA. But I learned a lot from this blog and really came to admire and understand the impact B.F. Skinner has had on behavior modification.
Terms: B.F. Skinner, Behaviorism, Behavior Modification, Behavior, Schedule of Reinforcement, Operant Conditioning, Modifies, Frequency, Consequence, Classical Conditioning, Pavlov, Conditioning, Reflexive Behaviors, Elicited, Antecedent, Voluntary Behaviors, Operant Chambers, Stimuli, Reinforcing Stimulus, Aversive Stimulus, Reinforcer, Operant, Target Behavior, Extinction, Emitting, Continuous Reinforcement, Fixed Ratio Schedule, Intermittent Schedule, Fixed Interval Schedule, Variable Interval Schedule, Variable Ratio Schedule, Shaping, Method of Successive Approximations, Air Bed, Manipulate, Trial and Error Learning
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/skinner.html
http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/AboutSkinner.html
http://www.ibe.unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/archive/publications/ThinkersPdf/skinnere.PDF
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm
John Watson
Over this semester, I have learned about several important psychologist from the history of psychology. One of the most important psychologist I have learned about was John Watson. John Watson was the the "founding father of behaviorism." The three things that John was most known for was behaviorism, "The Little Albert" experiment, and his career in advertising.
The behaviorist view point was mostly objective dealing with natural science. Watson believed that people emit behaviors that they learn from others. He ideas were based on predicting and controlling people's behavior, otherwise known as behavior modification. His view points at the time were radical and not accepted.
The most famous experiment conducted by Watson was "The Little Albert" experiment. John experiment to today's standards would be considered controversial and unethical. Watson chose to condition a child to fear all furry things by pairing a loud clanging noise with a white rat. The experiment taught psychology a great deal about conditioning, however the experiment is not considered ethical because the child was never de-conditioned after the experiment.
Another thing that Watson was known for was his research and development of advertising after studying psychology. Watson used behavior modification techniques to sell people items through feelings of fear and other emotions. Watson's advertising was a huge success, as Watson became the vice president of one of the biggest ad advertising agencies in the United States.
URLs:
1.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhwats.html
2.http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/watson.htm
3.http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm
Terminology: John Watson, psychologist, behaviorism, The Little Albert experiment, advertising, science, emit, learn, behavior modification, radical, unethical, condition, de-conditioned, emotions.
One of the most famous psychologists was B.F Skinner. Skinner made many contributions to the field of psychology including items such as the air crib, operant conditioning chamber, cumulative recorder, teaching machine and also pigeon-guided missile. Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on Mark 20, 1904 in Pennsylvania. He was atheist and majored in English literature at Harvard. After an unsuccessful career with writing, he encountered John B. Watson and was extremely fascinated with psychology and also with the term “behaviorism”.
Skinner started his career by receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University, he then started teaching at the University of Minnesota then followed by Harvard which he received a tenured from. Skinner was known as a behaviorist. He called his particular brand of behaviorism “radical” behaviorism which means philosophy of the science of behavior. Skinner introduces schedules of reinforcement; he was also a supporter of positive reinforcement. The three types of reinforcement are continuous, interval and ratio reinforcement.
One of Skinner’s more famous experiment was something called an Air Crib. Skinner invented a crib for his daughter that both he and his wife firmly believed in. An air crib is a bed for a baby/toddler to sleep in. It is a controlled crib that emits a certain temperature making the need for any blankets not n necessary. This also led to the decrease of laundry. It was also raised higher so whenever they would pick up their child, it would decrease the amount of back strain. It was enclosed as well, with a glass door allowing the children to look through the crib. This crib has become a very controversial issue however the majority of society and rejected this idea however there are some people who still use this style of crib today.
Not only was Skinner a psychologist but also a writer. He wrote Walden Two and also Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Unfortunately Skinner died of leukemia of the age of 86 in 1990 but Skinner has given psychology many important and vital facts that we continue to study to this day.
Terms: air crib, operant conditioning, cumulative recorder, behaviorism, radical, positive reinforcement, continuous, interval, ratio reinforcement, emits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/AboutSkinner.html
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm
For this blog, I have decided to choose John B. Watson. Watson was born in South Carolina to a poor family. He lived a troubled life and grew up without a father figure in his life. He eventually ended up marrying one of his graduate students.
Watson's most famous experiment was the Little Albert study. This study involved a baby that was scared of very little. One of the only things that frightened the baby was a loud clanging noise on a metal bar. Watson used this information to elicit a frightened behavior of the child. He then used the noise as an unconditioned stimulus in which the child would then become afraid. This fear from the child would be considered unconditioned response. In addition to this, he would then put a rat in the experiment. He would put the rat in front of Albert, then followed by the loud noise. Over time, Albert realized that whenever the rat was around the noise would soon followed. He then quickly became afraid of the rat as well. This would be considered a conditioned stimulus. He was shaped into being afraid of the rat itself. After awhile, Albert began to be afraid of anything that was furry. This would be considered a conditioned emotional response. They baby was shaped to fear the rat and other furry objects, which means he was conditioned. The emotional response comes into play with his fear being associated with something that he was previously not afraid of.
Another thing that Watson said was that he could take any healthy baby and raise it to be whatever he wanted. He said he could shape the baby to be a lawyer or even an artist, regardless of what skills they possessed. I think this was a very brave thing of Watson to say. I don't know if I necessarily believe that he could have but the theory behind it is nice. He believed that parents could shape their children to be whatever they wanted them to be. He believed that all the behaviors that we know how to do were learned. He says that any behavior could be manipulated to do something else.
I picked Watson because I believe that he was a very controversial psychologist. I like that he took chances in doing the experiments that he did and opening them to the public. Nowadays, if someone were do to the things he did, that person would be heavily criticized more so than when Watson was conducting them. I just think he had a lot of courage to be able to do that.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/classicpsychologystudies/a/little-albert-experiment.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxKfpKQzow8
Terms: elicit, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, shaped, emit, conditioned emotional response
B.F. Skinner (3/20/1904-8/18/1990)
From an early age, B.F. Skinner had already begun his life as an inventor of useful and handy tools. He even designed a tool for a job selling elderberries, which was a floatation system that separated the different berries. He also made other inventions at jobs he worked in high school, which shows how intellectual he was even in the younger years of his life.
One of Skinner's most influential contributions to behavior modification was his further development of the theory of operant conditioning, which is the idea that behavior is influenced by consequences, reinforcement or punishment, that determines whether the behavior will occur more or less. He was greatly influenced by other behaviorists such as Thorndike, Watson, and Pavlov. Also, according to one of the articles I found, "He denied the existence of a mind as a thing separate from the body, but he did not deny the existence of thoughts, which he regarded simply as private behaviors to be analyzed according to the same principle as publicly observed behaviors."
His study of operant conditioning involved a rat in an apparatus with a recorder, speaker, metal bars on the bottom which received electric shock, a light, a machine that distributed food, and a lever for the rat to push. He paired the tone from the speaker with the light being off, and if the rat emitted the behavior of pressing the lever, he would receive food. If the light was on and the rat pressed the lever, he would receive a shock. After time, just seeing the light would elicit the rat to emit the behavior of freezing up, even if it received no shock. The rat was reinforced for pushing the lever at the desirable time, but receiving a food pellet. This combination of classical and operant conditioning together is why I find him one of the most influential psychologists.
Another contribution that Skinner made was the never before thought of invention of the baby box (or air bed). The baby box was his attempt at mechanizing the care of a child, and he used it on his daughter Deborah. The idea was to use the box to help the mother be less stressed with taking care of the baby. The box allowed for a temperature control, so Skinner could manipulate the climate and the baby didn't have to be in an aversive situation where it has too much clothing on, or too little. She grew up to be a healthy and happy child, although many people don't like the idea of this invention.
On top of his inventions, he was also a greatly skilled writer. He wrote at his child rearing ideas, and also of a Utopian world where everything was controlled by behaviorists and behavior modification (Walden Two). He published articles into popular journals, and in his book "Beyond Dignity and Freedom," he discussed the concept of individual freedom as being an illusion. All in all, the behaviorists we have studied so far have all had major contributions to the field of behavior modification, I just happen to find Skinner's ideas the most interesting to myself, and I find it fascinating to hear the research and experiment he conducted during his lifetime.
http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/AboutSkinner.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/297/000022231/
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm
terms used: behavior modification, aversive, desirable, air bed, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, reinforcement, punishment, behaviorists, manipulate, emit, elicit
I felt like we had learned enough about the psychologists we talked about in class, so I wanted to find a different psychologist to talk about. I had previously heard of Albert Bandura and his experiments, but I wanted to find out more about him and his findings.
Albert Bandura was born in Canada in 1925. Bandura obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of British Columbia in 1949. Bandura took a psychology class just to fill up time while he was in college, and he ended up falling in love with it. He then later graduated from the University of Iowa with a doctorate in psychology in 1952. He was then hired at the University of Stanford and is still employed there today.
Bandura's main contribution to psychology were his theories in learning. His first theory is based on the modeling process. It has four steps to it. 1. Attention-according to Bandura, in order for someone to learn anything, they have to pay close attention to the behavior that is being modeled. 2. Retention- the person needs to remember what they're being taught. 3. Reproduction- the person learning the behavior needs to be able to reproduce the behavior in order to fully understand what they are being taught. 4. Motivation- the person must have a reason for wanting to reproduce the behavior that they are being taught. He also came up with the process of self regulation; this has three parts to it. 1. Self Observation- people will look at themselves and their own behavior to keep track of their actions. 2. Judgement- people then compare these actions/behaviors with society's standards. 3. Self Response- the person will either punish or reward themselves based on how they think they compare to society's standards. These two theories are very influential as to how people teach others now.
One of things that he is most famous for is the Bobo experiment. While he was studying at the University of Iowa, he became extremely interested in aggression in children and did multiple experiments with it. He had children watch a video of a person hitting a Bobo doll, then put them in a room full of toys and were told that they weren't allowed to touch any of the toys. A Bobo doll was also placed in the room. According to the research results, about 88% of the children still attacked the Bobo doll in some way just because they had seen the video of someone hitting it. Another experiment he had was similar to that, but the children were also shown the consequences at the end of the video. The children that were shown a positive consequence were more likely to repeat the behavior. The children that were shown a negative consequence were less likely to repeat the behavior.
I just think it's cool that he has made so many contributions to modern behavioral psychology, and he's still alive to spread more of his wisdom around. I also think it's cool that he graduated from an Iowa school.
Terms: modeling process, self regulation, behavior, Bobo experiment, negative consequence, positive consequence, behavioral psychology
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/bandura.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandurahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura
In behavior modification we learned a lot about different psychologists in the world of psychology, science, and behaviorism. The psychologist I chose was Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov is the one of the most memorable psychologists to me because I instantly think of his work when someone mentions his name. Pavlov was inspired by Russian literary critic, D. I. Pisarev, and the father of Russian physiology, I. M. Sechenov. Originally Pavlov desired a career in religion, but he left that to focus on the area of science. Physiology soon became Pavlov's passion.
Pavlov's research of digestion led him to his discoveries about conditioned reflexes. He focused a lot of his time on psychic secretion and how it's caused by food stimuli. After emitting experiments of salivary secretion, Pavlov concluded that a reflex was involved temporarily or conditionally.
Pavlov's findings with the drooling dog brought the idea of the conditioned stimulus (CS), conditioned response (CR), unconditioned stimulus (US), and unconditioned response (UR). With his research, Pavlov concluded that environmental factors do have a relation to reflexes.
Pavlov was one of the most accomplished people out of the ones we've read in class. He was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1901, he was awarded the Nobel Prize three years later, and was given an honorary doctorate at Cambridge University in 1912. Those awards and recognitions were only a few of the many. Pavlov not only made amazing contributions to science, but he taught and led many great physiologists.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1904/pavlov-bio.html
http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/pavlov/readmore.html
http://www.ivanpavlov.com/
Terminology: behavior modification, emit, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus , conditioned response
Edward Lee Thorndike was born in 1874 and died 1949. He was elected the President of the American Psychological Association in 1912, 100 years ago from the present. In our most recent chapter on Thorndike, we read about his experiment on how animals, and humans, learn. In his experiment, he constructed a cage "puzzle box" with a variation of mechanisms that unlocked the door of the cage. The goal was to have a chosen animal (a cat) to figure out how to release itself from the confines of the cage. The cat could achieve this by making a select number of actions. In this clip --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDujDOLre-8 --- the cat needs to turn a piece of wood to unblock the door and push a wire far enough to release the door. The cat will eventually learn this process by means of trial and error. The cat will emit certain behaviors (perform actions) until it gets the desired result it is looking for. After repeated experiences of achieving the desired consequence (outcome: getting out of the cage) the cat will learn and remember what worked last, what worked best, and will get out faster and faster each time until something is changed.
Thorndike wrote the book "Animal Intelligence" about this experience and is what he is most known for.
His work on learning theory helped pave the way for operant conditioning to come about within the behaviorism approach.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDujDOLre-8
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm
http://www.simplypsychology.org/edward-thorndike.html
As most people who have taken even the most basic psychology course know, Ivan Pavlov is the Russian scientist known as the discoverer of the conditioned reflex (i.e. classical conditioning) for his experiments involving the salivation of dogs. In this class I really began to learn a lot more about him and his contributions to psychology. I was very interested to learn about his experiments with excitatory and inhibitory neurons as expressed in the experimental neuroses experienced by some of his test subjects; some dogs would become docile, while others would rip at the harnesses that secured them. I was also very interested to learn that he was originally studying digestive processes and physiology. He also is the inventor of the "Pavlov pouch" which was the result of a process of isolating a section of a dog's stomach so that the food ingested would not contaminate it's saliva.
For this assignment i decided to learn more about the man who is best known for his experiences with dog drool. I learned quickly that Pavlov was an exceptionally talented and very distinguished surgeon. The Brittanica website described a procedure in which he was able to insert a catheter into a dog's femoral artery painlessly and without anesthesia. this procedure allowed him to monitor blood pressure in response to stimuli in a similar manner as saliva studies that he is so famous for.
I was also interested to learn that in the early 1930's, Pavlov attempted to incorporate his findings into explaining human psychoses. His theory was based on the idea that psychotic individuals were under the same influence of the exitatory/inhibitory neurons the dogs that experienced the experimental neuroses. He understood it as a kind of protective mechanism in both the dogs and people. Pavlov also explained around this same time that language function in humans as being a long chains of conditioned reflexes.
http://www.ivanpavlov.com/
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/447349/Ivan-Petrovich-Pavlov
http://www.learning-theories.com/classical-conditioning-pavlov.html
Terms: Pavlov, conditioned reflex, classical conditioning, inhibitory, excitatory, experimental neuroses,Pavlov pouch, psychoses, stimuli
(for the above post)
Terminology: condition, experiment, puzzle box, process, trial and error, emit, behaviors, repeated, desired consequence, outcome, learn, learning theory, operant conditioning, behaviorism
I have chosen to do more research on B.F. Skinner. Not only is he my all time favorite psychologist to learn about, he is also rated number one on the top ten most influential psychologist's of all time! According to About.com, in a 2002 study ranking the 99 most eminent psychologist's of the 20th century, B.F. Skinner topped this list. Skinner's staunch behaviorism made him a dominating force in psychology and therapy techniques based on his theories that are still used extensively today, including behavior modification and token economies.
Now that you know who you will be learning more about, let me give you a little bit of back round knowledge on B.F. Skinner. Skinner was born on March 20, 1904 and passed away on August 18, 1990. Early in Skinner's life he enjoyed building and inventing things, he would later hypothesis and test his own psychological experiments. He received his B.A. In English literature in 1926 from Hamilton College, and spent a lot of time struggling as a writer, until he was later inspired by the works of Watson and Pavlov.
In Skinner's career, he became one of the leaders of behaviorism and his work contributed immensely to experimental psychology. He also invented the Skinner Box, in which a rat learns to obtain food by emitting the behavior of pressing a lever. This process of learning to receive food is known today as operant conditioning. Schedules of Reinforcement's is also very important when teaching a rat how to receive it's food. Depending on when the food is dropped, will have a huge impact on the rats ability to learn when its going to receive food. For example, Fixed Ratio, would be that after the same amount of pulled levers (for example: after the rat pushes the lever two times), the rat would receive its food. Fixed Intervals, would be that after a differential amount of time( For Example, the food is released sporadically and there would be no way for the rat to determine when the food would be dispensed). If this were to happen, the rat would either give up or probably first off, hit the lever many times in a row to try and get the food to dispense and this is known as extinction.
In my short you tube video clip, it is about a rat that was put into the Skinner's box. From no back round knowledge on this video, I get that when the light is on in the box, the rat knows that it can push the lever to receive its food. It appears that the rat being tested, is receiving food after every time that it pushes the lever. These experimenters in this video are using a fixed ratio with the rat, every time the rat pushes the lever, it receives food!
Well now that you know a little bit about B.F. Skinner, lets talk about what Behaviorism is since Skinner was one of the biggest contributors to the theory of it. Behaviorism is also called the learning perspective. Behaviorism is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do, including acting, thinking, and feeling, can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns or modifying the environment. I think that this makes a lot of sense, especially when comparing it with what we have learned in the ABC's of Behavior. Skinners behaviorism is considered radical because it expands behavioral principles to processes within the organism, in contrast to methodological behaviorism. No mechanistic or reductionistic, hypothetical (mentalistic) internal states are not considered causes of behavior, phenomena must be observable at least to the individual experiencing them. So, to dumb that down a little bit, I would describe Skinner to be a radical in behaviorism because Skinner made a lot of his theories based on the unconscious and you can not see the unconscious. And in order for a theory to be based on behavior, it has to be able to be seen, at least by the individual, that is actually be affected by the behavior.
Terms That I Used In My Blog: Token Economies, Behavior Modification, Behaviorism, Emitting, Behavior, Operant Conditioning, Schedules of Reinforcement's, Fixed Ratio, Fixed Interval, Extinction, Unconscious.
http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/tp/ten-influential-psychologists.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_skinner.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQtDTdDr8vs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism