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Theories of learning and their educational implications
My opinion of behaviorism
Behaviorism introspection
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Behaviorism known as learning theory states that the reason why people think, act, and feel the way they do is because they learned it. John Watson in 1913 started this movement claiming that learning wasn’t just about our neutrons or your genes. It’s believed that all behavior is learned from surrounding behaviors and behavior is a result of stimulus and response. Behaviorism is also scientific but ignores biology, it has many experiments to support its theories and is highly applicable in therapy. There are three ways to apply behaviorism, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.
Classical conditioning is a form of associative learning, it’s when you using the pairing of stimulus to cause a certain reaction.
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Observational learning says that learning can happen by watching then imitating other people’s behaviors. This theory was developed by Albert Bandura, he and a few colleagues came up with this theory after working several experiments including the famous “Bobo doll” experiment. Observational learning is what we do every day in our daily life’s we watch and then imitate, for example when we go somewhere new and we’re not exactly sure what to do we usually observe everyone’s behaviors and do the same. There is a four-step pattern that Bandura formulated first is attention, when the person notices something in its environment. Secondly, retention is the person remembering what they noticed. Third, reproduction the person attempts to produce and action that is similar to what they noticed. Fourth, motivation is what happens after the person produces their imitation if they are encouraged or discouraged by their model is what determinates if they will continue. An example of observational learning would be a baby learning how to speak, they noticed their parents trying to communicate with them so they try and memorize what they heard then the baby attempts to speak it and when they try and see their parents smiling and clapping for them it encourages them to …show more content…
For the experiment, he was supposed to find an emotionally stable child to conduct the experiment on. According to the original report of the experiment the mother of Albert wasn’t aware the experiment was going on, and she took Albert away right after the experiment not giving Watson the opportunity to remove the conditions he put on the infant. In 2009 “Little Albert” was found to be Douglas Merritte, and in 2012 we learned new research that Douglas was claimed to be “neurologically impaired at the time of the experiment”. It is also believed that Watson was well aware of this and hid this fact from his case. This new research can heavily affect the experiment because that could mean that the experiment was somehow fixed and the result can’t be
Behaviourism main theorist included Skinner, Pavlov and Thorndike who describes this theory as having a ‘stimulus and response’. Petty states, ‘learners are motivated by expected reward of some kind (such as praise or satisfied curiosity); learning will not take place without it’ (Petty, 2009:15-16). In addition, there should be immediate reinforcement otherwise this will cause a delay in learning. Another principle of behaviourism is the learning should be step by step and not all at once and by doing so the learner has successions of successes which increase their motivation that leads ‘to more complex behaviour’. Petty also states that ‘effective teachers stress key points and summarise them at the beginning and at the end of the class and, makes use of old learning in developing new learning’ (Petty, 2009:16).
Watson did not debrief either Albert or his parents about the nature of the study. The study’s purpose was to induce an emotional response of fear into this young child. Watson both physically and mentally harmed the child, possibly leaving Albert emotionally traumatized by the experiment. To add,
In 1913 a new movement in psychology appeared, Behaviorism. “Introduced by John Broadus Watson when he published the classic article Psychology as the behaviorist views it.” Consequently, Behaviorism (also called the behaviorist approach) was the primary paradigm in psychology between 1920 to 1950 and is based on a number of underlying ‘rules’: Psychology should be seen as a science; Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events, like thinking and emotion; People have no free will – a person’s environment determines their behavior; Behavior is the result of stimulus resulting in a response; and All behavior is learned from the environment. How we process these stimuli and learn from our surrounds
Behaviorism is a foundational theory in the world of psychology. However, behaviorism though it was a flourishing influential idea during the beginnings of psychology, it suffered a decline when other aspects of scientific research entered the psychology practice. Behaviorism was the scientific study of behavior. A plethora of great thinkers have made their marks with discoveries in behaviorism but B.F. Skinner was one of the most influential thinkers during the decline of behaviorism and the rise of experimental psychology.
Behaviorism, or learning theory is one of three “grand theories” of human development. The focus of behaviorism is observable behavior, with no reference to mental processes. As a learning theory behaviorism, assumes that learning occurs via interactions with the environment, through the process of conditioning.
Behavioral theories are very significant, but the social learning theory by Albert Bandura is one of the most valuable and influential theory out of them all. The social learning theory analyzes how humans learn through observing other people’s attitudes and behaviors. Adolf Hitler was the dictator of Germany and he was the founder and conductor of the Nazi Party. Accordingly, Adolf Hitler is related to the social learning theory because his actions were related with his life struggle. Many people wonder why Hitler killed so many innocent lives and the reality is that no one will ever know, but the social learning theory by Albert Bandura can help people briefly understand why humans perform cruel and inhumane behaviors. This theory does not excuse nor does it permits Hitler’s malicious behavior, but it provides a psychological view to his unnatural actions. Adolf Hitler was the main cause of World War II and the Holocaust; he was responsible for about 11 million deaths and approximately 1 million were children. During the Holocaust the Nazis focused on executing the Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and disabled people. Moreover, Hitler also conducted the concentration camps, labor camps and extermination camps. In the camps Hitler kept as prisoners anyone who acted against him in any way and he also kept Jews. The concentration camp mainly forced people to do hard labor and slowly they would die of starvation, infections or murder; in the other hand, extermination camps were used to kill an immense cluster of people instantly. Also, Hitler permitted doctors that were part of the Nazi Party to performed medical experiments to the prisoners without their consent, basically the prisoners were used as lab rats and then they ...
The quote from the famous psychologist John B. Watson essentially sums up behaviourism. Behaviourism refers to the school of psychology founded by Watson, established on the fact that behaviours can be measured and observed (Watson, 1993). In behaviourism, there is a strong emphasis that the acquisition of learning, or permanent change in behaviour, is by external manifestation. Thus, any individual differences in behaviours observed was more likely due to experiences, and not by the working of genes. As the quote suggest, any individuals can be potentially trained to perform any tasks through the right conditioning. There are two major types of conditioning, classical and operant conditioning (Cacioppo & Freberg, 2012).
...moved away and the question had always remained as to what had happen to the child? Was there a grown man out in the world living with the fear of white furry objects? In 2009 psychologists had discovered that the child had died at the age of 6 of hydrocephalus which goes to question if “Little Albert” had in fact been the healthy and normal boy that Watson had presented in the beginning of the experiment.
Behaviorism is the study of human and animal behavior. The idea behind behaviorism is that behavior is altered by stimuli in the environment and can be reinforced by reward or punishment. Behaviorism can be dated back to the 1800’s and has been studied by many psychologists. But the term behaviorism was known to be brought on by psychologist, John Watson, who wrote the article, “Psychology as the behaviorist views it”, that claimed behaviorism should be considered a natural science, rather than a theory. (Malone 2014) In Watson’s eyes “Psychology should embrace behavior as it’s subject matter and rely on experimental observation of that subject matter as its method” (Moore 2011)
There are four steps in the process of modeling for observational learning. They are attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Attention is when you focus on what the person you are observing is doing. Retention is remembering what you observed. Reproduction is performing the behavior you observed, and motivation is wanting to actually do the behavior.(www.courses.lumenlearning.com) The psychologist that most strongly identifies with observational learning is Albert Bandura. He believed that observational learning was the result of cognitive processes that are, “actively judgemental and constructive,” not merely “mechanical copying.”(Bandura) According to Bandura there are three different models to observational learning. They are live model which is behavior in person, verbal model which is not doing a behavior but explaining or describing it, and symbolic model is when people or fictional characters demonstrating behaviors in books,
Behaviorism is a branch of psychology that has a theoretical approach that gives emphasis to the study of behavior in place of the subject of the mind or the physiological correlates of one's behavior. Behavior is the externally visible response to a stimulus of an animal or human (Weidman). B.F. Skinner is one of the most prominent psychologists of the study of behaviorism. Skinner was on the advance of behaviorism. B.F. Skinner created a group of theories that set out to prove that subjective impetus is not what behavior in humans and animals is so much based on but that behavior is more based on possible reward received and chastisement applied to the animal or human (Newsmakers). Skinner entered into the branch of behaviorism in the 1920s. Behaviorism was still a fairly new branch to psychology at this time. However, Skinner's experiments in his libratory were broadly consideration to be electrifying and ground-breaking, illuminating an knowledge of human behavior and logistics (Newsmakers). Skinner called such behavior based on possible reward received and chastisement that was followed by the repetition of that behavior operant.
“Behavior theory consists of ideas about how human actions and emotions develop, are sustained, and are extinguished through principles of learning” (Walsh, 2010). Positive and negative reinforcement is used to help manipulate the behaviors of the individual. The theory has been used to help eliminate unwanted behaviors. In addition, behavior theory has been use primarily with children, and persons with developmental disabilities. According to Walsh (2010) behavior theory evolved in the 1960s from a field of philosophy to the field of science. Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning, which plays a major role in behavioral theory. Classical conditioning is the process of learning through ones surroundings, conditioned, and unconditioned stimuli and response. B. F. Skinner discovered operant conditioning the process of learning to influence the future responses to the environment (Clark, 2004). The two concepts has been used throughout the behavior theory to help assist clients with unacceptable behaviors that is occurring. The combination of the two concepts has been a very helpful aspect to the behavior theory. Both concepts offer a different approach or solution to the behavior of the client.
There are many intriguing branches of psychology, but behaviorism captured many aspiring psychologists and young minds in the 1920s and 1930, and has been the dominant orientation since the mid 30s. Behaviorism was the radical revision of the method of psychological research. Consciousness was not accepted at the time and behaviorism called for the ban of introspection. Behaviorism is a branch of psychology that started with John B. Watson’s “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it.” Even though considered innate, researching this topic will show behavior is learned more by environmental factors through modeling and observing. The founder, Watson, created classical conditioning, and later B.F. Skinner contributed with operant conditioning. Watson’s evidence was his most famous experiment, the “Little Albert Experiment.”
Behaviorism is a learning theory or a developmental theory that measures observable behaviors that are produced by the learner’s response to stimuli. On one end of the spectrum behaviorism is known as an attitude. At the other end, it is known as a doctrine. According to the behavioral views of human development, behaviorists argued that to focus attention on unobservable constructs, such as emotions, thoughts, or the unconscious, was an unscientific approach.(Craig & Dunn, Ex.: 2010)
Behaviorism is the point of view where learning and behavior are described and explained in terms of stimulus-response relationships. Behaviorists agree that an individual’s behaviors is a result of their interaction with the environment. Feedback, praise and rewards are all ways people can respond to becoming conditioned. The focus is on observable events instead of events that happen in one’s head. The belief that learning has not happened unless there is an observable change in behavior. “The earliest and most Ardent of behaviourists was Watson (1931; Medcof and Roth, 1991; Hill 1997). His fundamental conclusion from many experimental observations of animal and childhood learning was that stimulus-response (S-R) connections are more likely to be established the more frequently or recently an S-R bond occurs. A child solving a number problem might have to make many unsuccessful trials before arriving at the correct solution” (Childs, 2004).