Behaviorism

About behaviorism

Some of the oldest learning theories belong to the behaviorism as learning paradigm and date back from the beginning of the 20th century. The key component to this paradigm are stimulus-response (S-R) events resulting in observable behaviors which can be measured.

Behaviorists view learning as a visible change in ones behavior. Behaviorism assumes that the learner starts off as a clear state and simply responds to environmental stimuli. Those responses can be shaped through positive and negative reinforcement increasing or decreasing the probability of repeating the same behavior.

Among below listed learning theories within behaviorist framework, connectionism presents an introduction to behaviorist learning and setting its frames. Classical and operand conditioning present true behaviorist learning perspectives, and sign learning finally forms a bridge from behaviorism to cognitivism which has replaced it in the second half of 20th century.

Learning theories:

Connectionism - Edward Thorndike (1874 - 1949)

Clasicall Conditioning - Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

Operant Conditioning - Burrhus Skinner (1904 - 1990)

Sign Learning - Edward Tolman (1886 - 1959)

Drive Reduction Theory - Clark Hull (1884 – 1952)

Discriminational Learning (Keneth Spence)

Contiguity Theory (Edwin Guthrie)

Stimulus Sampling Theory (William Estes)

Criticisms

Behaviorism today mostly lost its influence and let cognitivism take its place as the dominant paradigm. Critics of behaviorist learning usually argue that behaviorism:

does not explain all kinds o learning since it ignores inner mind activities,

offers a very limited view on learning since it ignores internal factors such as emotions or motivation,

ignores fact that learning depends on learner's inner subjective representation of environment and learning history.

Bibliography

Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy: Behaviorism.

Classical Conditioning - Introduction to Classical Conditioning.

Read more

Turner, M. B. Philosophy and the science of behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967.

Skinner, B. F. About Behaviorism. Paw Prints, 2008.

Baum, William M. Understanding behaviorism: science, behavior, and culture. Wiley-Blackwell, 1994.