CH16: Skinner's Behavioral Analysis

• Emerged from laboratory studies of animals and humans.
• Is focused on observable behavior (radical behaviorism)
• Human behavior is lawfully determined and can be studied scientifically.
• Behavior is a product of environmental stimuli.
• Human behavior should be studied scientifically. To be scientific, psychology must avoid internal mental factors and confine itself to observable phenomena.
• Behavior can best be studied without reference to needs, instincts, or motives.
• Although Skinner believed that internal states are outside thedomain of science, he did not deny their existence, but emphasized that they are not explanations for behavior.
• Scientific behaviorism allows for an interpretation of behavior but not an explanation of its causes
• Interpretation permits a scientist to generalize from a simple learning condition to a more complex one.
• Science - Advances in a cumulative manner
• Rests on an attitude that values empirical observation, that is, (1) rejects authority, (2) demands intellectual honesty, and (3) suspends judgment until clear trends emerge.
• Science searches for order and lawful relationships
• Prediction, control, and description are possible in scientific behaviorism because behavior is both determined and lawful.
• Classical Conditioning - Respondent Conditioning, drawn out of the organism.
• Operant conditioning - skinnerian conditioning. Likely to recur when it is immediately reinforced. Behavior is emitted.
• Ivan Pavlov - A neutral (conditioned) stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus repeatedly until it is capable of bringing about apreviously unconditioned response (now called the conditioned response).
• Skinner - A process of changing behavior in which reinforcement is contingent on the occurrence of a particular behavior.
• Operant encourages moving an organism closer and closer to the desired behavior each time (shaping).
• Behavior is not discrete but continuous; that is, the organism usually moves slightly beyond the previously reinforced response.
• Operant discrimination - Each of us has a history of being reinforced by reacting to some elements in our environment but not to others.
• Reinforcement - strengthens behavior and rewards the person
• Punishment - Suppresses the tendency to behave in an undesirable fashion. Conditions a negative feelingand spread its effect through suppression
• Positive reinforcement - Add pleasant stimulus to INCREASE behavior
• Negative reinforcement - Remove aversive stimulus to increase
• Positive punishment - add aversive stimulus to decrease behavior
• Negative punishment - remove pleasant stimulus to decrease