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.

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.

The key component to this paradigm are observable behaviors and their measuring.

Learning theories:

Clasicall conditioning (Ivan Pavlov)

Operant conditioning (Burrhus Skinner)

Other important contributors:

John Watson, Edward Thorndike, Edward Tolman

Critic

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. Behaviorism also neglects the fact that behavior also depends on learners 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.