cep900 09.21.11
• Introducing Dr. Zach Mural, teaching
assistant for CEP900
• Announcements
• Assignments for next week
• Behaviorism lecture & discussion
• Being a public intellectual video
assignments
Required readings
– Miller, P. H. (1993). Information processing theory. As you read,
try to appreciate the main strengths of this perspective.
– Woolfolk, A. (2007). Cognitive views of learning
RDP
– meet w/ faculty, take notes
– find articles only from high quality journals and
handbooks in your area of interest
announcements
• Annotations
• Enable comments on websites
perspectives on learning
Perspectives on learning provide a way to think
about…
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What is the nature of “knowing”?
What is the process of learning?
What motivates learning?
What is the role of the teacher and student?
perspectives on learning
Three perspectives discussed in CEP900
– Behaviorism
– Cognitive perspective
– Situative & Socio-cultural perspective
learning
Woolfolk’s definition:
– Learning occurs when experience causes a relatively
permanent change in behavior or knowledge
What are the distinctive qualities of this definition?
What are your thoughts about this definition?
learning
• How is learning defined from the perspective of
behaviorism?
• How is motivation defined?
• What is the process of learning?
• What is the role of the teacher and student?
seeing from a behaviorist’s
perspective
“Elizabeth example”
a few well known behaviorists
Thorndike
Skinner
Pavlov
Watson
classical conditioning
• Learning is developing new stimulus-response associations.
• A pre-existing association between a stimulus (S1) and a response is
modified so that the same response is associated with a new stimulus
(S2).
•
S1 (food) ---> R (salivate)
S1 (food) + S2 (bell) ---> R (salivate)
S2 (bell) ---> R (salivate)
• At first, food and salivation are associated. Now, the sound of the bell
causes the dog to salivate (Pavlov)
• Other examples: animal training, many of the things we like and
dislike emerge from negative or positive associations
Pavlov wins Nobel Prize with help of
drooling dogs
operant conditioning
• A critically important development in behaviorism.
Enabled the theory to explain for a much wider range of
learning. Explain.
operant conditioning
• Focused the connection between behavior and its the
consequences, rather than between stimuli and reflexive
behavior.
• Introduces the idea of rewards and punishments
• The individual is active in the environment causing things
to happen. The environment responds in particular ways to
particular actions. These are contingencies.
• The environment shapes the behavior (and the behavior
shapes the environment. Mutual determinism)
behaviorist learning theory
Important terms (create examples that illustrates the meaning
and importance of each term)
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task analysis, shaping, successive approximations
reinforcement, positive, negative, punishment
antecedents, behaviors, consequences
reinforcement schedule, continuous, intermittent, fixed,
variable
laws of learning
E. L. Thorndike formulated “laws of learning”
Law of Effect: The effect of a behavior makes a difference.
The more a behavior is rewarded, the more likely it is to
occur again. The less a behavior is rewarded, the less likely
it is to occur again.
Law of Exercise: The exercise of a behavior makes a
difference. The more a behavior occurs, the more likely it
occur again (habit, no reward necessary)
behavior-ism
Behaviorism is not only a theory of learning. It is an
“ism”
What is an “ism” and how is behaviorism an
example of one?
behaviorism & the science of learning
What assertions does behaviorism make about the
science of learning?
behaviorism & the science of learning
“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. The
behaviorist in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal
response, recognizes no dividing line between man and
brute.” (From “Psychology as the behaviorist views it.” John
Watson, 1913).
behaviorism & the science of learning
• What are the distinctive behaviorist ideas in this
passage?
• How might they be significant in the history of
educational psychology?
behaviorism: historical context
Darwin. Continuity between man and other animals.
Important role of the environment
The study of animal behavior, how new behaviors are
acquired
Rise of the sciences and industry: emphasis on prediction,
control, and design
A negative reaction to introspective, Freudian, and Gestalt
psychology
being behaviorist
Consider your RDP topic of interest
How would a behaviorist researcher study it?
What questions would they ask?
What kinds of data would they be most interested in?
watson’s bold claim
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own
specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to
take any one at random and train him to become any type
of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist,
merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief,
regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities,
vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my
facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the
contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands
of years. (Watson, 1930)
social learning theory
• Highlighted the important phenomenon of learning from
the experiences of others
• Vicarious reinforcement. No action needed, no
consequence necessary. "No-trial learning”
• Researchers interested in the qualities of influential models
skinner’s critique of cognitivism
• “Having moved the environment inside the head in the
form of conscious experience and behavior in the form of
intention, will, and choice, and having stored the effects of
contingencies of reinforcement as knowledge and rules,
cognitive psychologists put them all together to compose
an internal simulacrum of the organism…a
doppelganger…the homunculus.” (Skinner, WIANACP,
p109)
skinner’s critique of cognitivism
• “Behaviors change because contingencies change, not
because a mental entity…develops.” (Skinner, p100,
WIANACP)
• Example? A child becomes more mature
– How does a cognitivist define “mature”? Perhaps, “knows” right
from wrong and understands responsibility.
– How did this happen? An “internal” change?
– Or a change in contingencies in the environment (different
behaviors-consequence relations)?
• Child – doesn’t clean room – no unpleasant consequence
• Adult – doesn’t clean room – unpleasant consequence
• What changed? Person or environment?
skinner’s critique of cognitivism
• “I am equally concerned with practical consequences. The
appeal to cognitive states and processes is a diversion
which could well be responsible for much of our failure to
solve our problems. We need to change our behavior and
we can do so only by changing our physical and social
environments. We choose the wrong path at the start when
we suppose that our goal is to change the “minds and
hearts of men and women” rather than the world in which
they live.” (Skinner)
chomsky’s critique of skinner
Chomsky’s famous critique and debate with Skinner
• Noam Chomsky (linguist), asked how can we understand
and create sentences that we’ve never encountered before?
And, how can language develop so rapidly?
• Chomsky concluded it can only be that we have an innate
capacity to understand the deep structure, the grammar, of
language. We are born with a “language acquisition
device” (L.A.D.)
• In other words, learning is not entirely constituted from
experience – a central tenet of strict behaviorists.
multimedia resources on behaviorism
B. F. Skinner
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=mm5FGrQEyBY&m
ode=related&search=
multimedia resources on behaviorism
Watson, Little Albert experiment
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4gmwQ0vw0
A&feature=related
Bobo doll (Bandura)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHdovKHD
NU
multimedia resources on behaviorism
NPR: NYC & Chicago give cash incentives to the
poor
• NPR: NYC gives cash incentives to the poor
• http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
yId=14472737
Alex: A brilliant bird
• http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/weekinrevie
w/16john.html
being a public intellectual
One of the responsibilities of people with PhD is to be public
intellectuals. You do research on particular topics and,
therefore, have a responsibility to share your informed
opinion on it with the public through your writing and
speaking. In CEP900, you will have a chance to develop your
skills as a public intellectual.
Be prepared to give a 30 second opinion on some of issues
discussed today.