Neo-Behaviorism
Modified: 2024-12-25 5:08 AM CST
As noted earlier, the original behaviorist movement begun by Watson moved slowly and was not revolutionary. It was not until Pavlov's classical conditioning became prominent that Neo-Behaviorism started as a more fully fleshed set of theories. Two neo-beaviorist pioneers were Tolman and Hull. Skinner, later, developed radical behaviorism, the only extant neo-behaviorist theory.
- A slow-moving neobehaviorist movement gradually emerged from Watson’s ideas.
- Neobehaviorism promoted the use of animal models for studying learning and freely extrapolated results from rats, monkeys, and pigeons to humans.
- Tolman’s Purposive Behaviorism posited expectancies and cognitive maps in humans and rats.
- He and Hull used mazes extensively to investigate learning.
- Although their methods were similar, the ends each sought were different.
- Tolman’s S-S approach saw animals as goal directed.
- Hull did not. He saw his animals as automatically responding to the variables that controlled learning in a straight S-R fashion.
- Their theories differed too. Hull looked for a hypothethico-deductive approach that would ultimately yield a universal theory of learning.
- Tolman’s theory was never fully developed.
- Mostly, he concentrated on disproving Hullian theory without offering a palatable cognitive alternative.
- Behaviorism evolved into two types of Neobehaviorism:
- mediational and radical.
- Mediational versions such as Tolman’s and Hull’s permitted the existence of unobservable or intervening variables as long as they could be operationally defined, a borrowing from modern physics.
- Radical Behaviorism dispensed with any type of unobservable variables, labeling them as mentalistic, and instead adopted a selectionist methodology where the survival of a particular behavior depended on the consequences that followed it.
- Reinforcers selected for survival of behaviors while punishers selected for their extinction.
- Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism survived to the present, mostly as a self-isolated subfield of psychology.
- Its proponents often label themselves as behavior analysts or applied behavior analysts.
- Nevertheless, its accomplishments have been many starting with the operant chamber (Skinner Box) and the cumulative recorder.
- Applied behavior analysis moved Radical Behaviorism out of the laboratory and into homes, classroom, businesses, and hospitals.
- Its discoveries of:
- schedules of reinforcement:
- the partial reinforcement extinction effect,
- and shaping are covered in all introductory psychology texts.
- Less influential have been Skinner’s contributions to the study of language acquisition and his utopian desire to transform the world for the better using Radical Behaviorism.
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