Skinner – Operant Conditioning Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior. Operant conditioning was coined by behaviorist Skinner, which is why you may occasionally hear it referred to as Skinnerian conditioning. As a behaviorist, Skinner believed that internal thoughts and motivations could not be used to explain behavior. Instead, he suggested, we should look only at the external, observable causes of human behavior.
They observe the response individuals make to different situations or different conditions. Like behaviorist, cognitivists believe the environment has an impact upon a learner and what happens in one’s life. Lastly, they both hold that our experiences impact the way we learn. In conclusion, these two schools of psychology clearly have their differences and similarities. Behaviorism and cognitivism in my opinion are one of the most important schools of
Unconscious urges are described by Freud in his psychoanalytic theory. Observable behavior is emphasized in Albert Bandura’s social learning theory. The interaction of nature and nurture is emphasized in social learning theories · Which theories emphasize the impact of early experience on development? · How does each theory view the child? · How do the theories view adult development?
Structuralism was developed by a man named Edward Titchener who was a student of Wilhem Wundt. Titchener was extremely interested in learning about the structure of the consciousness. He believed in the use of experimentation for the science of psychology (Kowalski & Westen, 2009). The second school of thought, functionalism, along with structuralism was the two schools of thought which were dominant in the beginning of psychology (Kowalski & Westen, 2009). Functionalism studied the psychological processes which enable individuals to be able to adapt to their environments; each psychological process has an important role which is their main point of focus.
The quantitative psychometric testing and the experimental tradition in which individual difference can be known were the dominant methodologies for many decades. As Hollway (2007) would concur that scientific tradition had been historically a power related establishment that was central to the way knowledge was produced. This frustration let some clinicians, for whom the problem of individual differences became a salient feature in psychotherapy proposed an alternative theory: a personal construct theory that understood people lived experience and was freed from the constraints of the scientific tradition. In a sense, people constructing themselves by engaging in a context that is fluid and complex and always changing, rather than fixed and predictable. The personal construct theory is a critical social approach, a protest theory in reaction to psychometric and the experimental tradition (Butt, 2007).
To analyze behavior experimentally, Skinner developed operant conditioning procedures. In this he manipulated the consequences of an organism’s behavior to see how it would affect future behavior. So the consequences “operate” on the environment, thereby affecting it and affecting future consequences. Unlike classical conditioning, operants are not elicited by any specific stimuli. Rather the response to a stimulus “operates” on the environment and thus creates a different response when it affects the environment differently.
The humanist approach doesn’t describe deviance as a behavior, rather defining it by the reaction and it being a subjective experience. The positivists focus on the high consensus deviance, the deviance that the majority agrees upon, such as hurting yourself or someone else. They want to explain the behavior and believe that it’s caused by the social environment. One theory used to explain behavior by the positivists is control theory. Control theory helps explain “crime, deviance, and especially delinquency” (56) In 1969, Travis Hirschi developed control theory.
Conditioning is structure of many parts, some of the most important ones been operant conditioning, positive and negative reinforcement, and reinforcement schedule. The few parts of conditioning that are mention are enough to influence a person's behavior. The term or word conditioning is used to describe the actual procedures that modify a desired performance, (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2013). Therefore, operant conditioning is used in behavioral psychology and is a method to learn behavior. Operant conditioning is a concept developed by behaviorist B.F. Skinner.
Running head: The Educational Implications of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Ericson Exploring the Educational Implications of Piaget, Vygotsky and Ericson John Doe University Exploring the Educational Implications of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Erikson In every field, there are certain individuals whose research and contributions to their discipline have set them apart. Child psychology happens to be a field that is very complex and expanding with new research and findings. Those influential individuals are Piaget, Vygotsky and Erikson. Piaget is known for his stage theory of cognitive development, Vygotsky for his concept of the zone of proximal development. Erikson for his theory of psychosocial development, who believed that personality develops in a series of stages.
For example, Skinnerian conditioning as a behaviorist, Skinner believed that internal thoughts and motivations could not be used to explain behavior. Instead, he suggested, we should look only at the external, observable causes of human behavior. Skinner used the term operant to refer to any "active behavior that operates upon the environment to generate consequences" (1953). Motivation is a condition that energizes behavior and gives it direction. It is experienced subjectively as a conscious desire For example, the