Behaviorism and Skinner's Impact

Aug 27, 2024

Lecture on Behaviorism and B.F. Skinner

Introduction

  • Focus on the potential for creating a better way of life through specific proposals.
  • Emphasis on behaviorism, particularly the work of B.F. Skinner, a prominent Pennsylvanian psychologist.

Skinner's Philosophies and Experiments

Key Beliefs of Skinner

  • Believed humans start as a blank slate.
  • Behavior is shaped by the environment.
  • Operant conditioning is central to behavior modification.

Operant Conditioning

  • Method of learning that employs rewards and punishments for behavior.
  • Skinner's experiments began with pigeons.
  • Pigeons were trained to peck a button a set number of times to receive a seed reward.
  • Demonstrated the power of conditioning by training pigeons to play ping pong.

Application to Humans

Experiment at Youth Borstal

  • Conducted in the early 1970s with the BBC documenting his progress.
  • Inmates had challenging backgrounds: lack of family, education, and employment.
  • Introduction of a reward system to encourage positive behavior.

Reward System

  • Points for good behavior could be exchanged for various rewards:
    • Better food
    • Game room access
    • Private room or TV rental
    • Short vacations

Outcomes

  • Dramatic improvements in behavior and learning:
    • Inmates learned reading, writing, and arithmetic without compulsion.
    • Hostile behavior decreased significantly.

Language Acquisition and Criticisms

Skinner's Theory on Language

  • Proposed language is acquired through operant conditioning:
    • Imitation from parents, reinforced by rewards and punishments.

Criticisms and Challenges

  • Linguists argued Skinner's theory was too simplistic.
  • A BBC Horizon program in the 1970s challenged this concept.
  • Experiment demonstrated that young children could not simply copy complex grammar.

Experiment Outcomes

  • Older child could copy sentences.
  • Younger child struggled with complex sentence replication.

Skinner's Admission

  • Acknowledged limitations of his explanation on verbal behavior.
  • Admitted ignorance in some areas of language acquisition.

Conclusion

  • Humans are not merely blank slates.
  • Each individual is born with inherent traits and capabilities.
  • Skinner’s work remains influential, seen in reward systems worldwide, but it has limitations in explaining complex human behaviors like language acquisition.