EDUC 104: FACILITATING LEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING

BEHAVIORIST PERSPECTIVE
Pavlov
Thorndike
Watson
Skinner
BEHAVIORIST PERSPECTIVE
Conditioning & Reinforcement
(Rewards & Punishment)
BEHAVIORIST PERSPECTIVE
STIMULUS-RESPONSE PATTERN
LET’s RECALL!
1. Recall the kindest teacher you’ve had.
2. Recall the most ‘terror’ you’ve had.
3. Recall their facilitating styles/strategies in the classroom.

BURRHUS FREDERICK SKINNER’s

OPERANT CONDITIONING
Theory of Operant Conditioning:

✔ “Learning is a result of change in overt behavior.”

✔ Changes in behavior are the result of an individual’s response to events (stimuli).

✔ When a particular Stimulus-Response (S-R) pattern is reinforced (rewarded), the individual is conditioned to
respond.
REINFORCEMENT

✔ Reinforcement-the key element in Skinner’s S-R theory.

✔ Reinforcer-strengthens the desired response.

REINFORCEMENT

✔ Positive Reinforcer-any stimulus that is given or added to increase the response.

❑ when a teacher promises extra time in the play area to children who behave well during the lesson
❑ a mother who promises a new cell phone for her son who gets good grades
❑ verbal praises, star stamps, and stickers
REINFORCEMENT

✔ Negative Reinforcer-any stimulus that results in the increased frequency of a response when it is withdrawn or
removed.
❑ a teacher announces that a teacher who gets an average grade of 1.5 for the two grading periods will no
longer take the final examination
EXTINCTION/NON-REINFORCEMENT

✔ Punishment- is a consequences intended to result in reduced responses.

❑ a student who always comes late is not allowed to join a group work that has already began
(punishment), therefore, loses points for that activity
EXTINCTION/NON-REINFORCEMENT
 ✔ Responses that are not reinforced are not likely to be repeated.

✔ EXAMPLE: Ignoring a student’s misbehavior may extinguish that behavior.

SHAPING OF BEHAVIOR

✔ An animal on a cage may take a very long time to figure out that pressing a lever will produce food.
BEHAVIORAL CHAINING

✔ Behavioral chaining comes out when a series of steps are needed to be learned. The animal would master each
step-in sequence until the entire sequence is learned.

✔ Implication: This can be applied to a child being taught to tie a shoelace. The child can be given reinforcement
(rewards) until the entire process of tying the shoelace is learned.
REINFORCEMENT SCHEDULES

✔ Once the desired behavioral response is accomplished, reinforcement does not have to be 100%; in fact, it can
be maintained more successfully through what Skinner referred to as partial reinforcement schedules which
include interval schedules and ratio schedules.
FIXED INTERVAL SCHEDULES

✔ The target response is reinforced after a fixed amount of time has passed since the last reinforcement.

✔ EXAMPLE: The bird in a cage is given food (reinforcer) every 10 minutes, regardless of how many times it presses
the bar.
VARIABLE INTERVAL SCHEDULES

✔ This is similar to fixed interval schedules but the amount of time that must pass between reinforcement varies.

✔ EXAMPLE: The bird may receive food (reinforcer) different intervals, not every ten minutes.
VARIABLE RATIO SCHEDULES

✔ The number of correct repetitions of the correct response for reinforcement varies.

✔ EXAMPLE: The bird is given food (reinforcer) after it presses the bar 3 times, then after 10 times, then after 4
times. So, the bird will not be able to predict how many times it needs to press the bar before it gets the food
again.
IMPLICATIONS OF OPERANT CONDITIONING
1. Practice should take the form of question (stimulus)- answer (response) frames which expose the student to the
subject in gradual steps.
2. Require that the learner makes a response for every frame and receives immediate feedback.
3. Try to arrange the difficulty of the questions so the response is always correct and hence, a positive
reinforcement.
4. Ensure that good performance in the lesson is paired with secondary reinforcers such as verbal praise, prizes,
and good grades.
PRINCIPLES FROM SKINNER’s OPERANT CONDITIONING
1. Behavior that is positively reinforced will reoccur; intermittent reinforcement is particularly effective.
2. Information should be presented in small amounts so that responses can be reinforced (shaping).
3. Reinforcement will generalize across similar stimuli (stimulus generalization) producing secondary conditioning.
EDWARD L. THORNDIKE’s
THEORY OF CONNECTIONISM

✔ S-R framework of behavioral psychology

✔ first to use the term ‘Educational Psychology’

✔ Association or habits become strengthened or weakened by the nature and frequency of the S-R pairings.

✔ ” Responses came to be repeated more than others because of rewards.”

EDWARD L. THORNDIKE’s THEORY OF CONNECTIONISM
Theory of Connectionism:

✔ Learning could be adequately explained without considering any unobservable internal states.

✔ Learning has taken place when a strong connection or bond between stimulus and response is formed.
THREE PRIMARY LAWS:
Law of Effect
Law of Exercise
Law of Readiness

LAW OF EFFECT
“Learning requires both practice and rewards.”
Stimulus—Response
Reward
Punishment

LAW OF EXERCISE
“Learning requires both practice and rewards.”
Stimulus—Response
Practice

Feedback

LAW OF READINESS
“A series of S-R connections can be chained together if they belong to the same action sequence.”
-The more readiness the learner has to respond to the stimulus, the stronger will be the bond between them.

4 PRINCIPLES FROM THORNDIKE’s CONNECTIONISM

1. Learning requires both practice and rewards.
2. A series of S-R connections can be chained together if they belong to the same action sequence.
3. Transfer of learning occurs because of previously encountered situations.
4. Intelligence is a function of the number of connections learned.

IVAN PAVLOV’s CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

PAVLOV’s EXPERIMENT ON CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
IVAN PAVLOV
 ✔ a Russian Psychologist

✔ known for his experiment on classical conditioning/ stimulus substitution

PAVLOV’s EXPERIMENT ON CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

STAGE 1 (before conditioning)
Bell
(neutral stimulus) no response

STAGE 2 (during conditioning)

Bell
(neutral stimulus)

meat
(unconditioned stimulus) Salivation (unconditioned response)

STAGE 3 (after conditioning)

Bell
(conditioned stimulus) Salivation (unconditioned response)

IVAN PAVLOV’s FINDINGS

STIMULUS GENERALIZATION

✔ Once the dog has learned to salivate at the sound of the bell, it will salivate at other similar sounds.
EXTINCTION

✔ If you stop pairing the bell with the food, salivation will eventually cease in response to the bell.
SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY

✔ Extinguished responses can be ‘recovered’ after an elapsed time, but will soon extinguish again if the dog is not
presented with food.
DISCRIMINATION

✔ The dog could learn to discriminate between similar bells (stimuli) and discern which bell would result in the
presentation of food and which would not.
HIGHER-ORDER CONDITIONING

✔ Once the dog has been conditioned to associate the bell with food, another unconditioned stimulus, such as a
light may be flashed at the same time that the bell is rung. Eventually, the dog will salivate at the flash of the
light without the sound of the bell.

JOHN B. WATSON’s EXPERIMENT ON ALBERT

✔ He worked with Pavlov’s ideas.

✔ He involved in human studies and human behavior research.

✔ Watson applied classical conditioning in his experiment concerning Albert, a young child, and a
white rat.

✔ ” Humans are born with few reflexes and the emotional reactions of love and rage.”

✔ ” All other behavior is learned through stimulus-response associations through conditioning.”

✔ ” If you were given a dozen healthy infants, you can make them into anything you want them to
be.”
Albert was not afraid of the rat; but Watson made a sudden loud noise each time Albert touched the rat.
Because Albert was frightened by the loud noise, he soon became conditioned to fear and avoid the rat.
Later, the child’s response was generalized to other small animals. Now, he was also afraid of small
animals. Watson then ‘extinguished’ or made the child ‘unlearn’ fear by showing the rat without the loud
noise.