...University Management in Human and Social Development - MGMT 8010 June 28, 2014 Understanding Burrhus Frederic Skinner B. F. Skinner was one of the most influential of American psychologists. A radical behaviorist, he developed the theory of operant conditioning, the idea that behavior is determined by its consequences, be they reinforcements or punishments, which make it more or unlikely that the behavior will be repeated again, (NNDB, 2014). His principles are still incorporated within treatments of phobias, addictive behaviors, and in the enhancement of classroom performance as well as in computer-based self-instruction, (NNDB, 2014). Skinner believed that the only scientific approach to psychology was one that studied behaviors, not internal (subjective) mental processes, (NNDB, 2014). He denied the existence of a mind as a thing separate from the body, but he did not deny the existence of thoughts, which he regarded simply as private behaviors to be analyzed according to the same principle as publicly observed behaviors, (NNDB, 2014). According to Michael (2013) Burrhus Frederic Skinner is very famous for developing his own philosophical studies around animal and human behavior. Once I had realized that this Theorist had caught my attention, I really became very excited about this research project so I started finding information about the man called B.F. Skinner, (NNDB, 2014). I am not sure if you’ve heard of him before but he is one of the most famous...
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...B. F Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner was best known as BF Skinner, American behaviorist, author, inventor, social philosopher and poet. He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychologist. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure the rate of response as part of his influential work on schedule of reinforcement. While F.B Skinner was at the University Of Minnesota he invented the operant conditioning chamber to measure the responses of organisms and their orderly interactions with the environment useful devices like the cumulative recorder, even in his old age he invented a thinking aid to help with writing. Skinner showed the positive reinforcement by placing a hungry rat in the Skinner box. This box contained a lever with food as the rat moved inside the box the lever would drop the food to a container next to it. The consequence was that the rat would repeat the behavior again and again. A good example to picture this would be thinking of a daily basis situation every time you do something good you get a reward, so then the same action becomes a daily thing so you can get rewarded more often. The negative side is that if one day you don’t do the right thing then you won’t get reward and then the habit might be broken. The opposite of reinforcement is punishment this can also work directly by doing something unpleasant stimulus. For example if the children don’t behave then they get put in time out and...
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...example of this is when a child says “doggy go bye-bye”. The last stage is called the whole sentences stage. When the child begins to go to pre-school, they now begin to use grammatical terms in their sentences and also learns how to increase the number of words in their sentences. There are many theories, old and new, out there in the world about language, but this essay will only be focusing on three and their leaders. Those three theories are the Behavioralism theory, the Nativist theory, and the Interactionist theory. Burrhus Frederic (B. F.) Skinner was the one who lead the Behavioralism theory. Noam Chomsky was the one who lead the Nativist theory. Lev Vygotsky was the one who lead the Interactionist theory. Burrhus Frederic, commonly referred to as B. F. Skinner, was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. He received a B.S. in English from Hamilton College, New York in 1926 then turned to psychology and received his Ph. D from Harvard University in 1931. Skinner strongly believed that learning ethics such as imitation, association, and reinforcement were the key to learning language. This behaviorist theory originates in the school of philosophy know as empiricism. Empiricism simply states that knowledge develops from past experience. The environment surrounding the baby is the core of language development. This is because the baby will hear a name of something for example then connects that name to the object. With that being said, the Behavioralism theory leans on the understanding...
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...B. F Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner was best known as BF Skinner, American behaviorist, author, inventor, social philosopher and poet. He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychologist. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure the rate of response as part of his influential work on schedule of reinforcement. While F.B Skinner was at the University Of Minnesota he invented the operant conditioning chamber to measure the responses of organisms and their orderly interactions with the environment useful devices like the cumulative recorder, even in his old age he invented a thinking aid to help with writing. Skinner showed the positive reinforcement by placing a hungry rat in the Skinner box. This box contained a lever with food as the rat moved inside the box the lever would drop the food to a container next to it. The consequence was that the rat would repeat the behavior again and again. A good example to picture this would be thinking of a daily basis situation every time you do something good you get a reward, so then the same action becomes a daily thing so you can get rewarded more often. The negative side is that if one day you don’t do the right thing then you won’t get reward and then the habit might be broken. The opposite of reinforcement is punishment this can also work directly by doing something unpleasant stimulus. For example if the children don’t behave then they get put in time out and...
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...Olsen & Hergenhahn, 2009 list 24 major theoretical concepts associated with Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Among these theoretical concepts, radical behaviorism, shaping, extinction, chaining, punishment, verbal behavior, and his learning theory are paramount. In addition to these theoretical concepts, Skinner’s respondent and operant behavior, type s and type r conditioning, as well as the cumulative recording and contingency contracting cannot be ignored. However, the primary focus of this slide is a succinct review of the 12 fundamentals of Skinner’s behaviorism as notated in Team B annotated bibliography from week 2. In that regard, Delprato & Midgley state, “Behaviorism’s impact on disciplines inside and outside of psychology is exemplified by the prominence of its leading advocate B. F. Skinner” (p. 1507). The essential points Delprato & Midgley revealed regarding Skinner’s behaviorism are the purpose of science, methodology, determinism, locus of behavioral control, consequential causality, materialism, behavior as subject matter, reductionism, non-reductionism, organism as the locus of biological change, classification of behavior into respondent and operant stimulus control of operant behavior, and the generality of behavioral principles. According to Delprato & Midgley, 1992 the purpose of science is to predict and control behavior of organism. To that end, experimentation, the use of scientific research, and technological application is vital in accessing...
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...Madeline Clausell ABA "The consequences of behavior determine the probability that the behavior will occur again" --B. F. Skinner. B. F. Skinner was born March 20, 1904. B.F. Skinner described his Pennsylvania childhood as "warm and stable." As a boy, he enjoyed building and inventing things; a skill he would later use in his own psychological experiments. Skinner married Yvonne Blue in 1936, and the couple went on to have two daughters, Julie and Deborah. Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner majored in literature at Hamilton College in New York. He went to New York City in the late 1920s to become a writer, but he wasn't very successful. So he decided to go back to school, and went to Harvard to study psychology, since he had always enjoyed observing animal and human behavior. For the most part, the psychology department there was immersed in introspective psychology, and Skinner found himself more and more a behaviorist. He worked in the lab of an experimental biologist, however, and developed behavioral studies of rats. He had always been a tinkerer, and loved building Rube Goldberg contraptions as a kid; he put that skill to use by designing boxes to automatically reward behavior, such as depressing a lever, pushing a button, and so on. His devices were such an improvement on the existing equipment; they've come to be known as Skinner boxes. Skinner received his PhD in 1931. In 1936 he took an academic position at the University of Minnesota where he wrote The Behavior of Organisms...
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...P1 Psychology is the study of behaviour and mental processes. The aim of psychology is to understand the way the human brain processes information in different environments. Psychology has different approaches and perspectives which are particularly used to view a human’s way of thinking, feeling and the ways in which they behave. There are five different perspectives that have been observed and studied by well-known psychologist these are; the cognitive approach, behaviourist approach, biological approach, humanistic approach and the psychological approach. The cognitive approach is the way the human mind retains, stores and processes information to solve a problem they are faced with in their day to day lives. The different processes that need to happen in order to solve a problem are; Perception, attention, memory and problem solving. Perception is the way we view a situation by using and having our own opinions. By having gained an opinion into the situation at hand, this will allow your brain to move into the next cognitive stage which is attention. Attention is the brain understanding the information that has been given by the environment and gaining a further insight into becoming an outcome of the situation, but before that you will need your brain to tap into the long term memory stores, which then leads into the third stage of the cognitive approach theory. The memory stage compares the current information given by the environment to the old information that’s...
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...conditioning is the prudent method to use to reach such goals. B. F. Skinner, the behaviorist that came up with the operant conditioning theory, began the innovative experiments that led to the detection of the effects of positive and negative reinforcements. These two methods are effective tools that alter behavior in any home, school, or social environment that a person could manifest unpredictable behavior. The schedule of reinforcement is also a vital component of the learning process, which maintains positive behavior and a constant rate of response. The theory of operant conditioning Operant conditioning is an acclimatizing method of learning in which an individual’s behavior modifies by the use of positive or negative reinforcement. Therefore, the individual’s behavior changes in use, regularity, and strength. Operant conditioning came to be notable from classical conditioning; entails the conditioning of reflex behaviors, which stimulates by the manifestations of precursor conditions. The difference between the two is that classical conditioning does not uphold its method by the use of reinforcement. Alternatively, operant conditioning uses reinforcement to modify voluntary behavior. American psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner, mostly known by B. F. Skinner, was the first to revolutionize the term “operant conditioning.” Skinner develops his theory by creating the operant conditioning box or Skinner box, which he uses in the experimental analysis of behavior....
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...PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE THE HUMAN PERSON II. BEHAVIORISM BEHAVIORISM 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 a random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select- doctor, lawyer, merchant- chief, and, yes, even beggar man and thief, regardless of his talents, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. - John B. Watson, 1930 BEHAVIORISM ¡ Ψ A Psychological perspective and a Learning theory that focuses on objectively observable behaviors and defines learning as the acquisition of new behavior through conditioning that occurs through interaction with the environment. ¡ Ψ A school of Psychology founded by John Broadus Watson based on the idea that behaviors can be measured, trained and changed. KEY CONCEPTS • OPERANT CONDITIONING ( Skinner)- utilizes reinforcement and punishment to create associations between behaviors and the consequences for those behaviors. • CLASSICAL CONDITIONING ( Pavlov) - a process that involves creating an association between a naturally existing stimulus and a previously neutral one. Imagine a dog that salivates when it sees food. The food is the naturally occurring stimulus. If you started to ring a bell every time you presented the dog with food, an association would be formed between the food and the bell. Eventually the bell alone, aka the conditioned stimulus, would come to evoke the salivating response...
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...Comparison between Maslow and Skinner Rhonda Gardner Educational Psychology July 1, 2012 Comparison and Contrast between Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory and Burrhus Frederic Skinner Behaviorist Theory B. F. Skinner and Abraham Maslow both are well known in the field of Psychology, but not all psychologist believe in the same theories, perspectives or needs. Here we have two brilliant minds with two different theories when it comes to learning. While neither is wrong, they both have a tremendous impact in the classroom. Take a look at the cart below and compare Skinner’s and Maslow’s theories. Chart: Theories and Needs | Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs | Skinner Behaviorist Theory | How Motivation is Defined | Maslow believed that people have basic instincts according to their needs. This shapes their behavior of the person, when one of the five key needs are deprived or missing there is a change in behavior. | Skinner believed that behavior is shaped by positive and negative reinforcement. Good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior is punished or a least favorable outcome occurs.. | How Motivation changes for elementary vs. secondary students. | Maslow believed that the 5 steps in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs must be meet in order for a student to be successful in the learning process. Once these needs are met the students should proceed forward in small steps to more advanced steps of the subject area and adjusted if needed. In secondary students...
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...the past decade have helped form the foundation of knowledge. In this paper, this writer will compare two of the most talented theorists of the time. Abraham Maslow and B.F. Skinner are just two of the many theorists that have formed the organization in today’s classrooms. This paper will address the differences in the theories and the similarities. It will describe how each theory can be implemented in the learning environment of an early childhood classroom. Lastly, it will describe each theory that will be compared supported by research. Comparison of two Theories Operant Behavior Conditioning of Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990) BF Skinner renowned for his theory of Operant Behavior (Maslow and Skinner: n.d.). He is known for, his leadership in the field behavior modification through conditioning. This states that behavior is affected by the consequence that follows the behavior. This is a practice teachers, utilize in the classrooms every day as part of the classroom management process: if the behavior of the child or children is unacceptable, the consequence will not be favorable. If the behavior is positive, the consequences will also be positive. Really, Skinner's theory states that good behavior is reinforced while bad behavior is reprimanded (Maslow and Skinner, n.d.). Ultimately, Skinner believed that in order to change behavior there had to be a positive stimulus to reinforce that behavior. Added onto this is the theory of Operant Conditioning. This states...
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...B. F. Skinner Burrhus Frederic (B. F.) Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher.[1][2][3][4] He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.[5] Skinner believed that human free will is an illusion and that any human action is the result of the consequences of the same action. If the consequences are bad, there is a high chance that the action will not be repeated; however if the consequences are good, the actions that led to it will become more probable.[6] Skinner called this the principle of reinforcement.[7] The use of reinforcement to strengthen behavior he called operant conditioning. As his main tool for studying operant conditioning Skinner The Skinners’ grave at Mount Auburn Cemetery invented the operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner Box.[8] Skinner developed his own philosophy of science called radical behaviorism,[9] and founded a school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, as well as his philosophical manifesto Walden Two, both of which still stimulate considerable experimental research and clinical application.[10] Contemporary academia considers Skinner a pioneer of modern behaviorism along with John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov. Skinner emphasized rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological...
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...F. Skinner. The theory is based on the thought that learning is a factor of change in undisguised behavior. Changes in behavior are the outcome of an individual's response to events. For instance, at a young age, everyone most likely tried many things that were unacceptable and learned from the punishments and consequences that were given to them. “For example, if when you were younger you tried smoking at school, and the chief consequence was that you got in with the crowd you always wanted to hang out with, you would have been positively reinforced and would be likely to repeat the behavior. If, however, the main consequence was that you were caught, caned, suspended from school and your parents became involved you would most certainly have been...
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...INTRODUCTION Theories of development put forward a framework for human growth, development and learning. Why do we study the developmental process? What can we learn from theories of development? If you have ever wondered about what motivates development, thoughts and behaviour, understanding these theories be a useful insight to individuals and society. LEV VYGOTSKY Lev Vygotsky is well known for his sociocultural theory of development. Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, emphasized the roles of language, social interaction and culture on the child’s developing mind (Vygotsky, 1978, 1986). Vygotsky said that through social interactions, it enables the development of skills which are needed for logical reasoning. Lev Vygotsky’s theory is one in which he speaks about cognitive development. The first step in learning about cognitive development , you have to know what the concept ‘development’ means. Development is the changes that takes place in all humans from birth to adulthood. There are physical changes such as changes in the shape and size and how the body functions for example swimming when you were in Standard 2 as to swimming faster in secondary school. There are also emotional, social and personal development which are changes to our personalities and the ways in which we manage our...
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...Abstract Behavioral psychology also known as behaviorism in focusing on observable behaviors, which behaviorists uses key concepts of conditioning, punishment, and reinforcement. John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner’s approach on behaviorism exhibited behavioral psychology as the model of formal disciplinary. On the other hand, Edward C. Tolman’s approach on behavioral learning subsidized to behavioral psychology. Although Watson, Skinner, and Tolman’s approaches were different in describing and explaining their theoretical approach, Watson, Skinner, and Tolman contributed their own theories proven to impact a part of psychology in influencing the advancement of modern day psychology in understanding behavior and human learning. Perspectives John B. Watson (1878-1958) was born in a small city (Travelers Rest) in Greenville County of South Carolina to Emma Watson and Pickens Butler. Watson was an American psychologist who founded the psychological school of behaviorism and the first to advocate a behavioral approach. Watson believed that one could benefit a full understanding of behavior by learning and modifying the environment in which people function and control as well as he thought that it was feasible and probable to produce any desired type of behavior by controlling a person’s environment (Feldman, 2010). According to Watson, psychology should be the science of observable behavior in which he treated mental events outside the province of a scientific psychology. Watson’s...
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