This week in my CEP 800 class, we discussed behaviorism and looked at how conditioning can affect the actions of humans and animals. Behaviorism is the idea that the behavior of all humans and animals can be explained through conditioning. There are two main schools of theory when it comes to behaviorism, classical and operant conditioning.
Classical conditioning builds on the ideas of Dr. Ivan Pavlov and the associations that can be created when combining a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned response. A great example of this would be teaching one of my runners to improve his race starts. First I take a neutral stimulus, which is my clapping, and I pair it with a response which is him beginning to run. As we begin to practice this eventually he becomes conditioned to the point where he will no longer false start before a race starts.
Operant conditioning goes with the ideas of scientists like Thorndike and Watson. The idea is that behaviors can be changed by introducing positive and negative punishments and reinforcers. Positive in this case means to add something, and negative means to take something away. An example of this would be something that I did in my classes. I wanted my students to stop cursing in class. In order to correct this behavior I introduced a game which used positive reinforcement for not cursing. If the students didn't curse more than any of the other classes, that class received donuts after a two week period. This led to students policing themselves more and exhibiting the desired behavior.
Both of these schools of behaviorism have their strengths and weaknesses. Both of these schools provide a way to create responses in the subjects that they are testing. The issues come with the weaknesses that they possess. For classical conditioning, the issue is that it involves an involuntary response which can be ethically questionable. It also does not explain why the behavior is happening. For operant conditioning, the issue is that conditioning will not work at the same rate in individuals. I have seen this with students who are very hesitant to react to conditioning like my no cursing competition.
I also feel that it is important to include other examples of this conditioning as well. For that I am including extra thoughts that I had on these topics and used in my class that both describe my thinking when it comes to classical and operant conditioning. These examples helped me make more sense of the topics overall.
References:
BrainPsychLopedia. (2023, February 4). What is operant conditioning (reinforcement learning)? YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFu7ZEF_pqk
Cherry, K. (2023, February 24). What is operant conditioning and how does it work?. verywell mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/operant-conditioning-a2-2794863.
Sprouts. (2020, May 30). Pavlov's classical conditioning [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd7Jdug5SRc
All included images are my personal images.
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