Behavioral Learning Theory: Shaping Behavior Through Environmental Interaction

Have you ever wondered why someone reacts or behaves in a specific way? Then you may want to tap into behaviorism learning theory. Psychology helps us understand how people act, especially when confronted with situations that challenge them. Within education, professionals typically subscribe to one or more theories of learning. One of the learning theories, behaviorism learning theory is an approach to shaping human behavior.

Core Principles of Behaviorism

In short, behaviorism emphasizes how people interact with their environment. Over time, these interactions (called stimuli) form particular behaviors. In general, behaviorists are typically concerned solely or primarily with understanding behavior as the response to environmental stimuli. As we will see, some behaviorists are more extreme in this way of thinking than others. On one end of the spectrum, radical behaviorists entirely discount innate psychological phenomena outside of stimulus and response. Behaviorism as a learning theory represents the culmination of various schools of thought in modern psychology. It emphasizes observable behaviors over internal mental processes.

Pioneers of Behaviorism

Wilhelm Wundt: The Father of Experimental Psychology

Wilhelm Wundt, widely regarded as the “father of experimental psychology,” founded the first psychology laboratory in the world and carried out experiments that strongly influenced the field. His novel, 19th-century approach included the proposal that psychology is a natural science; he facilitated controlled experiments with reproducible results.

Ivan Pavlov: Classical Conditioning

One of those behaviorists, Ivan Pavlov, is most known for his study of dogs who salivated as specific lab assistants entered the room. Because these lab assistants often fed the dogs, Pavlov noticed that the dogs associated the presence of the assistants with food, triggering a physiological response. He devised an experiment to tie the presence of food with the ringing of a bell. These experiments helped formalize the concept of classical conditioning. According to this theory, a neutral stimulus can elicit a response when paired with a positive stimulus.

John Watson: Applying Conditioning to Humans

Even though Pavlov confined his experiments to animals, another psychologist - John Watson - performed experiments on people (with dubious ethical considerations). While he is widely regarded as the founder of behavioral psychology, Watson never claimed this title. In his research, Watson conditioned a young child to fear a small rat by timing the arrival of the rat with a loud noise.

Read also: Your Guide to Nursing Internships

B.F. Skinner: Operant Conditioning and Radical Behaviorism

Many of behaviorism’s commonplace concepts, such as positive and negative reinforcement and operant conditioning, grew out of B.F. Skinner’s landmark experiment involved placing a lab rat in an operant conditioning chamber or “Skinner box,” outfitted with a lever or button. These two responses, food and shock, are known as reinforcements and punishments, respectively. Skinner found that animals were prone to push the lever when they received rewards and less likely to do so when they didn’t. He called this operant conditioning. Skinner would go on to propose radical behaviorism, in which all psychological processes were deemed responses to environmental stimuli and reinforcement.

Applications in Education

Behavioral learning theory has several applications in education that can help teachers shape student behavior and improve learning outcomes.

Reinforcement

If a teacher returns students’ papers within a week of submission, students may be more likely to learn from that feedback, compared to a teacher who waits several weeks. Many teachers implement reward systems for students to reinforce good behavior. When students receive extra credit for optional quizzes leading up to a big test, for instance, they might be more likely to pace their study with the quizzes, instead of cramming the night before the exam.

Shaping

Similar to reward systems, shaping is a behavioralist technique in which teachers gradually reinforce behaviors that approximate the desired outcome. Instead of jumping into lessons immediately, many teachers opt to start their classes with routine activities. This can be as simple as leaving a problem up on the board for students to complete as the class begins.

Modeling

Teachers can display the behaviors they want students to adopt, showing rather than telling students how to behave.

tags: #behavioral #learning #theory #definition