1 February: Behaviourism

Sorry a few of you missed some of the material; I've made rather greater than usual use of video this week to help you to catch up, but do bring your questions to next week's session.

Here is an annotated version of the full presentation, of which we saw only a few slides;

Notes on Behaviourism

My summary page on behaviourism is at www.learningandteaching.info/learning/behaviour.htm, with links in the side-bar to other pages on the site and external links in the main body of the page.

If you are searching for yourself, remember that "behavior" will get many more hits than "behaviour". If you come across anything particularly good, let me know, please.

For a fun simulation of Pavlov's original experiment, try:http://www.simplypsychology.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pavlov.swf

Books! Look at;
SLATER L (2004) Opening Skinner's Box; great psychological experiments of the twentieth century London; Bloomsbury --on Skinner and the myths surrounding him, and lots of other good stuff in a popular-science style.

Here's a reasonable short overview:



Here’s a rather sanitised reconstruction of Pavlov’s set-up!



This half-hour silent film, however, is authentic.

(Pavlov, Watson and Thorndike were interested only in stimulus and response (S-R) behaviour; Skinner paid more attention to the organism as part of the chain (S-O-R), which is why he is sometimes referred to as a "neo-behaviourist".)

Here’s a bit more detail on Skinner and his pigeons and free will…



Some videos I referred to can be viewed here:

• YouTube playlist "Skinner and Behaviourism"http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6439B7CD9DD445F9&page=1

• Basic chicken training (QuickTime movie: download free version here) 

• Shaping chicken behaviour (also QuickTime)

(Note: be careful when downloading movie players: they use sneaky tricks to get you to sign up for more than you bargained for!)

There's a very straightforward overview of clicker training for dogs here:



Note that there are two stages, which I think I should have spelt out more clearly:

• The first is classical conditioning, establishing the association between the sound of the clicker (conditioned stimulus) and the treat (unconditioned stimulus) 

• The second is using that conditioned response to reinforce and then shape behaviour in a desired pattern.

...and here is a training session in real-time showing how long it takes (once the conditioned response to the click has been established):



at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC367wKGi4M there are as many related videos as you could wish for.

Here is original footage of the case of Little Albert (1920). Forgive the intrusive music, and trust what you see, and not what the commentary tells you to make of it!



Here is a postscript on the case, which is even more disturbing, but does make sense of the film you just watched.

It is very easy, as we discussed, to get hung up on the details of behaviourism, partly because it is so experimentally focused, and there seems to be a lot to remember. Don't worry about that--concentrate on what you can do with it.

Points 

• Here's the latest take on Robert the Bruce and the spider. 

• There is an outline of the principles and practice of token economies here. 

• A propos of nothing (except that it is a very interesting novel), Never Let Me Go is by Kazuo Ishigoru.

Next week 

We shall move on to some selected aspects of cognitive theories of learning.


In particular we'll be looking at the fraught topic of intelligence, so start here and follow the links. You may also get into the idea of multiple intelligences, convergent and divergent thinking, and--heaven help you--learning styles.

If you have time to take in a book on it, from a critical stance, see:

• Gould S J (1997) The Mismeasure of Man (rev. ed.) London; Penguin

Gould also describes the eugenics experiments which we discussed briefly this week.