WHAT IS LEARNING FOR YOU?

BEHAVIORIST PERSPECTIVE

ALONA A. ENCINARES
Discussant

NOEL V. IBIS,Ph.D.
Professor
WHAT IS LEARNING?
 Learning is acquiring new, or modifying existing,
knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and
may involve synthesizing different types of
information.
 The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals
and some machines. Learning may be viewed as a
process, rather than a collection of factual and
procedural knowledge. It is based on experience.
Learning produces changes in the organism and the
changes produced are relatively permanent.
BEHAVIORIST PERSPECTIVE
Behaviorist perspectives in learning
are different from most other
perspectives because they view
people as controlled by their
environment and specifically that
we are the result of what we have
learned from our environment.
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
) who viewed the new born baby as
a blank slate - tabula rasa - on
whom the experience of life would
write a specific story.
IVAN PAVLOV
Classical Conditioning
-Stimulus-Response
JOHN B. WATSON
 Early Classical Conditioning with Humans

John b. Watson further extended

Pavlov’s work and applied it to
human beings.
BEHAVIORISM
 underlying assumptions regarding methodology and
behavioral analysis:
 * Psychology should be seen as a science.
* Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable
behavior,
* People have no free will
 * When born our mind is 'tabula rasa' (a blank slate).
* There is little difference between the learning that
takes place in humans and that in other animals. .
* Behavior is the result of stimulus
 * All behavior is learnt from the environment.
BURRHUS FREDERIC SKINNER
 Operant Conditioning

 -it means roughly changing of behavior

by the use of reinforcement which is
given after the desired response.
Skinner identified three types of
responses or operant that can follow
behavior.
Skinner identified three types of responses or operant
that can follow behavior.

Neutral operants: responses from

the environment that neither
increase nor decrease the
probability of a behavior being
repeated.
• Reinforcers: Responses from the
environment that increase the
probability of a behavior being
repeated. Reinforcers can be either
positive or negative.
Punishers: Response from the
environment that decrease the
likelihood of a behavior being
repeated. Punishment weakens
behavior.
References:
 en.wikipedia.org/wiki
 John Locke’s Theory of Tabula Rasa/eHow.com
 McLeod, S. A. (2007). B.F. Skinner | Operant
Conditioning.
 www.simplypsychology.org
›Perspective>Behaviorism
THANK YOU!
Activity:
 Identify one habit or behavior in yourself that you
would like to change. Develop a simple structure of
rewards and punishments which will assist you to
operationally condition yourself to change this
behavior. For example, if you would like to eliminate a
habit of snacking between meals, you might decide to
"punish" yourself with 10 pushups every time you
snack between meals. You might "reward" yourself by
giving yourself a dollar before each meal when
snacking before the meal did not occur. You would
then need to use your "snack money reward" toward
some fun activity or item for yourself.