Week 1 - Journal

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Feb 20, 2024

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Behaviorism is a complex theory. It consists of many sub-theories and frameworks, all consisting of behaviors learned by stimuli and their responses. Many psychologists like Pavlov, Skinner, and Thorndike helped develop and evolve the complexity of behaviorism with their research and experiments with classical and operant conditioning and how everything is connected. It isn't easy to wrap your mind around it as complex as it is. Thus, it is difficult to explain for me and even other scholars. The pre-test for Chapter 1: The Foundations of Behaviorism was easy. I received a 100%, answering all six questions correctly. I was honestly surprised at this. I was astonished at how easy the pre-test seemed and that I answered all the questions correctly without reading anything about the content first. Once I started reading the chapter, I realized I already knew much of this information subconsciously. I don’t remember when or where I learned some of this information previously, but I know it must have been years ago. This fascinated me as it showed me how resilient my knowledge and learning are. I can recall information and knowledge easily as if I had just learned about it. Some of the information I recall previously learning was behaviorism. I didn’t go in-depth into the theory, but I remember learning about Pavlov’s classical conditioning in my Intro to Psychology class. Behaviorism is a complex theory. It has many sub-theories and frameworks. So much information can be confusing, especially when so many different psychologists who put their thoughts into the matter are integrated into it. Such as Pavlov’s classical conditioning, which is associated with the behaviorism sub-theory of psychological

behaviorism, which states that positive or negative reinforcers influence the learning of behaviors and increase the likelihood of said learned behavior to increase (Rosser- Majors, Section 1.3, para. 1, 2017). Radical behaviorism, also known as Skinnerian Behaviorism, in which theorists believed that it was not psychological and the behavior was just a result of an action Rosser-Majors, Section, i.2, para, 5, 2017). Most sub-theories seem similar, only providing a few different ideas or adding new ones to support further what was previously stated. This can cause some confusion and difficulty in distinguishing. All of them are associated with behaviors. The key difference seems to be how those behaviors are brought upon, which type of reinforcers were used, and why those behaviors were brought up. For instance, was it to fulfill a physiological need, as in eating, or maybe a social need, as in a child behaving? An example of association doctrine could be recalling a specific memory of when you were younger because of something (stimulus) that made you remember the memory, like a smell. Usually, the memory is linked to the stimulus; for instance, the scent of cinnamon reminded you of your grandmother cooking breakfast because of the cinnamon she used for French toast. An example of connectionism could be drinking water to quench our thirst when we are thirsty. We drink the water to fulfill the need to quench our thirst. Doing this satisfies us because we are no longer thirsty; thus, we drink water every time we are thirsty. This is based on the connection between the stimulus (drinking water) and response (quenching thirst), the connection being that you are no longer thirsty.

The stimulus-response model establishes connections between stimulus and response to learning behavior. For instance, giving a dog a treat (stimulus) to sit on command (response) (Rosser-Majors, Section i.2, para. 5, 2017). The law of effect is similar to where a stimulus was still used to elicit a response for a behavior. The difference is that now we consider the person (or organism) and their reaction to the stimulus and response (Rosser-Majors, Section 1.2, para. 1 & 18, 2017). For instance, a child’s acceptable schoolwork receives good grades. This will motivate the child to continue with the acceptable schoolwork to keep getting good grades. Behaviorism’s early stage consisted of psychological behaviorism in that behaviors were simply a reflex and learned through negative or positive reinforcers (Rosser-Majors, Section i.2, para, 4, 2017). Then, there was radical behavior based on Skinner’s research and experience with operant behavior. This was similar to psychological behavior, but Radial didn’t believe behavior was just reflexes; instead, that behavior was based on external factors (Rosser-Majors, Section i.2, para. 6, 2017). To add on top of what Skinner proposed, then cam molar behaviorism, which consisted of the rate of reinforcers, which was the number of events in a given time, and they were much more critical to behavior than the external factors (Rosser- Majors, Section i.2, para. 9, 2017). Neo-behaviorism consists of cognition being the explanation for the behaviors when cognition was not considered (Rosser-Majors, Section i.2, para. 13, 2017). After reading this chapter, I had a better understanding of behaviorism and all its sub-theories and frameworks. However, it was a bit confusing. It was Mainly because

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