A Critique of the Behavioural Theories of Learning

He deciphered that dogs like humans salivate (reflex response) when they see food; it is a natural physiological reflex response. However he also demonstrated that a signal such as using a bell (stimulus) just before he gave the dog food would eventually lead the dog to salivate at the sound of the bell even if there was no food present. Pavlov verified by pairing or associating another stimulus (the bell) with food he could train the dogs to salivate. This theory could then be applied to people as well. According to Richard et al (2007) it was found that pairing one stimulus with another stimulus could also provoke a reflexive response in people. This is also called a stimulus – response theory of learning.

Curiosity that struck Ivan Pavlov with the idea of reflexes that all organisms possess led to the beginning of classical conditioning. It became the very first concept of learning, which consequently inspired other behaviorist psychologists to come up with more learning theories. As a result, Ivan Pavlov is considered one of the first people to establish behaviorist psychology and define its position and beliefs. Over time, behaviorist psychologists together modified the existing learning theories and introduced new learning theories and techniques with significantly increased efficiency and practicality. Therefore, behaviorist therapists now use different types of learning methods to reinforce an individual to behave in a certain way. Moreover, psychology now shares key features with modern science and asks powerful and critical questions that may influence the entire world.

After the meat powder and bell were presented together several times, the bell was used alone. Pavlov’s dogs, as predicted, responded by salivating to the sound of the bell without the food. The bell began as a neutral stimulus (i.e. the bell itself did not produce the dogs. However, by pairing the bell with the stimulus that did produce the salivation response, the bell was able to acquire the ability to trigger the salivation response. Pavlov therefore demonstrated how stimulus-response are formed. He dedicated much of the rest of his career further exploring this finding. In technical terms, the meat powder is considered an unconditioned stimulus and the dog’s salivation is the unconditioned response. The bell is a neutral stimulus until the dog learns to associate the bell with food. Then the bell becomes a conditioned stimulus which produces the conditioned response of salivation after repeated pairings between the bell and food. John B. Watson further extended Pavlov’s work and applied it to human beings. Around 1921, Watson studied Albert, an 11-month-old infant child. The goal of the study was to condition Albert to become afraid of a white rat by pairing the white rat with a very loud noise. Behavior modification is a technique concerning the change in the undesired behavior and enhancing desired behavior. It is an approach that aims to modify the behavior of a

Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner both studied learning, in which they both did different experiments on different animals and with different conditioning. Classical conditioning is the process in which two stimuli become linked; once this association has been recognized, an originally neutral stimulus is conditioned to provoke an involuntary response. The dogs in Pavlov’s studies learned to associate countless stimuli with the expectation of food, which caused in them salivating when the stimuli were presented. Pavlov revealed how such associations are learned, and referred to this process as conditioning. While the

We use the term classical conditioning to describe one type of associative learning in which there is no contingency between response and reinforcer. This situation resembles most closely the experiment from Pavlov in the 1920s, where he trained his dogs to associate a bell ring with a food-reward (Ryle 1995). In such experiments, the subject initially shows weak or no response to a conditioned stimulus (CS, e.g. the bell), but a measurable unconditioned response (UCR, e.g. saliva production) to an unconditioned stimulus (UCS, e.g. food). In the course of the training, the CS is repeatedly presented together with the UCS; eventually the subject forms an association between the US and the CS. In a subsequent test-phase, the subject will

Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning which occurs when two stimuli are paired together repetitively and therefore become associated with each other eventually producing the same response. Classical conditioning was developed from the findings of Ivan Pavlov to account for associations between neutral stimuli and reflexive behavior such as salivation. Pavlov (1927) accidently discovered that dogs began to salivate before they had tasted their food. To support his theory, he carried out experiments using dogs which involved measuring the amount of saliva they produced. In his experiments, food started off as an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) which produced salivation, an unconditioned response (UCR). They are both unconditioned as they occur naturally without being learned. The dogs were presented with a bell (NS), this provided no salivation. The bell and food were presented together and after many trails an

8. Pavlov found that if he allowed his animals to rest for several hours following the extinction of a behavior, the conditioned response would spontaneously appear again upon re-presentation of the conditioned stimulus – although in a somewhat weaker form. This is called:

It occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired together, one being an unlearned stimulus and the other a neutral stimulus. The neutral stimuli eventually will produce the same reaction as the unlearned stimuli. Ivan Pavlov had been investigating the saliva reactions in dogs. He conducted a study where he noticed that dogs salivated not only when food was placed in their mouths but also when stimuli associated with the food (a bell) was presented. Pavlov identified that the dogs had formed an association between the two stimuli, that it was an example of classical conditioning. A problem with this study was the fact that we can not generalize it to humans. Watson and Rayner rectified this in a later study using a young boy named Little Albert. At the age of nine months old, Little Albert was showed a variety of stimuli including a white rat, a monkey, a rabbit and burning newspapers. Watson and Rayner observed the boys’ reaction to the stimuli and found he showed no fear in relation to them. The next time Albert was exposed to the rat the researched made a loud, unpleasant noise which made Albert cry. Eventually, Albert would cry just in the presence of the rat. After this observation ‘Watson and Rayner wrote "The instant the rat was shown, the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over on [his] left side, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was

Classical conditioning is learning that occurs trough association can be defined as a type of learning in which a conditioned stimulus (sound of a bell, Pavlov) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (food) to evoke a response. In the early twentieth century Pavlov’s research included dogs that would start to salivate when food was presented. Pavlov suggested that salivation was a learned response. During the research a bell was rang when the food was presented, the dog salivated

If we review classical conditioning, we can see that an unconditioned stimulus is one that unconditionally and naturally results in a response. In contrast, a conditioned stimulus incorporates an unconditioned stimulus with a neutral stimulus to elicit a response. The classic case that highlights this concept is that of Pavlov's

Then, later, the unconditioned stimulus can be withdrawn and the neutral stimulus evolves to become the conditioned stimulus. Now the conditioned stimulus or learned stimulus evokes a conditioned response, or learned response. Given the example, the conditioned response is salivation. When it hears the bell, the dog salivates because the dog was conditioned to associate the hot dog with the sound of the bell.

Taking together, the hypothesized process of ABA renewal can be due to excitatory conditioning in context A or inhibitory conditioning in context B or both. Therefore, in order to isolate these processes, Bouton, Todd, Vurbic and Winterauer (2011) found other ways of changing the current context. Specifically, Bouton and colleagues included between-group comparison of ABA versed AAB renewal in the first experiment. During baseline training, the lever-press responses resulted in food as reinforcement on a variable interval 30 seconds (VI 30s) schedule. The trainings happened in the context A for both groups. However, extinction occurred in context A for AAB group, whereas extinction occurred in context B for ABA group. Finally, the two groups were put into test sessions in both context A and context B in a counterbalanced order. The results of this experiment found both ABA and AAB renewal after operant extinction. This revealed that renewal not only due to returning to training context as AAB group did not go back to the original context but still got the relapse effect. In addition, rats did not only learn the excitatory conditioning in which case learning to respond to get reinforcement in context A. This was because rats still responded even when

The dogs would start to salivate just by hearing the bell ringing, which normally would not produce this response. The first part of the process involves an unconditioned response, like blinking or salivating. The next part needed for classical conditioning is an unconditioned stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus is one that automatically produces the unconditioned response, such as the smell of food triggering salivation. During conditioning, the neutral stimulus, like the bell in Pavlov’s case, is repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus, or the meat powder. After a while, the neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus. The conditioned stimulus then produces a conditioned response, since the subject of the experiment has associated the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned response. Many interesting experiments have been conducted using classical conditioning. Another scientist that preformed an experiment with classical conditioning is John B. Watson. Watson used classical conditioned to make a young boy fear white fluffy objects. He scared the child by making loud noises every time the child was presented a white rat.

This is known as the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Meat is the unconditioned stimulus because at the sight of the meat the dogs begin to salivate (Feldman, 2010).   The dog’s response to the meat educes salivation and is known as the unconditioned response (UCR). An unconditioned response is defined as a reflexive and natural response that is not connected to prior learning. Unconditioned responses always occur in the presence of the unconditioned stimulus (Feldman, 2010).   While conditioning the dogs, Pavlov would ring a bell right before the presentation of meat. Eventually, the dogs would associate the ringing of the bell with the meat. Therefore, the dogs would begin to salivate at the sound of the bell. At this point, Pavlov could state that he had classically conditioned his dogs. The bell which was a prior neutral stimulus had now become the conditioned stimulus (CS) that brought forth the conditioned response (CR) of salivation (Feldman, 2010). Moreover, we have to ask what would happen if these poor dogs were never again received food upon the ringing of the bell. This would lead to extinction. Extinction occurs when a prior conditioned response decreases in frequency and eventually disappears (Feldman, 2010).   In order for Pavlov to unconditioned his dogs he would have to break their association with the sound of the ringing bell and the presentation of food. To do so he

After associating the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus, the sound of the bell alone will start to evoke salivating as a response. The sound of the bell is now known as the conditioned stimulus and salivating in response to the bell is known as the conditioned response (Cherry, 2014) . The term operant conditioning, first came on the scene by Edward Thorndike. Edward Thorndike is famous in psychology for his work on learning theory that lead to the development of operant conditioning within behaviorism. However, “B.F. Skinner is responsible for expanding the field of behaviorism after the early work of E.L. Thorndike, and his law of effect. Skinner divided behaviorism into respondent conditioning and operant conditioning, the latter of which he defined as explaining how the consequence of a behavior controlled the future occurrence of that same behavior. Skinner believed all behavior could be explained by an action performed and the valence of its consequence. Skinner's most famous research studies were simple reinforcement experiments conducted on lab rats and domestic pigeons, which demonstrated the most basic principles of operant conditioning. His work remains extremely influential in the worlds of psychology, behaviorism, and education” (Boundless, 2014). The term operant conditioning, was latter coined by B.F. Skinner. Skinner’s work with operant theory was built off of Edward Thorndike’s theory. (McLeod S. A., 2007). Operant conditioning, is also