The Contribution Of Edward Thorndike's Theory Of Connectionism

Behaviourists like Skinner believed that the principles involved in these learning processes were applicable to people and underpin complex human behaviour. Skinner proposed that behaviour changes as a result of its consequences and that behaviour is also reinforced by reward. Behaviour that is reinforced will also increase in frequency Skinner suggested. Similarly, he argued, negative reinforcement works in the same way as positive re inforcement. For example, if a loud noise is made every time a rat pokes its nose through its cage, the rat would stop doing it. He promoted the idea that as humans are just another species, giving praise for desirable behaviour in a child would reinforce that behaviour in the same way that getting food by pressing a lever in a box would reinforce behaviour in a rat.

Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner, an American behavioral psychologist, is best known for his experiments on changing behavior. With behavioral psychologists Pavlov and Watson as his inspiration, Skinner formulated his theory of operational conditioning. His idea of “shaping” behavior is prevalent in the parenting and teaching techniques of children and students.

The Learning theory explains in three ways how we usually learn new behaviors, leaving the old behaviors behind. The three ways are: modelling, reinforcement and association.

Persistence is an essential trait if success is desired in any learning set up. Students must demonstrate the trait of repeating certain tasks for full comprehension and grasp of concepts. The brain is always wired to forget certain concepts that might have been explained earlier. Persistence makes sure the student never hangs up their boots when they encounter a hard task. Besides grasping forgotten concepts, persistence is also efficient when dealing with practical sessions. The ability of the student to perform one task repetitively is desirable and it increases the chances of the student to permanently and fully grasp the concept (Habley, 2013).

B.F. Skinner’s theory of behaviorism claims that behavior is directed by environmental reinforcements, some natural and some intentionally applied. Skinner proposed three possible consequences of any behavior: reinforcements which are consequences which increase the likelihood of behavior (such as praise or food), punishments which tend to decrease behavior (such as a frown or a traffic ticket), and the lack of reinforcement or punishment which also tends to decrease behavior (such as no response to the punch line of a joke). He also holds that reinforcers can be learned (money becomes valuable because of it 's

Watson in early twentieth century, this theory includes the work of such people as Thorndike, Tolman, Guthrie, Hull, and Skinner (Merriam 278). Later came B.F. Skinner's major contribution to the understanding of learning known as operant conditioning. Simply stated, operant conditioning means “reinforce what you want the individual to do again; ignore what you want the individual to stop doing” (Merriam 279). It’s all about the reinforcement of observed behavior and contributing to that behavior with an environment conducive to learning what’s expected of them.

Disillusioned Latin students, who cringe at the thought of repeatedly scribbling their grammar, are often told by their teachers, "Per repitio nos studiare," which translates to "through repetition we learn." Though this may seem hard to believe as their hands begin to cramp, it bears a certain amount of truth. As my grandfather once told me, "Experience is often the best teacher." Truly gaining an understanding of something often comes from repeated involvement.

Furthermore, through learning, a person undergoes behavioral changes, as well as changes in skills, attitude and knowledge. Therefore this

Throughout the course, I learned that learning is a continuous and intricate process. There is not quite one theory that fully explains this process, and more often, learning is a combination of the theories (e.g. Pavlor’s classical conditioning, Skinner’s operant conditioning, Tolman’s latent learning/place learning, Bandura’s social learning). Learning appears to be a life-long process (since the hippocampus, which plays a role in learning and memory, undergoes neurogenesis throughout adulthood; also, our synaptic connections are constantly changing as we learn new information), and involves developing and maintaining associations between behaviors and events. These associations are either reinforced or punished, helping the organism distinguish

Edward Lee Thorndike was one of the earliest Behaviourists. At the time, introspection was used to study mental states and consciousness. Thorndike rejected the use of introspection for three reasons. Thorndike believed that studying objective behaviour could expand the scope of psychology. Secondly, mental states can be studied by other means, introspection as a superior form of investigation is based on misconception because mental states can be studied objectively. Lastly, consciousness is linked to behaviour and actions as such, it can only be studied through behaviour (Farrell 2014 p.g. 367). Other behaviourists such as Watson also rejected introspection for because subjective data was unreliable (Farrell 2014

B F Skinner was one of the most influential behaviourist in psychology. He introduced a lot of new theories from his work and has been studied by many for years. Skinner particularly focused on behaviour patterns of animals and people, of course. He was very popular for his “Skinner Box” experiment. Skinner Box is used for conditioning animals like pigeons and rats to behave in desired ways such as running through a maze, playing tunes on a keyboard, or pressing levers (McLeod, 2007). Skinner also influenced the education field through his theory that behaviour was important and good behaviour should be reinforced with rewards and bad behaviour should be negatively reinforced or punished (McLeod, 2007). Skinner is known as the father of Operant Conditioning and introduced a new term Reinforcement as his work was based on Thorndike’s Law of Effect.

He used the example that (Skinner 1972 as cited in Robins, G (2012)) if a person moves into the shade because it is hot, he is more likely to repeat this behavior the next time the sun is hot. He described this phenomenon as ‘operant conditioning’. The cooling down reinforces the behavior. He argued that if the students are consistently praised, rewarded and acknowledge for learning or having in a certain way, they would behave in the same way again, this creating ‘conditions which are optimal for producing the changes called ‘learning’ (Skinner 1969: 10 as cited in Robins, G (2012)) and allowing the teacher to influence the behavior of pupils at will without resorting to

Mostly he was working in educational fields and wrote great literature pieces on it. His conducted researches with animals highly influenced development of general theories of learning. He applied “Morgan’s cannon” to find simplest explanation. In publication “Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of Associative Processes in Animals” he introduced a new mechanistic, deterministic approach – “connectionism”. This approach was incorporated in to his “Law of Effect”. Thorndike’s “Law of Effects” demonstrates how simple stimulus - response (S-R) can explain allegedly intelligent animal behaviour. Thorndike did comparative study by studying various species of animals - cats, monkeys and chickens – and findings applied to

Psychologists have been focused on observing and understanding human behavior for centuries, dating back to the Greek philosophers when psychology and philosophy were considered one.Today, Psychology is the study of human behavior, beginning before birth and lasting until death. It is clear that the observance human behavior is a vast and profound source of data for psychologists. Early philosophers relied on methods of observation and logic. A physiologist named Wilhelm Wundt in the 1800’s began using scientific research methods in his study of mental processes. However, the situation was totally different in the beginning of 20th century when psychology still struggled to be regarded as a separate discipline with practical value(Mastering,2011). Psychologists had only begun to be accepted as a science. It was John B. Watson who established the school of Behaviorism and inspired many other psychologists to study patterns of human behavior and their mechanisms. Watson 's contribution to psychology is important not to underestimate; he studied animal and human behavior to come up with a methodology that would give Psychology a respected status among other scientific disciplines. This essay will focus on the biography and works of John B. Watson with a purpose to show why his works are important for Psychology today(Hergenhahn & Henley, 2013).

Thorndike pioneered work in educational practices, verbal behavior, comparative psychology, intelligence testing, the nature-nurture problem, transfer of training, and the application of quantitative measure to sociopsychological problems. Thorndike called the association between sense impressions and impulse to action a bond or a connection. This marked the first formal attempt to link sensory events to behavior. Thorndike’s concern was not only for stimulus conditions and tendencies to action, but also for what held the stimulus and response together. He believed they were connected by a neural bond. His theory is called connectionism. For Thorndike, the most basic form of learning was trial-and-error learning, or what he originally