NEO-BEHAVIORISTS:B.F. Skinner, Karl Lashley, Donald Hebb, Hobart Mowrer

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History and Systems of Psychology PSY502

Lesson 21

NEO-BEHAVIORISTS

B.F. Skinner

One of the most prominent psychologists, who was impressed by Watsonian behaviourism on the

one hand and Pavlovian conditioning on the other was another American B.F. Skinner, born in the year

1904 and died in 1990. He worked at Harvard University and carried on his experiments on animals, writing

many books and articles. His main research work is now known by the title of Instrumental or Operant

Conditioning.

Working on white rats and pigeons, in specially devised cages, known as Skinner boxes he observed

how animals learn. He therefore adopted an experimental method of learning. He also purported the idea of

learning by conditioning but his conditioning was different from that of Pavlov. Later Pavlov's conditioning

came to be known as classical conditioning while Skinner's conditioning was called instrumental or operant

conditioning.

One of the contributions of B.F. Skinner is that he distinguished between positive reinforcement

and negative reinforcement, where positive reinforcement is when a response is positively rewarded and

negative reinforcement is when a response is negatively rewarded or punished. In other words, if a subject,

who is hungry, is rewarded on its act with food, the reinforcement is positive. On the other hand, if a

subject is punished on his or her act but being beaten up or being subjected to some kind of torture, or

even a less sever punishment such as denial of food, the reinforcement given to him according to Skinner is

negative reinforcement.

According to Skinner, learning takes place by four schedules of reinforcement:

i. Fixed ratio schedule

ii. Variable ratio schedule

iii. Fixed interval schedule

iv. Variable interval schedule

Reinforcement is given to the subjects according to these scales. Fixed ratio is, when reinforcement

is given after a fixed number of responses. Variable ratio is when reinforcement is given after variable

number of responses. Fixed interval is reinforcement is given after a fixed time period. Variable interval is

when reinforcement is given after a variable time interval.

Based upon his experiments he proposed in his famous book: "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" that

change in whole society is necessary for the betterment.

Karl Lashley

An important contributor to the behaviourist school is Karl Lashley, born in 1890 and died in 1958.

He was a pupil of Watson. Adopting from Watson, he proposed that psychology is a science of behaviour

and behaviour is the result of activity of the cerebral cortex, a part of the brain. This is one of his greatest

contributions in psychology which lead to the development of two principles given by Lashley himself.

Principle of equi-potentiality:

According to Lashley, one part of the cortex is the same as another part. Therefore, even if one

part is cut off, the brain activity still takes place. In other words, both parts of the cortex have

equal potential to make the brain work properly.

History and Systems of Psychology PSY502

ii. Principle of mass action:

He also proposed that the more the cortex in mass, the better the learning and called it the

"principle of mass action." So Lashley showed that behaviour and more precisely learning is a

function of the activity of the cortex.

Donald Hebb

Donald Hebb was a Canadian psychologist, who showed that, when a part of the human brain was

removed accidentally, it did not affect a person's IQ. It is similar to Lashley's principle of equi-potentiality

which stated that if one part of the cortex is removed, the brain continues to function as with the full

cortex.

Harvey Harlow

Another psychologist Harvey Harlow, of University of Wisconsin showed that curiosity,

exploration and manipulation effect animal learning. This meant that if a subject is curious about certain

phenomenon, it would have a different learning pattern as compared to other subjects. Further, exploration

and manipulation also affect learning.

Hobart Mowrer

Hobart Mowrer at the University of Illinois showed that factors such as hope and disappointment

influence learning.

Behaviourism slowly had introduced such mentalistic concepts as curiosity, hope, disappointment,

etc. So behaviourism slowly moved away from dealing with purely observational data and started looking

into psychological factors.

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