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Shaping sometimes fails. An oft-cited example is an attempt by Marian and Keller Breland (students of B.F. Skinner) to shape a pig and a raccoon to deposit a coin in a piggy bank, using food as the reinforcer. Instead of learning to deposit the coin, the pig began to root it into the ground, and the raccoon "washed" and rubbed the coins together.
The experimental analysis of behavior is a science that studies the behavior of individuals across a variety of species. A key early scientist was B. F. Skinner who discovered operant behavior, reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, contingencies of reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, intermittent schedules, discrimination, and generalization.
Skinner's studies on animals and their behavior laid the framework needed for similar studies on human subjects. Based on his work, developmental psychologists were able to study the effect of positive and negative reinforcement. Skinner found that the environment influenced behavior and when that environment is manipulated, behaviour will change.
According to Skinner, language learning depends on environmental variables, which can be mastered by a child through imitation, practice, and selective reinforcement including automatic reinforcement. B.F. Skinner was one of the first psychologists to take the role of imitation in verbal behavior as a serious mechanism for acquisition. [58]
To say "Skinner is brilliant" means that Skinner is an originating force. If Skinner's determinist theory is right, he is merely the focus of his environment. He is not an originating force and he had no choice in saying the things he said or doing the things he did. Skinner's environment and genetics both allowed and compelled him to write his ...
Theoretical behaviorism is a framework for psychology proposed by J. E. R. Staddon as an extension of experimental psychologist B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism. [1] [2] It originated at Harvard in the early 1960s. [3] In the late 1980s, R. H. Ettinger and Staddon critiqued functional analysis. [4] [5]
The basic learning principles constitute another level of theory, as do the human learning principles that specify cumulative learning. How the principles work—in areas like child development, personality, abnormal personality, clinical treatment, education, and human evolution—compose additional levels of study.
Skinner also found that he could shape (create new behavior) the rats' behavior through the use of rewards, which could, in turn, be applied to human learning as well. Skinner's model was based on the premise that reinforcement is used for the desired actions or responses while punishment was used to stop the responses of the undesired actions ...