Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Behavioral momentum is a theory in quantitative analysis of behavior and is a behavioral metaphor based on physical momentum.It describes the general relation between resistance to change (persistence of behavior) and the rate of reinforcement obtained in a given situation.
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.
[1] [2] Instinctive drift was coined by Keller and Marian Breland, former students of B.F. Skinner at the University of Minnesota, describing the phenomenon as "a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory." [3] B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist and father of operant conditioning (or instrumental conditioning), which is a learning ...
Radical behaviorism is a "philosophy of the science of behavior" developed by B. F. Skinner. [1] It refers to the philosophy behind behavior analysis, and is to be distinguished from methodological behaviorism—which has an intense emphasis on observable behaviors—by its inclusion of thinking, feeling, and other private events in the analysis of human and animal psychology. [2]
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.
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]
This theory also allows for knowledge transfer within both systems as images, expressed through verbal language, can be encoded and placed into the imaginal system. [37] While these theories can be traced back to gestalt psychology, many of these theories were influenced by the rise of technology, neuroscience, and communications. [2] [37]
A reinforcement schedule may be defined as "any procedure that delivers reinforcement to an organism according to some well-defined rule". [10] The effects of schedules became, in turn, the basic findings from which Skinner developed his account of operant conditioning. He also drew on many less formal observations of human and animal behavior ...