behaviorism theory history and applications

behaviorism theory history and application

     The birth of behaviorism is formed by the article "Psychology as the behaviorist sees" John Watson published in the journal in 1913 he led the Psychological Review. He later clarified and developed his ideas in various articles and several books, including the main Behaviorism, published for the first time in 1925. Although Watson

himself has not brought considerable empirical findings, the influence of the ideas he has expressed and manifested true that launched in 1913 was such that the United States and consequently in the rest of the world, that we could talk about this "break" in the field of psychology. For psychology which claims the adjective "scientific", that is to say, first, of course, for the general experimental psychology, but also for other areas of psychology (and even beyond it, for areas such as biology or social sciences), the notion of "behavior" becomes a notion of reference.

          It is important to see exactly in what sense it is to be able to grasp the substance of discussions and historical developments that have affected the psychology for about a century.

1. Breaking watsonienne

         The term behavior is old, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the dictionaries describe as "old." One of its first uses in Pascal is French: "To recognize if it is God who makes us act, it is much better to look through our behaviors outside as inside our motives. "But, of course, the use of new builds rather the Cartesian tradition, that of animal-machines. It was in 1907 that Henri Pieron reintroduced the term in the French language as a psychological equivalent of U.S. behavior (or German Verhalten) to mean "ways of being and behaving animals and men, objective manifestations of their overall activity. " However, he believes, as does his part Pavlov, that the facts identified relate to physiology.

         The ideas developed by Watson and will be in stark contrast to two streams which already exist. The birth of scientific psychology it is, somehow, before Gustav T. Fechner, Hermann L. Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt - who founded in 1879 the first laboratory of experimental psychology - Hermann Ebbinghaus, Ivan Sechenov, Ivan Pavlov, Alfred Binet and others have paved the way by observing various types of behavior and trying to put them into relationship with their conditions of occurrence. However, the notion of behavior itself was not yet completely clear then. In France, Pierre Janet always uses the term "conduct", but by including the contents of consciousness, which seem to be inseparable.

        Watson takes a clear stand against the designs of this type, it shows very severe for posterity Wundt, to introspective psychology and German emulated for it in the United States, he condemns the "thirties sterile" This is opposed to science and William James. According to him, psychology must become a "natural science" - or, to be more precise, a "science of nature" - as well as medicine, chemistry or physics. "Why, he wrote in The Behaviorism, do not do what we can observe the real field of psychology? Limit ourselves to things that can be observed and formulate laws concerning only those things. "This limitation has, somehow, actually founded scientific psychology, but at the same time, the way it should be designed not ceased to divide this discipline.

          The first principle of Watson is to reject any reference to entities not only "metaphysical" as the soul or spirit, but consciousness. This implies the refusal to consider mental states as objects of observation. It is on this crucial point that the radicalism of John Watson is innovative. Scientific psychology began to develop as soon as you have decided, like what was already advanced in science, basing the knowledge of "facts", that is to say on observable. But not so taken was inadequate as long as we continued to admit that mental states were also observed. Watson, however, excludes the states of the field of observation, and he decides not to take into account only observable objectives, those that appear in the material world: it is precisely these which are behaviors. The extension of this position is that language is itself considered a behavior and is analyzed as such.

        The choice epistemological Watson is the same as it had done before Pavlovet, even before that, his master Sechenov. However, an important difference between Watson them: is that distend somewhat the relationship between behavior and nerve activity to the point of sometimes being accused of neglecting the latter, he protested that the importance it attributes to him, but he considers the central nervous system as only an organ integrated into the body as a whole. Pavlov, it should be remembered that he did not observe directly the nervous system, considered the objective point of view he had adopted, as well as all of his own work as "physiological" and as dealing the "higher nervous activity". Watson talking about the same things in terms of behavior and psychology. Subsequent developments followed the second rather than the first: we reserve the term direct observations of physiological nerve or its electrical or chemical events, and speaking of psycho-physiology when they are taken into account the same time as those on global behaviors.

2. The typical form of behaviorism "stimulus-response" design:

      When looking back with a design that Watson and his followers made about behavior, it is clear that they consider most often this term as the equivalent of "response" or "reaction". These last two terms imply clearly that the behavior considered occurs in the presence of an event defined environment, which is called "stimulus." The question of what exactly a stimulus can in no case receive a simple answer in psychology. However, behaviorism tends to simplify the problem by saying so somehow circular, that is what the stimulus in the environment, determines the response.

          Of concurrency is slipping, in fact, easily causality and we can say that the stimulus "product", "causes" or "triggers" the answer. A lower expression, and therefore preferable, is that the stimulus "raised" (Anglo-American Evokes) response. This conceptualization of behavior, which is closely related to the idea of ​​"reflex", although this term is not used extensively by the behaviorists, led to what is often referred to by the expression " SR theory "or" stimulus-response ". It is more appropriate to speak of "SR design," since it is an epistemological rather than a theory itself. In this design, the object of psychology is precisely to study the relationship between stimuli and responses.

         A first possible approach is then to try to identify responses and identify stimuli that give rise steadily. Watson implements it partially in his research on the problem of emotions. Criticizing the method of William James, he considers essentially introspective, he clings to the notion of "emotional response" alone, he said, which allows an objective and experimental. He gives up quickly enough to experiment on adults whose emotional reactions are too complex, and no fear in his laboratory to submit very young subjects with strong stimuli, they enable him to isolate three major classes of emotional primitives, it refers to the fear, anger and love - "in a broader sense it is usual to employ."

          Research stimuli that elicit an innate can be approached SR behaviorism. It will be reinvented and later developed by ethologists school "objectivist", which, in a somewhat different theoretical context, the applied successfully to the study of instinctive behavior in animals, and more risk theory, to the child or man. However, neither Watson nor behaviorists who follow are not the focus of their investigations this type of stimulus-response relationships, which is the most stable yet. Despite the homage rendered to Darwin, which he calls the descriptions "completely objective behaviorist" Watson departs from him and opposes William James on the extension of instinctive activities humans.

     What will remain for decades the center of behavioral psychology is all learning phenomena. From the outset, Watson endorses the findings of Pavlov and his school: he reinterprets integrates its design and pushes them to be developed. His contribution to this research is the experimental study he led with his wife, R. Rayner, conditioned emotional reactions in children.

        In this context, within the SR scheme, S is as much and more than the stimulus innate stimuli that have become able to elicit the response. The "theory of higher nervous activity" Pavlov is now called "conditioning". The difference is not only terminology, the basic mechanism for packaging is designed by behaviorists as that of substitution. If a stimulus provoked a response R, and now a stimulus causes the same response Sc R. This is the fundamental paradigm of learning in design SR. This is essentially a formula to resume later Neal Miller, a "theory of the hyphen."

       The design of the SR behaviorism is certainly not completely dominant since, remaining in a methodologically and epistemologically behaviorist, Edward C. Tolman and a number of researchers who are related to him trying to develop a cognitive theory, illustrated by the diagram SS learning is more than a change in knowledge, pure and simple behavior modification. However, this design is SR, which historically has emerged as the most representative of behaviorism.

3. Development of behaviorism:

      After Watson, experimental psychology grows, the United States, an extremely fast and is characterized essentially by its inspiration behaviorist. However, it remains as a parallel practice of psychology rather extensive non-experimental, especially in the clinical area, where behaviorism penetrates only very slowly and where psychoanalytic currents soon become predominant.

        Experimental Psychology General, if the central theme of research and theoretical development remains that of learning a second theme is there more closely linked, according to the behaviorist formulation: the motivation.

     Thirties to the fifties, runs a great debate on theories of learning, fed by numerous experimental or animal, from conditioning procedures, or humans, particularly through the learning by heart. The main objective is to build a unified theory of behavior that is capable of reporting, from a limited number of principles, postulates or laws of all phenomena, both in animals and in the humans. The researchers who have worked most striking in this task are, among others, Clark L. Hull, Edward C. Tolman, Edwin R. Guthrie, Burrhus F. Skinner.

      This is arguably the most strictly positivist and "SR" behavioral theorists of this period, he responds negatively, at least temporarily, to the question he asked himself: "Theories of learning are needed? "He built an original and somewhat marginal compared to other behaviorists, but it contributes important theoretical and experimental. First, it highlights and conceptualizes, about the same time as Jerzy Konorski and Stefan Miller in Poland, a "second type" packaging, which he calls "operating" and Hilgard and Marquis appoint "instrumental" . In contrast with the behavior "sponsor" illustrated Pavlovian conditioning, also called "classic", the operant behavior is not so much determined by the stimulus that precedes it as the one that follows. Skinner then reinterprets learning by trial and error, as well as the "law of effect" of Edward L. Thorndike, and integrates them into a theory of conditioning and behavior. It isolates and a third means by which the environment affects it. The first two were bonding and linking innate SR SR classical conditional, and the third is behavior modification by stimuli that follow, the reward and its suppression are two typical cases. We took the usual - so little happy, because it adds to the confusion of terminology - to divert the Pavlovian term "capacity" in its original meaning for this type of effect of subsequent stimulus.

      However, the most ambitious behaviorist theory of this period was the hypothetico-deductive system of Hull, which is based on the formal enunciation of a number of "assumptions" and "corollaries" which are derived predictions can be experimentally tested. Although the system of Hull has precisely not resist experimentation, it has played a very important historical and prefigured the logical and conceptual models of the later period.

      These were based, essentially, on the introduction of probabilistic relationships between stimulus and response, or between responses and stimuli. However, the models are then become much more local, the introduction of probabilities have not been successful overall expected. After médiationnistes theories, those heirs of Hull, which we will talk, there will be no grand theory of behavioral set that is both broad enough and accurate enough

4. Evolution, challenged and weakening of behaviorism:

    From the late forties, SR behaviorist theories face of increasing internal and external difficulties.

     The former are themselves both species. First appear a number of disagreements between experimental predictions derived from theories, and the results observed empirically. Contrary to what one might think at first glance, these disagreements are not, in themselves, a failure in the path followed, they rather correspond to a type of success of experimental psychology. It is, in fact, the first time in the long history of ideas that men forge about their own psyche, a overall design is undermined by his confrontation with the facts gathered especially this purpose. The disagreement is so that the designs were precise enough to be reversed, which is not often the case for other kinds of theories. This is to a large extent on the concepts of reinforcement, motivation and anticipation that crystallize these difficulties. Theoretical place where they are born is easily recognizable: it is in this that joins S and R. In renouncing the introspectionism, behaviorism - and objective psychology in general - is deprived of any possibility of direct access to the knowledge of internal operations. Can not denying the existence of the latter? The same requirements of experimental research gradually tend to shake any attempt to eliminate this problem, or around, the simple description concomitances between stimulus and response.

        In the debate on theories of learning, different designs were already opposed on this point. It was mentioned earlier extremism positivist Skinner. Tolman, for its part, agreed to use "conceptual constructs hypothetical" (hypothetical constructs) to account for the behavior, while Hull stood by the "intervening variables" (intervening variables), much more directly attached to observable variables. A second example was the intermediate variable "degree of hunger," or more generally "power of mobile" (drive), we can infer and estimated from the relation between, on the one hand, the duration of starvation of an animal, on the other hand, the effect of its behavior learned through a food reward.

       The first experimental disagreement led to theoretical changes local it and the motivation deprivation mentioned above Hull had added a different motivation, "motivation stimulative." One way to build it was taken into account the relation between the force behavior with rewards to the importance of the award.

        In the early fifties, these alterations become insufficient, the solution sought for experimental and theoretical difficulties then gives rise to theories of mediation. They consist, essentially, to introduce one or more links sr, called "mediate" between S and R, that is to say between the stimulus and the response observed, the new general scheme is as the SX r X s X R. Intermediary bodies r and s are in accordance with the ideas of Watson, considered "implicit", that is to say, not directly observable. However, further experimental developments should, by law, lead to the highlight. Twenty-five years later, it must be admitted that they do not succeed and thus SR behaviorist theory could not escape the contradiction between the observable and unobservable.

        In the late fifties, behaviorism also faces a very strong external challenge, which main purpose language problems.

         The first acts are the publication in 1957 of the book Skinner, Verbal Behavior, and the sharp criticism that Noam Chomsky gives two years later. Ironically, Skinner's book is almost entirely speculative Chomsky considers it gives also an idea of ​​language activities impoverished and inaccurate. In general, all research, even non skinneriennes, which focuses on "verbal behavior", including those studying associative learning, are considered by the Chomskyan school as irrelevant. The controversy reached a bitterness unusual, perhaps because she has a background extra ideological: the United States are at the heart of their Vietnam War and protest their university.

         Psycholinguistics, as a discipline original has just been born from the meeting of linguists, specialists in the new theory of information and psychologists proponents of behaviorism relaxed, such as Charles Osgood and George Miller. This current is quickly supplanted by Chomskyan psycholinguistics inspiration, which bills itself as "cognitive" or "mentalist", that is to say antibehavioriste fundamentally in that it affirms the existence and the rule of mental activities or power. Authors belonging to this trend as opposed to behaviorism by the low importance given to environmental factors, especially to learning most of them indicate their preference for one viewpoint or nativist nativist. Some connection is established between their ideas and those of Jean Piaget.

        At the same time that this current develops, and to a large extent independently of him, the notion of "information" and gradually penetrates deep psychology. Issues related to motivation and affectivity are now treated separately. What happens "in the head" of the human subject is increasingly being seen as some sort of information processing, which is another branch of cognitivism.

         One could say that the SR behaviorism is then in decline if, oddly enough, did not take flight at the same moment one of its applications: the stream of behavior therapy - a phrase translated into French as "behavior therapy," "behavioral therapy "or even" behaviorales therapies "- or even" behavior modification. " As this last expression, it is to develop techniques based on a series of experimental results related to learning, interpreted in a SR perspective, and use them to modify behavior deemed pathological or undesirable eg antisocial (ie, say not conform to a certain conception of society). These practices have raised, particularly in France, strong objections theoretical, clinical, ethical and political, their final assessment remains to be established.

5. A review of behaviorism:

           Should be set apart from the field of behavioral therapies. As it mainly concerns the psychological determinants that affect the motivations, emotions, personality and, in general, clinical psychology, opposition remains strong between the subject, on the one hand, proponents of objective psychology and sometimes its most narrow, and, secondly, those of subjective psychology, including psychoanalysis remains the reference doctrine.

        But in all the areas that correspond to psychological headings entitled "memory", "learning", "perception", "language", "intellectual activities", etc.., It seems that the battle doctrine of behaviorism around abated and exceeded. Cognitivist theories of inspiration seems to have gradually imposed their forms measured. Admittedly, the Chomskyan theory itself, since the mid-seventies, lost much of its credit agreement but is fairly heavily on the idea that, in the above areas, the psychological activities s 'akin to an "information processing", which is based on a complex interplay of activities most basic input and processing, and builds on the knowledge acquired by the subject. It has obviously taken better measure of the complexity of these activities, which contrasts with the oversimplification that proposed SR behaviorism, even when it was implemented with extreme sophistication.

       This recognition of the role of internal activities, which is imposed on researchers in the United States, was further affirmed in the various European psychologies, none of which, practically, had also joined the viewpoint SR strict .

       However, it is striking that no serious questioning of the notion of behavior developed in methodology in recent decades. Although generative linguistics has largely relies on the intuition of the researcher, she has, despite its militant antibehaviorisme always sought the psychological side empirical support in the implementation of the experimental method, it is Behavioral say. All psychology researchers who study cognition and language, whatever their persuasion, and use only a general methodology, namely the systematic observation of behavior classes and their related conditions and, most often with stimuli that are the context, the occasion or the determinant. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that some sort of "methodological behaviorism" generalized survived the "theoretical behaviorism", which is endangered. Operated by the dissociation between behaviorism and introspection remains objective approach in this regard, a definitive acquisition of scientific psychology. But the refusal to consider what happens between stimulus and response and, beyond, the refusal to seek to know the internal activities, even when they do not result in immediate behavior, no longer correspond to requirements or opportunities to current research.