Behaviorism is a movement within psychology. It focuses mainly on behavioral science. Below I will explain the basic principles, history, view of man, their explanations of mental disorders. I will also explain concepts such as Behavioral Analysis, social skills training, Token Economy and habituation in more detail here.
The basic principles
Behaviorists believe that objectivity should be central to scientific practice. In order to work objectively in psychology, psychologists must focus only on the observable behavior of people and animals.
- There is a continuity between the behavior of animals and humans.
- Learning processes are central to explaining behavior.
- Classical behaviorism is based on the assumption that people come into the world blank. This means that all of a person’s behavior has been learned over the years.
- To study behavior, it can be broken up into small parts.
History of behaviorism
John Watson (1878-1958) is associated with the early period of behaviorism. Behavior was defined by Watson as a response (response = R) of an organism to a certain stimulation (stimulation or stimulus = S) from outside. According to Watson, all behavior was learned according to simple SR links. He started from the learning principle of classical conditioning. Watson pursued practical application.
The view of man in behaviorism
A person does not give direction to his own life, this is determined by environmental influences. This is called peripheralism. Emphasizing learning processes is linked to the view that people come into the world blank. There is no essential difference between animals and humans. Classical behaviorism is based on the lack of history of the individual. In behaviorism the distinction between child and adult breaks down. The learning principles that are recognized work exactly the same for children as they do for adults. In classical behaviorism you must distinguish between the person and the scientist.
Habituation
In our daily lives, countless stimuli come our way, stimuli that pass selection are, over time, pushed aside as no longer important by the organism. Habituation (habituation learning) explains this phenomenon.
Although it is a learning process, habituation is innate. A baby can habituate immediately.
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is the first learning process to be extensively studied by behaviorists. This process is also possible immediately after birth.
Sudden sound (reflex) fear response
( unconditioned stimulus) (unconditioned response)
White mice and sudden sound fear response (after repeating several times)
White mouse fear response (conditioned stimulus) (unconditioned stimulus)
Derivative learning laws:
Unconscious learning and minor influence of knowledge. Even if you have become aware of the learning process afterwards, the conditioned response cannot simply be unlearned because you want to. Conditioned responses form automatically, they act like a reflex.
Discrimination and generalization
Discrimination refers to the fact that a stimulus must meet certain characteristics if it is to elicit the conditioned response. Generalization is the process of not making a distinction between two different stimuli. The condition is that the stimuli must resemble each other.
Contiguity
Contiguity means adjacent, this concept indicates that the two stimuli must occur at the same time or close to each other. If a long time has elapsed between the unconditioned stimulus and another stimulus, no connection is made between the stimuli.
Operant conditioning
The most important insight from this theory was drawn up by the American psychologist Thorndike. He formulated the law of effect. This means that a behavior (a response) will increase in frequency if it is followed (consequence) by a pleasant event for the organism. The organism has learned an association between behavior and a consequence. Thorndike assumed that behavior is learned by chance, through trial and error.
Skinner extended the RC (response-consequence) model to include attention to the stimulus. It became an SRC model. An organism learns in which situation (stimulus) the behavior will be rewarded or punished. Discriminant stimulus refers to the fact that not all stimuli elicit the same behavior, but only one special stimulus.
(Models on 108 + 109!!)
To model
With model learning, a person observes another (the model) and learns from the behavior that the model exhibits.
Modeling has become an important principle in various care methods. (Social skills training, video home training).
Explaining mental disorders
Depression
Depression is a mood disorder. If you want to explain depression entirely behavioristically, you will encounter problems. Depressive behavior arises because normal (non-depressive) behavior goes away (extinction). Pleasant consequences (positive and negative rewards) are insufficiently present with normal behavior, and it is also assumed that the potentially depressed person has too few social skills to provoke the pleasant consequences. The depressive behavior (passivity, apathy) is followed by pleasant consequences. Depression is sometimes associated with learned helplessness.
Anxiety disorders
In principle, fear is a normal reaction in people and animals. You speak of an anxiety disorder when the fear itself has become a problem. Well-known anxiety disorders are phobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. They are discussed below. The classical conditioning model is used as a starting point to explain the development of phobias. In the 1950s, the two-factor model emerged to explain the development and persistence of a phobia. The model simply states that a phobia arises through classical conditioning and that it persists through a process of operant conditioning.
An obsessive-compulsive disorder (also called compulsive disorder) is characterized by the patient having frightening thoughts that are followed by compulsive actions. From behaviorism this is explained by the law of effect from operant conditioning. This law states that behavior increases in frequency if it has pleasant consequences and decreases if it produces unpleasant consequences. According to behaviorists, obsessive-compulsive disorders involve negative reward. (something unpleasant decreases). The frightening thoughts (obsessions) are neutralized by the compulsions.
Behavioral analysis
Behavioral analysis is defining and investigating a client’s wrong behavior. Behaviorism emphasizes observable and measurable behavior. First, the problem behavior must be defined so that it can be observed and defined. You then observe and measure the behavior before it is changed. When measuring behavior you can pay attention to three criteria: Frequency, duration and intensity.
This allows you to create an SRC/SORC schedule, using this rule of thumb: behavior with pleasant consequences produces a high frequency. And especially with negative behavior there is a zipper effect. Once the observation phase is over, you can create a baseline. The baseline is a representation of a situation before a treatment or intervention is started. A third rule of thumb is: Problematic behavior is often exhibited because it attracts attention; this is especially true in situations where normal behavior is ignored. You can then start influencing problematic behavior, here are a number of guidelines for this:
- Positive punishment for problematic behavior should be avoided as much as possible.
- Ignoring the problematic behavior with the aim of extinguishing it offers more perspective
- Pleasant consequences that follow the new behavior should yield more than the pleasant consequences that the problematic behavior produces for someone
- You can change situations so that behavior is no longer provoked.
Social skills training
Social skills training has been developed for psychiatric patients, for children, for the mentally handicapped, but also for care providers. For people with a behavioral deficit or excess behavior.
Social skills training aims to replace social incompetence that is negatively rewarded with socially competent behavior that is positively rewarded. Before starting this, a behavioral analysis must first be made.
Social skills training uses model learning and operant conditioning.
Token Economy systems
TEs are mainly used in residential care. In learning theory, hospitalization can be viewed as a combination of a lack of social skills and learned helplessness. A TE uses the insight that behavior is maintained by its consequences, but strives to standardize the consequences provided by nursing. Desired behavior of a resident is immediately rewarded with a token. A token is a symbolic one. For certain, precisely defined behavior, residents can earn tokens, which can be exchanged for a real reward at a later time.
Side notes
- If you want to understand an individual’s behavior, there appear to be more factors that maintain behavior than just factors outside the individual.
- Almost all laws have been discovered during laboratory experiments with animals, where the professors have complete control over the situation. However, the care provider does not have total control over the circumstances in which behavior must be learned or unlearned.
- The image of humanity that behaviorism is based on conflicts with the everyday image of humanity. The methods of providing aid often come across as technocratic and authoritarian. In addition, little account is taken of heredity and the social environment.