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There were several predominant theorists in the cognitive behavioral meta-theory. Each theorist came to their conclusions, were received, and added to therapeutic skills in different ways. Their biographical history allows for a better understanding of how they came upon their conclusions. Their theories add to the understanding of human nature.
Their critics expose flaws or oversights in the theories. The techniques used in the action stage of therapy today all have some historical roots in these theories and the theories of others. The overall goal being to focus on making changes in behaviors, thoughts, and feelings while continuing to explore feelings and examine values, priorities, barriers. Behaviorism began when Ivan Pavlov's dogs began to salivate upon hearing the sounds of food being prepared. Unfortunately this phenomenon ruined his saliva measuring experiment but it contributed the theory of classical conditioning. The theory is that when an unconditioned stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus many times a conditioned stimulus and conditioned response will result.
The unconditioned stimulus (US) in Pavlov's experiment was the food, which caused the dogs to salivate. The unconditioned stimulus normally elicits this reaction. The neutral stimulus, something that does not normally elicit the same reaction as the unconditioned stimulus, was a tone or bell. When the two were presented together the conditioned stimulus or learned stimulus became the tone and the learned behavior or conditioned response was to salivate.
John B. Watson (1878 1958) expanded Pavlov's theory into the behaviorism. Due to his contribution he became know as the Father of American Behaviorism. He described behaviorism as the study of overt rather than covert behavior. His emphasis was on objectivity instead of extrospection. This concept was drastically different then the psychoanalytical theory of the time.
Burrhus Frederick Skinner (1904 1990) led a life that enabled him to take behaviorism to an extreme. His father was an ambitious lawyer and his mother was a bright woman with high moral standards. His younger brother died suddenly at the age of sixteen. Skinner was raised in a small town as a middle class American. His parents did not use physical punishments but their method of child rearing succeeded in teaching their son to fear God, the police, and what people would think (England 209). As a child, Skinner was fascinated with machines and interested in knowing how things worked.
He developed a mechanical device to remind himself to hang up his pajamas, a gadget that enabled him to blow smoke rings without violating his parents prohibition on smoking, and a floatation system to separate ripe elderberries from green ones. As he matured so did his inventions. He worked unsuccessfully for several years on a perpetual motion machine. When his second daughter was born he invented an air crib to simplify her care and give her unrestrained movement in a temperature-controlled space. Unfortunately his air crib never marketed well. Skinner had wanted to become a writer.
He majored in English at Hamilton College. He sent some of his short stories to Robert Frost who encouraged him to write. After a while, Skinner realized that he did not have anything important to say so he gave up writing for a while. About this time he read a book by John Watson and Ivan Pavlov, which influenced him to begin graduate work in psychology at Harvard. He got his PhD in 1931. He taught at the University of Minnesota for nine years.
He then became the chairman of the department of psychology at Indiana University. He wrote Walden II, a book that describes a utopian society based on psychological principles. He returned to teaching at Harvard. At the age of 86 he died from leukemia. Skinners was an optimist who believed that the answer lies in recognizing our lack of control, and committing ourselves to being more effectively controlled by a behaviorally designed technology. His idea of radical behaviorism was a stimulus-response theory of psychology can account for all of the overt behaviors that psychologist seek to explain.
He also believed that individuals do not actually have a personality. One of Skinners most important contributions is operant conditioning. He believed that many behaviors couldnt be explained by classic conditioning. He used the term respondent behavior to explain Pavlov's dogs. Respondent behaviors are reflexes or automatic responses that are elicited by stimuli.
They are unlearned but may be conditioned or changed through learning. In contrast, operant behaviors are responses emitted without a stimulus necessarily being present. They are acts on the environment, made freely and occurring spontaneously. These behaviors allow for operant conditioning or spontaneous behaviors whose consequences determine their frequency. To test his theory he invented a box with a lever. This box is commonly known as the Skinner box.
He used reinforcement, defined as anything that increases the likelihood of a response, to teach animals to push the lever. Since pushing a lever is not a natural action for an animal. The behavior must be shaped. As the animal gets close to the desired behavior they are reinforced. The next attempt must be even closer to the desired behavior to achieve the reinforcement. Animal trainer all over the world uses this technique.
At the time Skinner was trying these experiments, food pellets were not sold in stores. He needed approximately 800 pellets per day, all made from scratch. This time consuming chore led him to discovered three schedules of reinforcement and thus reduced the number of pellets needed. Continuous reinforcement or reinforcement after ever successful behavior is extremely effective in initially developing and strengthening behaviors. The downfall to this technique is that once the reinforcement seizes so does the behavior. Because the probability of extinction is so high this method is not recommended for teaching continued behaviors.
Interval reinforcement, reinforcement after a certain time period has elapsed, regardless of response rate works slightly better. The downside to this technique of using fixed periods of time allows the subject to learn when to expect the reward and therefore it does not work as hard as if other schedules were used. To increase productivity, vary the time period by waiting different lengths of time before giving the reward. Still a better schedule of reinforcement can be used.
Ratio reinforcement is a schedule determined by the number of appropriate responses that the organism produces. Again a fixed number of attempts can be used for good results but varying the number of attempts works much better. Even after the reinforcement is stopped, the behavior will continue. Just as there are different schedules of reinforcements there are also different types of reinforcements. They are listed here from most effective to least effective. Generalized conditioned reinforces are praise and affection.
They have the power to reinforce a great number of behaviors and can be self given. An example of this type of reinforcer would be patting yourself on the back for a job well done. It is a way to intrinsically motivate yourself. Positive rein forcer's are rewards that occur when a behavior is followed by a situation that increases the likelihood of the behavior occurring in the future. An example of this type of rein forcer is giving a child a golden star for doing good work or giving a college student a good grade on a research paper. Skinner used food pellets as a positive rein forcer.
Negative rein forcer's occur when a behavior is followed by the termination of an unpleasant situation. Cleaning your room to stop your parents from yelling at you or paying a bill to stop the bill collector from calling are two good examples of negative rein forcer's. Skinner used the action of pressing the lever to stop electrical shock administered through the bottom of the Skinner box. Punishment is when a behavior is followed by the termination of an unpleasant situation. Spanking, restrictions, revoking of driving privileges, and jail are all examples of punishment. Satiation is permitting the behavior to occur until the individual tires of it.
Although it doesnt sound like a rein forcer, it is. An example of this rein forcer would be letting two people fight out their disagreement. Skinners theory was highly criticized because it attacks our illusion that we are in full control of our behaviors. His theory does not explain a childs ability to come up with a new sentence, never heard before.
It also does not explain meaningful errors that a child makes when learning how to speak such as brand which show the knowledge of the suffix ed as past tense. Albert Bandura's (1925 -) theory differs from Skinners theory by suggesting that causal influences on behavior do not simply go in one direction. But before his theories are discussed a brief look at his life will give reference to how he came about his conclusions. He was raised in rural Alberta, Canada. He was the youngest child and the only son out of six children, of wheat farmers. His high school consisted of twenty students and two teachers.
This style of education required students to self-learn. In fact, almost all of the students went on to professional careers. Bandura attended University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1949. He enrolled in a psychology class because it was scheduled for early morning when his car pool arrived. Fascinated by this course he decided to major in psychology and received his B. A.
Furthering his education at University of Iowa he received his M. A. in 1951 and his PhD in 1952. After graduation he became a professor at Stanford university where he has been studying social learning of aggression, the power of modeling, how people influence their own motivation and behavior and their perception of self-efficacy and the causes of stress reactions and depression. He has written several books and articles, as well as received many awards. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1973.
Currently he is teaching two undergraduate seminars on the psychology of aggression and personal and social change. His hobbies include hiking in the Sierra, dining by in Bay Area restaurants, and the San Francisco Opera. One of Bandura's contributions to behaviorism is the concept of reciprocal determinism. That is to say that although environmental stimuli influence our behavior, individual personal factors such as beliefs and expectations also influence how we behave. All three factors, behavior, environment, and cognitive, interact. The cognitive factor refers to the self-system or cognitive structures that provide reference mechanisms.
In other words, the self is a group of cognitive processes and structures by which people relate to their environment and that help shape their behavior. Depending on where you start an analysis, one aspect could represent environment, cognitive or behavior. An example of this confusing theory is television. Commercials and advertising may effect what we watch, viewing behavior determines what shows are produced, and the environment is determined by what we select to watch.
All factors are connected to one another. Another of Bandura's contributions is observational learning. He believes that people learn primarily by observation either intentionally or unintentionally. Children learning to speak would take longer to learn if they had to be reinforced after a spontaneous utterance as in Skinners theory.
Anther example that supports this idea is learning to drive a car. It would be dangerous to reward you only when you didnt hit a pedestrian. The most interesting thing about observational learning is that what is learned can be applied to other behaviors. For instance, when problem solving, one solution can work for many different types of problems.
The solution is not modeled for that problem yet the problem can be solved. Observers draw similar features from different responses and create rules of behavior that permit them to go beyond what they have observed. This accounts for creativity. Bandura proved his theory with an experiment involving Bobo dolls. They were inflatable plastic figures that would pop back up when you hit them. Pre-school aged children would watch as an adult hit and yelled at the doll.
Later the children had an opportunity to play with the doll. The experimental group was twice as aggressive to the doll then the control group. By manipulating variables in the experiment, Bandura learned several things. We are more likely to be influenced by someone who we believe is similar to ourselves than by someone who is different. Easier tasks are imitated more than complex ones. Aggressive behaviors are more prone to be copied then non-violent behaviors.
People who are lacking in self-esteem, or are highly dependent individuals, those who have been rewarded previously for conforming behavior, incompetent, and highly motivated are especially prone to imitate a model. The strongest variable is the reward consequence associated with a behavior. In other words, if a person believes that there will be positive short or long-term rewards, the y are more apt to copy the behavior. Observational learning is governed by four interrelated processes: attentional processes, retention processes, motor reproduction processes, and motivational processes. The attentional process is influenced by characteristics of the model, the nature of the activity, and with the subject. These factors determine how aware we are of what is happening and therefore how much we notice.
Retention process has to do with how much we remember. The longer the time between observing the behavior and doing it, the less we tend to remember. Some things are remembered verbally and some are remembered though images. Motor production processes is the process of cognitively organizing the response, initiation of the response, monitoring of the response, and refinement of the response. By using trial and error, we adjust our behavior to fit the model.
Motivation processes distinguishes between acquisition and performance. Acquisition is what a person has learned and performance is what that person can actually do. Bandura suggest that almost any behavior can be learned without a direct reinforcement. The impact of the stimulus itself commands our...
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