Theory of ties Torndayka

The founder of the theory of learning E.Turnikes considered consciousness as a system of relationships uniting ideas on the association. The higher the intelligence, the more He can install connections. As the two main laws of learning Torndayk proposed the law of exercise and the effect of the effect. According to the first, the more often some action is repeated, the deeper it is imprinted in consciousness. The law of the effect states that communication in consciousness is set more successfully if the reaction to the incentive is accompanied by promotion. To describe significant associations, Torndayk used the term "belonging": communication is easier established when objects seems to belong to each other, i.e. interdependent. Research is facilitated if the studied material is understood. Torndayk also formulated the concept of "effect spread" - willingness to assimilate information from the areas related to those areas that are already familiar. Torndayk experimentally studied the spread of the effect in order to determine whether the learning affects some subject to assimilate the other - for example, whether the knowledge of the ancient Greek classics helps in the preparation of future engineers. It turned out that positive postage is observed only in cases where the areas of knowledge come into contact. Recoverying in one type of activity may even interfere with the mastery of others ("proactive braking"), and the newly developed material is capable of sometimes destroying something already learned ("retroactive braking"). These two types of braking are the subject of the theory of interference when memorizing. Forgetting some material is connected not only over time, but also with the influence of other activities.

Opponent behavior skinner

Following the same direction, the American behavior of B. Communner allocated in addition to the classical conditioning, which he identified as the respondent, the second type of conditional is the operant condition. Operant learning is based on active actions ("operations") of the organism in the environment. If some spontaneous action turns out to be useful to achieve the goal, it is supported by the result achieved. Pigeon, for example, you can teach playing ping pong if the game becomes a means of feeding food. Promotion is called reinforcement, since it reinforces the desired behavior.

Pigeons will not be able to play ping pong, if they do not form this behavior by the method of "discriminatory learning", i.e. consistent selective promotion of individual actions leading to the desired result. Reinforcement can be distributed randomly or follow certain time intervals or in a certain proportion. Randomly distributed reinforcement - periodic winnings - makes people play gambling. Encouraging in certain intervals - wage - Holds a person in service. Proportional encouragement is so strong reinforcement that experimental animals in Skinner's experiments literally knew themselves to death, trying to earn, for example, more delicious food. Punishment, in contrast to encouragement, is a negative reinforcement. With it, it is impossible to teach a new type of behavior - it only makes avoid already known actions followed by punishment. Skinner became the initiator of programmed learning, developing training machines and behavioral therapy.

Programmed learning- This is a training for a previously developed program, which provides for the actions of both students and a teacher (or replacing its tutorial). The idea of \u200b\u200bprogrammed learning was offered in the 50s. Xx in. American psychologist B. Skinne-rum to improve the efficiency of managing the teaching process using achievements of experimental psychology and technology. Objectively programmed learning reflects in relation to the field of education a close connection of science with practice, the transfer of certain actions of a person to machines, an increase in the role of management functions in all spheres of social activities.

The general theory of programmed learning is based on the programming of the process of mastering the material. This approach to learning implies the study of cognitive information with certain doses, which are logically completed, convenient and accessible to holistic perception.

Today, under programmed learning it is understood by the manageable absorption of a programmed educational material using a training device (computer, a programmed textbook, a movie recorder, etc.). The programmed material is a series of relatively small portions of educational information ("frames", files, "steps") supplied in a specific logical sequence.

In programmed training, the teaching is carried out as a clearly managed process, since the material studied is divided into small, easily absorbed doses. They consistently presented a student for assimilation. After studying each dose follows the verification of the assimilation. The dose is assimilated - the transition to the next. This is a "step" of training: presentation, assimilation, checking.

Usually, when drawing up training programs from cybernetic demands, only the need for systematic feedback was taken into account, from psychological - individualization of the learning process. There were no sequence of implementing a specific model of the learning process.

Programming learning has a number of advantages: small doses are absorbed easily, the pace of assimilation is chosen by the student, a high result is provided, rational methods of mental actions are developed, the ability to logically think about it. However, it also has a number of disadvantages, for example:

- not fully contributes to the development of independence in training;

- requires high time spending;

- applicable only for algorithmically solvable cognitive tasks;

- ensures the acquisition of knowledge laid in the algorithm and does not contribute to the receipt of new ones. At the same time, excessive learning algorithm prevents the formation of productive cognitive activity.

Interest in programmed learning in the 70s-80s. Xx in. began to fall and his revival happened in last years Based on the use of new generations of computer equipment. It began to use only individual elements of programmed learning, mainly to control knowledge, consultation and training skills. The new technical base allows you to almost completely automate the learning process, build it as a sufficiently free dialogue of the trainee with the training system. The role of the teacher in this case is mainly in the development, commissioning, correction and improvement of the training program, as well as conducting individual elements of unamarious learning.

The concept of problem learning, like any other pedagogical concept, with its wording inevitably reveals the subjective features of consciousness, preferences of the teacher or researcher. That is why there are various definitions of this concept in pedagogical literature, in one way or another reflecting the author's attitude to the pedagogical process and the corresponding hierarchy of educational values. In addition, problem learning has its own development history, which imposed his imprint on this concept. If, for example, I. I.Lerner, who stood at the origins of the popularization of problem learning in Russia, understood the decision of students (under the guidance of a teacher) of new educational and practical problems In a system that meets educational school purposes, in modern practice, problem learning can be determined and as "a special type of learning, whose characteristic feature is a function developing in relation to creative abilities."

In the theory of M.I. Makhmutova Problem learning is a "type of educational training, which combines systematic independent search activities of students with the assimilation of the finished conclusions of science, and the system of methods is built with the goal-setting and principle of problem; The process of interaction between teaching and teachings is focused on the formation of the cognitive independence of students, the sustainability of the doctrine motives and mental (including creative) abilities during the assimilation of scientific concepts and methods of activity deterministic system of problem situations. "

Lecture 6. Sociogenetic development theories

The origins of the socionetic approach go from the Tabula RASA theory arising in the Middle Ages, formulated John Lokke(1632-1704), according to which the human psyche at the moment of birth is a "clean board", but under the influence of external conditions, as well as education, all mental qualities characteristic of him are gradually arising. Locke put forward a number of ideas about the organization of teaching children on the principles of associations, repetition, approval and punishment.

The French philosopher XVIII century was the representative of this direction. Claude Adrian Gelving(1715-1771), which believed that all people are born the same in their natural data and the inequality between them in the field of mental abilities and moral qualities is due only to different external conditions of the medium and various educational impacts.

Sociology ideas were consonant with the ideology prevailing in the USSR until the mid-80s. According to this theory, with the help of targeted education and education, you can form any qualities in a child and behavioral properties. In order to study the child, you need to study the structure of its environment.

The sociogenetic approach is associated with a behavioristic direction in psychology, according to which man is what makes his surroundings from him, Wednesday. The main thought of biheviorism: identifying development with learning, with the acquisition by a child's new experience. American researchers were taken by the idea of \u200b\u200bI.P. Pavlova that adaptive activity is characteristic of all living things. The phenomenon of the conditional reflex was perceived as a kind of elementary behavioral phenomenon. The idea of \u200b\u200ba combination of incentive and reaction, conditional and unconditioned incentives was performed on the fore, the temporal parameter of this connection was allocated. The main theories of biheviorism can be attributed to:

1. The theory of classical and instrumental determination by I.P. Pavlova

2. Associanistic concept of learning D. Watson and E. Gazry.

3. The theory of operant detergent E. Torndayka.

4. Theory B. Skinner. Using reinforcement, you can form any type of behavior.

The idea of \u200b\u200bholding a strict scientific experiment, created by I. P. Pavlov, has entered American psychology, and also to study the digestive system. The first description of I. P. Pavlov was such an experiment in 1897, and the first publication of J. Watson-in 1913. Already in the first experiments, I. P. Pavlova with the extended salivary iron was implemented by the idea of \u200b\u200bcommunicating dependent and independent variables, which It passes through all American studies of behavior and its origin not only in animals, but also in humans. This experiment is inherent in all the advantages of the present natural scientific study, which is so highly appreciated so far in American psychology: objectivity, accuracy (control of all conditions), availability for measurement. It is known that I. P. Pavlov persistently rejected any attempts to explain the results of experiments with conventional reflexes of references to the subjective state of the animal.

American scientists perceived the phenomenon of conditional reflex as a kind of elementary phenomenon available to the analysis, something like a building unit, from the set of which a complex system of our behavior can be built. The genius of I. P. Pavlova, according to American colleagues, was that he managed to show how simple elements can be isolated, subjected to analysis and are monitored in laboratory conditions. Development of ideas I. P. Pavlova in American psychology took several decades, and each time the researchers performed one of the aspects of this simple, but at the same time not yet exhausted in American psychology, the phenomenon of the conditional reflex.

In the earliest studies of learning to the fore, the idea of \u200b\u200bcombining incentive and reaction, conditional and unconditioned incentives: the temporal parameter of this connection was allocated. Thus arose an associanistant concept of learning (J. Watson, E. Gazry). J. Watson began "his" scientific revolution, having put forward the slogan: "Enough to learn what a person thinks; let's study what a person does!"

1. Beheviorism

Watson John Brodz

(1878 - 1958). American psychologist, founder of biheviorism (from English. Behavior - behavior), one of the most common theories in the western psychology of the 20th century.

In 1913 His article was published "Psychology from the point of view of a behaviorist", assessed as a manifesto of a new direction. Following this, his books "Behavior: Introduction to Comparative Psychology" (1914), Biheviorism (1925), in which for the first time in the history of psychology, was strongly refuted by the postulate that the subject of this science is consciousness (its content, processes, Functions, etc.).

Being under the influence of the philosophy of positivism, Watson argued as if it was actually actually what could be seen directly. He argued that the behavior should be explained from the relationship between the directly observed impacts of physical stimuli on the body and its directly observed responses (reactions). Hence the main Watson formula, perceived by behaviorism: "Stimulus reaction" (S-R). It has emerged that the processes between the stimulus and the reaction - be it physiological (nervous) or mental - psychology should eliminate from its hypotheses and explanations.

Biheviorism methodologists proceeded from the provision on the most violence of the formation of basic mental processes. Lipsitt and Kay (Lipsitt, Kaye, 1964) conducted experiments to work out conditional reflexes in 20 three-day babies. Ten babies were attributed to the experimental group, and for them 20 times the combination of unconditional (nipped) and conditional stimuli (pure tone) were repeated. Researchers wanted to obtain a sucking reaction on a sound tone, which in vivo causes a nipple. After twenty combinations of stimuli, the infants from the experimental group began to give sucking movements in response to the sound, while children from the control group that were not exposed to combinations of stimuli, did not demonstrate such a reaction. This study shows that learning occurs from the very first days of life. It also suggests that a behavior approach can help in understanding the essence of development and that, using the method of developing conditional reflexes, researchers can explore the ability of infants to handle sensory information long before they collate to speech.

D. Watson The ideas of classical conditioning were proved in its experiments on the formation of emotions. He experimentally demonstrated that it was possible to form a reaction of fear for a neutral incentive. In his experiments, the child was shown the rabbit, which he took in his hands and wanted to stroke, but at that moment he received the discharge of an electric current. Naturally, the child frightened rabbit frightened and starting crying. However, the next time he came again to the animal and received a blow to the current. At the third or fourth time most children, the appearance of a rabbit even in distance caused fear. After this negative emotion was fixed, Watson tried to change the emotional attitude of children once again, forming interest and love for the rabbit. In this case, the child began to show it during tasty food. The presence of this important primary stimulus was an indispensable condition for the formation of a new reaction. At the first moment, the child stopped there and began to cry, but since the rabbit did not approach him, remaining in the distance, at the end of the room, and the delicious food (for example, chocolate or ice cream) was near, the child quickly calmed down and continued. After the child ceased to respond to the appearance at the end of the rabbit room, the experimenter gradually moved the rabbit closer and closer to the child, at the same time adding delicious things to the plate. Gradually, the child stopped paying attention to rabbit and reacted calmly at the end, even when he was located near his plate, he took a rabbit in his arms and tried to feed something tasty. Thus, we argue Watson, our emotions are the result of our habits and can drastically change depending on the circumstances.

Watson's observations showed that if the formed reaction of fear of the rabbit was not reworked into a positive, in the future the similar sense of fear arose in children with the form of other objects covered with fur. Based on this, he sought to prove that people on the basis of conventional reflexes can be formed by a given program resistant affective complexes. Moreover, he believed that the facts open to them prove the possibility of forming a certain, strictly specified behavior model in all people. He wrote: "Give me a hundred children of one age, and after a certain time I will form absolutely identical people from them, with the same tastes and behavior."

The principle of behavior management received in American psychology after Watson works wide popularity. His merit is that he expanded the scope of mental, including injuries of animals and humans. But this innovation, he achieved an expensive price, rejecting as the subject of science. Huge psyche wealth, incorporated to externally observed behavior.

Edwin Ray Gazari

(1886 - 1959). He was a professor at psychology at the University of Washington since 1914 until his resignation in 1956, the main work was the "psychology of learning", published in 1935 and reissued in a new edition in 1952

He suggested the only law of learning, the law of adjacency, which he formulated as follows: "The combination of incentives, which accompanies movement, with its re-appearance tend to cause the same movement. Notice that nothing is said here about the "confirmation waves", or reinforcement, or a state of satisfaction. " In another way, the law of adjacency can be determined as follows: if you have done something in this situation, then the next time you find yourself in the same situation, you will seek to repeat your actions.

E. Gazry explained why, despite the possible truth of the law of arms, the prediction of behavior will always be probably. Although this principle, as soon as it was said, brief and simple, it will not be understood without some explanation. It uses the phrase "tends", because the behavior and any time depends on a large number of various conditions. Contradictory "trends" or incompatible "trends" are always present. The result of the impact of any incentive or pattern of incentives cannot be predicted with absolute accuracy, because there are other incentive patterns. We can express this by saying that the behavior is caused by the entire situation entirely. But, claiming this, we cannot flatter yourself what we did something more than the explanation of the fact that the prediction of the maintenance is impossible. No one has not yet described and no one will ever describe the entire stimulation of the situation entirely or is missing any complete situation in order to talk about it as a "reason" or even as a pretext for delusions a relatively small part of the behavior.

In the last publication, E. Gazry revised his law of adjacentness to clearly: "What is noticeable becomes a signal for what is being done." For Gazari, it was a recognition of the existence of a huge number of incentives faced by the body at any time, and the fact that it is impossible to form associations with all of them. Rather, the body responds selectively only on a small share of encountered incentives, and this is the proportion that is associated with any reaction incentives caused by these incentives. You can pay attention to the similarity between the way of the thoughts of Gazari and the concept of "predominance of elements" Tordayka, who also believed that the organisms react to various manifestations of the environment selectively.

Edward Lee Torndayk

(1874-1949). American psychologist and teacher. President of the American Psychological Association of 1912.

Conducted studies studying the behavior of animals. They were aimed at exit from the "Problem Box". Under this term E. Torndayk meant an experimental device in which experimental animals were placed. If they came out of the box, they received reinforcement of the reflex. The research results were displayed on certain charts, which he called "curves of learning". Thus, the purpose of his research was the study of motor reactions of animals. Thanks to these experiments, E. Torndayk concluded that the animals operate by the method of "samples and errors and random success." These works led it to the theory of confectivism.

E. Torndayk concludes that the behavior of any living being is determined by three components:

1) the situation that includes both external and internal processesaffecting an individual

2) the reaction or internal processes occurring as a result of this impact;

3) a thin bond between the situation and the reaction, i.e. Association. In his experiments, Torndayk showed that intelligence as such and its activity can be studied and without circulation of mind. The emphasis with the establishment of internal relations was transferred to them to establish links between the external situation and movements, which made new trends in associative psychology. Mechanical determinism Torndayk in its theory combined with biological, and then with biopsychic, significantly expanding the region of psychology, previously limited limits of consciousness.

Based on its research, Tordankov brought several laws of learning:

1. The law of exercise. There is a proportional connection between the situation and the reaction to it with the frequency of their repetition).

2. The law of readiness. The condition of the subject (experienced feelings of hunger, thirst) is not indifferent to the development of new reactions. Changing the body's readiness to carry out nerve impulses is associated with exercises.

3. Associative shift law. With a reaction to one particular stimulus of several, acting simultaneously, other stimuli involved in this situation, in the future cause the same reaction. In other words, a neutral incentive associated with the association with meaningful, also begins to cause the necessary behavior. The Torndayk also highlighted the additional conditions for the success of the child's learning - the ease of distinguishing the incentive and reaction and awareness of the relationship between them.

4. The law effect. The last, fourth, the law caused many disputes, since the motivation factor (a factor of a purely psychological orientation). The effect of the effect said that any action that causes pleasure in a certain situation is associated with it and further increases the likelihood of repetition of this action in a similar situation, the displeasure (or discomfort) under action associated with a certain situation leads to a decrease in the probability of committing This act is in a similar situation. This implies that some polar states inside the body are also based on learning. If the actions performed in a certain situation lead to successful results, they can be called satisfying, otherwise they will violate. The concept of successful result Torndayk gives at the level of neurons. With a successful action, the neurons system, which is ready, actually operates, and not inactive.

E. Torndayk, B. Skinner. They identified development with learning.

Burres Frederick Skinner

(1904 - 1990). American psychologist, inventor and writer. There was a huge contribution to the development and propaganda of biheviorism.

Skinner is most known for its theory of operant learning, to a lesser extent, thanks to artistic and journalistic works, in which he promoted the idea of \u200b\u200bwidespread behavior modification techniques developed in behaviorism (for example, programmed learning) to improve society and concept of people as a form of social engineering. Continuing the experiments of D. Watson and E. Torndayka, B. Skiner constructed called the "Skinner Box", which made it possible to accurately measure behavior and automatically submit reinforcement. In the sketch box, reminiscent of a rat or dove cage, there is a metal pedal by clicking on which the animal receives a portion of food into the feeder. With this very simple device, Skinner could conduct systematic observations of animal behavior under various reinforcement conditions. It turned out that the behavior of rats, pigeons, and sometimes people are quite predictable, since they follow certain laws of behavior, at least in this situation. In the experiments of Skinner (as in the ending experiments), the reinforcement usually served food.

The typical Skinner model typically includes the following components: different stimulus, individual reaction and reinforcement.The distinct stimulus usually signals an individual on the occurrence of learning. In the experiments of Skinner, light and sound signals were used as distinct incentives, as well as words. The reaction is the emergence of operant behavior. Skinner called its type of conditioning by the operant conditioning, because the reaction of the individual actuates (operate) the reinforcement mechanism. In completion, the reinforcing stimulus is fed to an adequate reaction. Therefore, reinforcement increases the likelihood of subsequent operant behavior. Opportal behavior can also be taught by causing avoiding when reinforcement is to terminate the impact of an unpleasant incentive. For example, bright light can be turned off, a loud sound is muted, an angry parent is calmed down. Thus, with the operant conditioning, the individual learns the reaction when reinforcement is to stop the impact of an unpleasant incentive.

Skinner has developed a method for generating behavior by consecutive approximations, which constitutes the basis of the operated content. This method is that the whole path from the initial behavior (even before the training) to the final reaction, which the researcher seeks to work out in the animal, is divided into several stages. In the future, it remains only consistently and systematically reinforce each of these stages and thus put the animal to the desired form of behavior. With this method of learning, the animal is rewarded for each action, which brings close to it to the ultimate goal, and it gradually produces a given behavior.

According to Skinner and other behaviorists, this is how most behavioral reactions in humans. From the position of Skinner can be explained very fast learning The child first words (not spread, however, this concept for the development of the language as a whole). At first, when a child is just beginning to pronounce some directed sounds, "me - me" already causes the delight of others, and especially the happy mother, which it seems that the child is calling it. However, soon the enthusiasm of the parents about such sounds cools until the baby does not say "Mo ... Mo". Then these sounds for the newborn stop being reinforced until a relatively self-parting "MO - MO" appears. In turn, this word for the same reasons will soon be changed by the combination of "Moma", and finally, the child will clearly say his first word - "Mom". Nevertheless, the rest of the sounds will be perceived by others only as "children's bowing" in the literal sense of the word, and they will gradually disappear from the "Lexicon" of the newborn. Thus, as a result of selective promotion by family members, the baby discardes the wrong reactions for which it does not receive social reinforcement, and maintains only those that are closest to the expected result.

Opportal reactions in the skinner understanding should be distinguished from automatic, purely reflex reactions associated with unconditional and conditional reflexes. Operant reaction - Action arbitrary and focused. However, Skinner determines the focusing in terms of feedback (that is, the impact on the behavior of its consequences), and not in terms of the objectives, intentions or other internal states - mental or physiological. In his opinion, the use of these "internal variables" in the psychology involves the introduction of dubious assumptions, which do not add anything to empirical laws that bind the observed behavior with the observed effects of the medium. It is these laws that are a real means of prediction and control of human and animal behavior. Skinner emphasized that "the objection against the internal states is not that they do not exist, but that they do not matter for functional analysis." In this analysis, the probability of the operator reaction acts as the function of external influences - both past and real.

In the field of education, Skinner put forward the concept of programmed learning. According to his thoughts, such training can free the student and the teacher from the boring process of simple knowledge transfer: the student will gradually move into the development of a particular topic in its own rhythm and small chains, each of which is supported; From these chambers and consists of a consistent approximation process (Skinner, 1969). However, it was very soon showed that such training quickly reaches its "ceiling", and this is due precisely that only minimal efforts are required from the student and therefore reinforcement soon becomes ineffective. As a result, the student has been rapidly annoying. In addition, to continuously maintain motivation at the student and ordered knowledge of knowledge, apparently, personal contact with the teacher is needed. All this is likely to be explained by the principles underlying social learning, and, in particular, learning through observation.

The founder of Beheviorism J. Watson saw the task of psychology in the study of the behavior of a living being, adapting to his environment. And for the first place in conducting research in this area, the decision of the practical tasks caused by public and economic Development. Therefore, only in one decade, behaviorism has spread all over the world and has become one of the most influential directions of psychological science.

The appearance and distribution of behaviorism was marked by the fact that completely new facts were introduced into psychology - facts of behavior that differ from the facts of consciousness in introspective psychology.

In psychology, under the behavior, the external manifestations of human mental activity are understood. In this regard, the behavior is opposed to consciousness as a totality of internal, subjectively experienced processes, and thus the facts of behavior in behaviorism and the facts of consciousness in introspective psychology are bred by the method of their identification. Some are detected by external observation, and others by self-surveillance.

Watson believed what is most important in man for the people around him and the very behavior of this person. At the same time, he denied the need to study consciousness. Thus, J. Watson divided mental and its external manifestation - behavior.

According to J. Watson, psychology should become natural and scientific discipline and introduce an objective scientific method. The desire to make the psychology of objective and natural-scientific discipline led to the rapid development of the experiment based on different from the introspective methodology of principles, which brought practical fruits in the form of economic interest in the development of psychological science.

Thus, the main idea of \u200b\u200bbehaviorism was based on the approval of the importance of behavior and the complete denial of the existence of consciousness and the need to study.

From the point of view of J. Watson, behavior is a system of reactions. The reaction is another new concept that was introduced into psychology in connection with the development of behaviorism. Since J. Watson sought to make a natural-scientific psychology, then from the natural science position it was necessary to explain the causes of human behavior. For J. Watson, the behavior or act of a person is explained by the presence of any impact on a person. He believed that there was not a single action that would not be the reason in the form of an external agent, or incentive. So the famous formula S - R appeared (stimulus - reaction). For behaviorists, the ratio S - R has become a unit of behavior. Therefore, from the point of view of behavior, the main tasks of psychology are reduced to the following: identification and description of types of reactions; study of their education processes; Study of the laws of their combinations, i.e. the formation of complex reactions. As common and final problems of psychology, the behaviorists put forward two of the following tasks: to predict the behavior (reaction) of a person and, on the contrary, to determine or describe it by the nature of the reaction or describe it.

The solution of the tasks was carried out by behaviorists in two directions: theoretical and experimental. Creating a theoretical base of biheviorism, J. Watson tried to describe the types of reactions and first allocated congenital and acquired reactions. To the number of congenital reactions, he refers those behavioral acts that can be observed in newborn children, namely: sneezing, iking, sucking, smile, crying, driving torso, limbs, heads, etc.

However, if with a description of congenital reactions at J. Watson there was no serious difficulty, because it is enough to observe the behavior of newborn children, then with the description of the laws on which congenital reactions are acquired, things were worse. To solve this task, he needed to push off from any of the existing theories, and he turned to the works of I. P. Pavlova and V. M. Bekhtereva. Their works contained a description of the mechanisms of conditional, or, as they said at the time, "combined", reflexes. After reviewing the works of Russian scientists, J. Watson takes the concept of conditional reflexes as a natural-scientific base of his psychological theory. He says that all new reactions are purchased by conditioning.

All human actions, according to J. Watson, are complex chains, or complexes, reactions. It should be emphasized that at first glance, J. Watson's conclusion seems true and non-doubts. A certain external impact causes a person a certain response unconditional (congenital) reaction or a complex of unconditional (congenital) reactions, but it is only at first glance. However, there are some phenomena, which is actually impossible to explain, based on this theory. For example, how to explain the riding a bear on a bike in a circus? No unconditional or conditional stimulus can cause a similar reaction or complex of reactions, since cycling cannot be related to the discharge of unconditional (congenital) reactions. Unconditional reactions to light can be blinking, to the sound - shuddering, on the food stimulus - salivation. But no combination of such unconditional reactions will lead to the fact that the bear will ride a bike.

No less significant for behaviorists were experimenting, with the help of which they sought to prove the correctness of their theoretical conclusions. In this regard, J. Watson's experiments were widely known for studying the causes of fear.

However, the emergency limitations of S - R scheme was quite revealed soon to explain the behavior of people. One of the representatives of Late Beheviorism E. Tolman introduced a significant amendment into this scheme. He proposed to place between S and R average link, or "intermediate variables" - V, as a result of the scheme, it became obvious: S - V - R. Under the "intermediate variables" E. Tolman understood the internal processes that mediate the action of the incentive. These include such education as "goals", "intentions", "hypotheses", "cognitive cards" (samples of situations). And although intermediate variables were functional equivalents of consciousness, they were displayed as "constructs", which should be judged exclusively according to the characteristics of behavior, and thus the existence of consciousness was still ignored.

Another meaningful step in the development of behaviorism was to study a special type of conditional reactions that were called tool (Torondayk, 1898), or operant (Skinner, 1938). The phenomenon of instrumental, or operant, conditioning is that if you reinforce any action of the individual, it is fixed and reproduced with more ease. For example, if any definite action is constantly reinforced, that is, to encourage or reward a piece of sugar, sausages, meat, etc., then very soon the animal will perform this action at one of the form of an incentive incentive.

According to the theory of behaviorism, classical (i.e. Pavlovskoe) and operant conditioning are a universal learning mechanism, common and for an animal and for a person. In this case, the learning process was presented as quite automatic, which does not require manifestation of human activity. It is enough to use one reinforcement in order to "fix" in nervous system Successful reactions regardless of the will or wishes of the person himself. From here, the behaviorists did conclusions that with the help of incentives and reinforcements, you can literally "sculpt" any behavior of a person, manipulate them that the human behavior is tightly "deterministic" and depends on the external circumstances and its own past experience.

Thus, the behaviorists are ignored by the existence of consciousness, i.e., the existence of a person's internal mental world is ignored.

Nevertheless, the merits of biheviorism in the development of psychology are very significant. First, he brought the spirit of materialism into the psychology, so that this science began to develop along the path of naturally scientific disciplines. Secondly, he introduced an objective method based on registration and analysis of external observations, facts, processes, due to which the instrumental techniques for the study of mental processes were widespread in psychology. Thirdly, the region of psychological research was expanded: the behavior of babies and animals began to be intensively. In addition, individual sections of psychology were significantly advanced in the works of the behavior, in particular the problems of learning, education skills. Finally, the spread of behavioral views contributed to the study of mental phenomena with natural-scientific positions.

Last updated: 04/05/2015

Overview of the basic concepts of theories of learning, including behaviorism, classical conditioning and operant learning.

If you are going to take a test on psychology of learning or just interested in this topic, then this brief guide to the main topics, including, classical conditioning and operant learning, will be very useful to you.
First, let's look at what to learn.

Recognition is a relatively constant change in behavior, which happens as a result of a certain experience. In the first half of the twentieth century scientific school, known as behaviorism, proposed several theories explaining the educational process. According to behaviorism, there are three types of learning.

Beheviorism is a scientific school of psychology, which considers only external manifestations of behavior. The essence of the behavior teaching, formed, is that psychology is experimental and objective science, which should not consider internal mental processes, since they cannot be observed and measured.

Classic conditioning

- This is the process of learning, which establishes a direct associative relationship between neutral to one incentive and incentive, which causes a certain reaction. For example, in classic example Pavlova smell of food has always been accompanied by a ringing bell. As soon as the constant connection between these two phenomena was established, then the sound of the bell can cause the required reaction.

Operant learning

- This is the process of learning, in which the probability of the desired reaction is enhanced or decreased by encouraging or punishment. The essence of this method, originally studied by Edward Torndayk, and then B.F. Skinner, lies in the fact that the consequences of our actions form our behavior.

Science through observation

- This is the process of learning, which occurs through observation and imitation of the behavior of others. As shown in the experiment of Albert Bandura "Doll Bobo", people imitate the behavior of other people even without additional incentive. To effectively learn through observation, four important elements are needed: attention, good motor skills, motivation and memory.