Behaviorism itself is not just a way to study learning, it is a particular way to approach psychology. It promotes the scientific study of behavior in a way that avoid to take into account what is happening inside the “black box”, meaning the mental processes involved to produce the behavior.

It reached its peak of popularity during the first half of the twentieth century but is no longer a dominating research program. Yet it produced a large number of valuable experiments and principles that are especially relevant in learning to this day.

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To understand behaviorism it is important to understand the key discovery that almost rooted it entirely. It was produced by Ivan Pavlov’s interest in salivation of dogs during the 1890s. He discovered that after a while, the dogs he used to feed would not only salivate when food was presented to them but also when any events they associated with food occurred in their environment (ex: the person that usually feeds them enters the room).

Pavlov designed multiple experiments to observe this phenomenon, the most famous one being with a bell and a dog :

 

To understand it we need to acknowledge the fact that some responses are not learned but are already “hard-wired” in every organism. So when a dog is presented something he perceives as food he does not ever need to learn to salivate. In this sense the behavior of salivating is an unconditioned response:

 

Unconditioned Stimulus (Food) > Unconditioned Response (Salivation)

 

What Pavlov discovered is that if you were to take a Neutral Stimulus (a stimulus that does not provoke an unconditioned response in the subject), for example, the ring of a bell, and present it near simultaneously to the dog as he received his food, he would start to associate both.

If you repeat this process multiple times, you will be able to ring the bell alone and observe salivation in the dog. In this case we would say that the dog has been conditioned to salivate when he hears the ring of the bell, the entire process is called classical conditioning (or Pavlovian conditioning).

 

Conditioned Stimulus (Ring of the bell) > Conditioned Response (Salivation)

 

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Behaviorism produced another method of learning called operant conditioning (or sometimes called instrumental learning). It is a process used to modify behavior through the means of rewards and punishments.

It was first pioneered by Edward Thorndike (notably his law of effect 1898) and later popularized by B.F Skinner one the most famous ambassador of behaviorism.

 

Skinner usually conducted his experiments in what is now called a “Skinner Box” in which an animal, usually a rat, would be isolated with just a lever and a food dispenser.

When the rat moved around the box he would eventually press the lever and as a consequence receive food. After some iteration the rat learned to press the lever as soon as it wanted to receive more.

In this case the receival of food is a positive reinforcer (a reward) and the rat pressing the lever is a change of behavior also called a conditioned response.

We say the behavior “press the lever” has been strengthened.

 

Skinner designed many similar experiments and some included the possibility to administer punishments in the form of electric shocks and lead to many other discoveries:

 

• Another way to strengthen a behavior could be to remove a punishment (unpleasant experience) associated with the absence of behavior.

 

• Positive punishment is the weakening of a behavior by associating an unpleasant experience with it.

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• Negative punishment can also be used to weaken the frequency of a behavior by associating the removal of a reward with it.

 

• When a punished behavior is no longer punished it returns from a certain level (it was never entirely forgotten).

 

Lastly he and Ferster designed even more diverse ways to deliver reinforcements and in particular they found a way to observe organisms’ response rate (the rate at which the rat pressed the lever) when different reward attribution system were employed. Basically a feedback (often a light or sound) would signal the subject that pressing the lever would be rewarded with food.

The light would either turn on after a predictable amount of time (fixed interval) or for other subjects after an unpredictable one (variable interval).

In another similar experiment the reward would be provided after a predictable number of actions, or in other words everytime the lever is pressed while the light is turned on (fixed ratio), or, for other subjects after an unpredictable number of actions (variable ratio).

The results can be a bit counterintuitive but are nonetheless correct. The overall response rate of the subject is greater when the perceived chance of receiving a reward is uncertain. The examples of this phenomenon in human behavior are everywhere we look and explains partly why gambling is so attractive to us.

We are just more likely to repeat a behavior when we have learned that a reward may or may not come by.

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• Rewards and punishment can quickly lead a student to produce specific behavioral responses. It is particularly relevant to teach facts and specific procedures. When there are good and bad answers in sum.

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• Student practice can be easily motivated by ​the means of reward acquisition, thus, increasing long-term retention of the skills.

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• Punishments are linked to an increase in anxiety and aggression in subjects which can eventually lead to negative consequences on learning  and health (Galea 2015).

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• Behaviorism does not take into account the limitations of the students' memory, attention, and perception as it is not interested in the study of cognition.

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• Concerning its application to humans, as most researches were made on rodents, it has been argued that the physiological difference between animals prevented accurate generalization. The different responses observed on rats could vary more or less on humans (but make no mistake, we have much more commonalities with rats than differences). 

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• Cannot teach high-level skills.