(5) behaviorist theory (learning & limitations)
Post on 21-Jul-2015
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BEHAVIORIST THEORY
Application of Behaviorist Theory in Language Learning
Limits of Behaviorism
There are some basic theories advanced to
describe how language is acquired and
taught. The behaviorist theory, Mentalist
theory, Cognitive theory, Empiricist theory
(Audiolingualism), and Cognitive –code
theory are some of these theories.
The behaviorist theory (behaviorism) is one
of the mainly applicable to the acquisition of
native languages.
Behaviorist theory, which is basically a
psychological theory in its essence, founded
by J.B. Watson, is actually a theory of native
language learning, advanced in part as a
reaction to traditional grammar.
The supporters of this theory are Leonard
Bloomfield, O.N. Mowrer, B.F. Skinner, and
A.W. Staats, etc.
Behaviorism was advanced in America
as a new approach to psychology in the
early decades of the 20th-century by
making a particular emphasis on the
importance of verbal behavior, and
received a considerable trust from the
educational world in 1950s.
Basically, the behaviorist theory of stimulus-response learning, particularly as developed in the operant conditioning model of Skinner, considers all learning to be the establishment of habits as a result of reinforcement and reward.
This is very reminiscent of Pavlov’s experiment which indicates that stimulusand response work together.
According to this category, the babies obtain
native language habits via varied babblings
which resemble the appropriate words
repeated by a person or object near them.
Since for their babblings and mutterings
they are rewarded, this reward reinforces
further articulations of the same sort into
grouping of syllables and words in a similar
situation.
In this way, they go on emitting (producing) sounds,
groups of sounds, and as they grow up, they
combine the sentences via generalizations and
analogy (as in *goed for went, *doed for did, and
so on), which in some complicated cases, condition
them to commit errors by articulating in permissible
structures in speech.
By the age of five or six, babblings and
mutterings grow into socialized speech but little by
little they are internalized as implicit speech (the
speech which is not communicated directly).
A• Babblings
• Mutterings
B• Grouping of Syllables
• Grouping of Words
C
• Emitting Sounds or Group of Sounds
• Combine Sentences via Generalization & Analogy
D• Socialized Speech
• Implicit Speech
Through a trial-and-error process, in which acceptable utterances are reinforced by comprehension and approval, and unacceptable utterances are inhibited by the lack of reward.
Children gradually learn to make better discriminations until their utterances approximate to the speech of the community in which they are growing up.
In other words, children develop a natural interest in learning a language of their social surroundings whose importance both over language learning and teaching must never be underestimated.
The Basic Principles of
Behaviorist Theory
The following principles illustrate the summary of
the operating principles of behaviorism:
1 Behaviorist theory dwells on spoken language.
That is, primary medium of language is oral: speech is language because there are many languages without written forms, because we learn to speak before we learn to read and write.
Then, language is primarily what is spoken and secondarily what is written. That is why spoken language must have a priority in language teaching.
2 Behaviorist theory is the habit formation theory
of language teaching and learning, reminding
us the learning of structural grammar.
In other words, language learning is a
mechanical process leading the learners to habit
formation whose underlying scheme is the
conditioned reflex. Thus, it is definitely true that
language is controlled by the consequences of
behavior.
3 The stimulus-response chain (S →R), is a pure
case of conditioning. Behaviorist learning theory emphasizes conditioning and building from the simplest conditioned responses to more and more complex behaviors.
This comes to mean that clauses and sentences are learned linearly as longer and longer stimulus-response chains, produced in a left-to right series of sequence like S1 → S2 → S3 → S4 …, as probabilistic incidents, which are basically Markov’s processes. Each stimulus is thus the case of a response, and each response becomes the initiator of a stimulus, and this process goes on and on in this way.
4 All learning is the establishment of habits as the
result of reinforcement and reward.
The result will yield conditioning. When
responses to stimuli are coherently reinforced,
then habit information is established. It is
because of this fact, that this theory is termed
habit-formation-by-reinforcement theory.
5
The learning, due to its socially-conditioned
nature, can be the same for each individual.
In other words, each person can learn equally
if the condition in which the learning takes
place is the same for each person.
The Main Limitations of Behaviorism
Ignorance of Genetics
Generalization
Cognitive Issues
Psychopathology
1. IGNORANCE
GENETICS:
Behavioral theories completely reject the idea of
genetics having an influence on human behavior.
Psychology in its modern form, on the other hand,
accepts genetics influence on human behavior as
a fact. One of the most popular social
psychologists, Kurt Lewin, tried to resolve the
limitation of behavioral theories by giving his
famous statement: behavior is a function of the
person (genetic nature) and the environment.
Behavioral theories lack one of
the vital factors in Lewin’s
statement, and cannot completely
describe human behavior.
2. GENERALIZATION
Psychologist that developed behavioral theories backed these theories on experiments containing stimuli that are not easily relatable.
In these experiments artificial environments are constructed to condition subjects to associating these normally unrelatable stimuli, such as food and electric shock.
The psychologists then generalized their results to all sets of stimuli, no matter how easily the relationships between these stimuli are made. The experiments showed that, no Stimulus-Response chain happened.
The limitation in this case is that such a
generalization cannot scientifically follow
such experiments.
In short, this generalization by behavioral
theories are not completely perfect
(containing mistakes).
Behavioral theories also ignore the cognitive
aspects of human psychology.
Because behavioral theories explain everything in
terms of the “outside” (behavior) and discard the
“inside” (mental processes, genetic influences,
emotions) ideas like memory and those
processes cannot enter the behavioral
explanations of human actions.
3. COGNITIVE
ISSUES
However, much research in psychometrics (the
field of psychological measurements), has shown
that these mental aspects predict much of human
behavior. One example is how personality tests
correlate to human decisions such as job and
mate selection.
In this respect, behavioral theories see humans
as no different creatures than animals: mental
processes are not important.
Behavioral theories are useless in explaining mental problems. Because behavioral theories treat the human mind as a “black box”, they have no place in explaining diseases that are associated with abnormal thought processes such as schizophrenia and pedophilia
It then follows that behavioral theories cannot assist those with mental diseases in their treatment processes.
4.
PSYCHOPATHOLOG
Y
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