When we speak of behavioral learning theory then we should understand it in our case as with the purpose of using the theory of behavior or behaviorism for achieving the purpose of learning. Learning can happen by multiple ways or procedures and out of that the process of behavior occupies an important role and purpose to play in human learning. 

Let us first see what is meant by behavior and behaviorism. 

Behavior is the property and method of interaction of any dynamic system to its environment. By dynamic system it can mean any natural organism or any artificial entity like any AI system or robot. Even sometimes the word is used for material objects also. But we are not going to the studies of other artificial systems over here as we are now solely concerned about human education only. So with the term behavior we will almost always mean the behavior of a human student with respect to his or her academic environment and related learning process. 

In case of other natural systems also you must have heard or used phrases like “behavior of weather” or “behavior of the wind” or similarly of the rivers, ocean, tides and many such other objects. We can even use it like the behavior of an acid or any other chemical, machinery and so on. So anything that reacts to its environment and any external stimuli or factors can be said to be having a behavior.

In this article we will confine ourselves to particularly the behavior of human beings. As we are concerned about education, according to our experience humans are the only species who can incur such massive amounts of learning and transformation which no other species of this planet are yet anyhow near the capability to show. And this happens through our education only. This learning and evolution is the greatest purpose of human education. 

Education(learning) shapes our behavior and that behavior aids our education through learning. This is the vice-versa relationship between learning and behavior. And on the basis of this the theories of behaviorist learning theories are founded. Behaviorist learning theory concerns two main focus points when the question is academic development and progress of a student.

1. How to modulate the right behavior for learning, and
2. How to modulate the learning process and its delivery (pedagogy) based on the current behaviors of the learner

Behaviorist learning theories and processes achieve both the above goals if properly implemented. On one hand, with transfer of information and knowledge it can help to shape and make one’s behaviors (or sets of reactions) developed and optimized for better learning, better academic performance and education. And if these factors develop then simultaneously we can achieve better modulation of our behaviors to every affairs of our life including the academics. 

Now a question arises, what should be considered to be the beginning? To begin with the modulation of behavior in order to achieve better learning or perhaps to use the learning to achieve better behaviors? This question is hard to answer too deterministically as it can vary case to case. Still we can try to figure out the most usable choice from our life experiences. 

The application of behaviorism starts from the day a child takes his or her first step in this world. Even there are possibilities of it being active in the mother’s womb also but we are not going to discuss that depth right here. But right from the birth a child learns to interact with his surrounding environment and react to it. This is the reason I choose to discuss this theory at the very beginning in this journey to theories of learning. For a baby child, the first learning theory that gets active is the behaviorist learning as no other learning modes are accessible and available to the child so small. 

If it can be understood that a child auto-deploys the behaviorist learning mode for his purpose of information acquisition and reaction delivery with respect to his environment, then the same can be used for his initial learning developments. Now the question is how to do that or how to achieve our objectives in this route? This is the purpose of my articles in this learning theory. I think and aspire that these articles will help school teachers, home tutors and parents/guardians to modulate and maximize their child’s or student’s learning and education processes. 

Parents and tutors of small children and junior students use the concepts of behavioristic learning almost everyday multiple times. In fact in most such cases, parents and tutors use the theories almost unknowingly. These implementations can happen through heredity or traditions, or maybe just an outcome of some thoughts, concepts or presence of mind. Whatever the sources may be, these methods almost always generate effective results. How many times have you lured your child to do a piece of job or study activity if he needs a candy very badly? This is a classic case example relevant to the generic and unknowing even to the participants. I will deal with a few such case studies later on consecutive articles on the theories of behaviorism.

The main pillars of behaviorism theory are constructed by 4 scientists of different times:

1. Ivan P Pavlov (1849 – 1936)
2. John Watson (1878 – 1958)
3. Edward Thorndike (1874 – 1949)
4. B F Skinner (1904 – 1990)

Later on many psychologists and scientists added more studies and information on the field of behavioral psychology and learning theory. One of the most prominent was Albert Bandura (1925 – 2021), who added another important part to the behavioral learning theory, which is also known as the 3d type of behavioral learning and by the name Social Learning Theory. 

The theory of behaviorism first initiated by an experiment of Ivan P Pavlov. It is famous by the name “Pavlov’s Dog Experiment”. It started what later came to be known as classical conditioning theory in the theory of animal behaviorism and animal behavioral learning theory. But it was not before Watson, classical conditioning was considered as equally applicable to human learning as well. In the year 1913, Watson in his famous article, “Psychology as the Behaviorists Views It” constructed the concept of application of classical conditioning in the human learning process. 

John Watson ……….

Watson did research and experiments on the foundation of human learning and especially human learning at very early ages. He wrote books and articles on infant and child learning. In that phase of human learning, there is little or negligible difference between animal learning and human learning methods. Though Watson was a typical behaviorist and believed that behavioral theory is equally applicable to human beings throughout ages and stages, there are many differences of views also within psychologists and educationists around the world. 

I will discuss details of Watson behavioral theory and its relation with human learning. Also it is important how those theories can be applied in the classroom. Extending it more just from classroom to parenting will be one of my purposes of writing on these subjects. Not only teachers but also parents and even students themselves can benefit considerably by knowing and trying to apply the learning theories. 

Also it is not just about school or academic education, but behavioral theory and whole of learning theories are not anyhow less applicable to general life education and lifestyle modifications. Usually education and learning theories are kept limited to classrooms and not much propagated to our daily living and environment. Also there are many conditions and limitations associated with every theory of learning and education proposed by different psychologists and educationists of different ages. If we neglect or overlook those limitations and conditions as well as deficiencies then our applications of the learning theories can not only become ineffective but can even be harmful in some cases. 

I will try to bridge up this gap as much as possible in my blog articles. Also there will be discussions on the limitations and application guidelines of these theories.  But as I said before, these topics are too deep and exhaustive to discuss within the scope of blog articles. For this I will be undertaking the plans to write ebooks, whitepapers, books, etc. in future. 

Let us see more about the history of behavioral theory. How it evolved from Pavlov to Watson and beyond to Skinner, Thorndike and Bandura. Let us see how it all started from the Pavlov’s Experiment. Though it is not directly useful or important for human learning and education, still Watson’s proposal of human classical conditioning is an extension of Pavlov’s animal classical conditioning theory which makes it historically valuable as the foundational base. 

Ivan P Pavlov(1849-1936) was a Russian psychologist and was the first Russian Nobel laureate by winning the award in 1904 for physiology and medicine. He is particularly well known for his theory of classical conditioning which he first demonstrated by his famous dog experiment.

Before we go to the experiment let us understand what we should understand by the term ‘conditioning’. In behavioral theory and elsewhere all over the theories of learning you will encounter this term again and again. 

All animals and hence also humans are endowed with more than one sense organs. Each and every sense organs are capable of generating stimulations in regions of the brain as a response to some kind of input to that sense organ. And the brain is also wired with all the other physiological body processes. But initially each and every sense organs and also all the physiological body processes are discriminated from each other and lack any kind of correlation within the brain and hence also in function.

But with external experiences they get attached and mapped with each other functionally in many cases. That does not anyhow override their discriminations but add some modifications to their responses which we can consider as an acquired behavior. Thus due to some input event, if one sense organ gets mapped with another sense organ functionally for that case then that can be called a case of conditioning. The same can also happen between a sense organ and a physiological body process. That is also a case of conditioning. 

In the case of dogs, eyes are a sense organ and salivation is a physiological body process. Initially they are not mapped with each other and hence both are absolutely discriminated functionally. But external events like seeing the food and eating the food conditions the production of saliva with the process. Thus after a time span, the eyes of the dog get mapped with the salivation process in the case where the eyes get a sight of the food. Thus as soon as the dog sees the food it starts salivating. This is a case of conditioning and it can be called ‘spontaneous conditioning’ as it happens spontaneously with the natural process of getting and eating the food.

But Pavlov showed in his dog experiment that we can also create such cases of conditioning artificially beside spontaneous conditioning. Thus we can attach sense organs and physiological body processes and create new brain maps as a response to some stimuli from an artificially set environment. 

The dogs are already salivating with the sight of the food. That was already naturally conditioned and hence can be considered artificially ‘unconditioned stimulus’. Thus for experiment purposes, Pavlov termed the natural conditioning as the ‘unconditioned stimulus’ and the experiment process will generate new conditionings that will be known as ‘conditioned stimuli’.

Pavlov modified those natural conditioning by adding one more sense organ stimuli and that was to say the ears in one case. As the dogs were served the food, Pavlop arranged for simultaneous ringing of bells. Thus now the dogs can see the food and hear the rings of bells and as a result salivate due to the presence of the food. Thus the input from the two sense organs, the eyes and the ears got mapped with the physiological body process of salivation in the brain of the dogs. 

Then to check the effect of such conditioning, the sight of food was turned off by not providing the food anymore but the bells kept ringing. And it was found that the dogs are still salivating with the sound of the bells even if they do not have sight of the food. Thus it can be proved that the ringing stimuli of the ears are conditioned to the process of salivation. This is a case of what he named classical conditioning. 

Thus Pavlop showed that likewise many animal behaviors can be conditioned and modified artificially by setting up the appropriate input environment for an effective time period. Animal brains can learn such modified conditioning and behave accordingly until and unless extinction of such conditioning happens. 

If the artificially conditioned stimuli lack to sync with the naturally conditioned stimuli for a certain extended period of time then the conditioning gets extinct. Thus if the dogs keep on not getting their food for an extended period of time with the ringing of the bells then their process of salivation to the response of the sound of bells also gets diminished. This is a case of extinction of conditioning. 

This was a brief description of Pavlov’s dog experiment and his idea of classical conditioning. He found that by using methods of classical conditioning, we can modulate or programme new animal behaviors beside their natural spontaneously acquired behaviors. This is the basic foundation of behavioral learning theory for animals, by which animals can learn new behaviors.

Watson extended such theories to human beings also and designed suitable instructional procedures to make behavioral learning functional in our school classrooms. And it can be found especially useful in the most junior classes where small students respond to unconditioned and conditioned stimulus more readily than their older counterparts. 

So these were the glimpses of behavioral theory history with Pavlov and Watson. Let us proceed to Thorndike and Skinner. 

Edward Lee Thordike(1874-1949), an American psychologist is one of the most renowned psychologists and also served as the president of American Psychological Association (APA). He impacted the theory of behaviorism with the theory of reinforcement and law of effect. 

Watson and Pavlov constructed the relationships between stimuli and response but did not conclude anything much on the type of stimuli and the resultant response. Also in their case, repeated stimuli generated a repeated response which ultimately forms a behavior. But in the case of reinforcement, the external stimulus usually follows a behavior and then that stimulus again generates the possibility of repetition of the behavior. Stimuli can be positive or pleasant or it can be negative or undesirable and the response also varies accordingly.  

If the stimulus is a positive, pleasant and desirable one, then that increases the possibilities of the recurrence of the behavior that was the cause of the stimulus. Thus that behavior can get positively reinforced. Conversely, if the stimulus is not a pleasant or desirable one then the causing behavior may not get reinforced and thus the occurrence possibilities decrease. 

There is another concept called negative reinforcement. In this case, a behavior triggers a stimulus which removes or diminishes something that is unpleasant or undesirable then that also increases the possibilities of recurrence of such behaviors. This also results in reinforcement and is called negative reinforcement.   

This is in total known as the Thorndike’s Law of Effect, a very important addition to the theory of behaviorism. Our current education system, the classroom setup model, has got its basis in this theory. From the concepts of reward and punishment, our pedagogy or delivery of education, learning and assessment, everything is connected to this theory of reinforcement or the theory of effect.

I will discuss more of this very important theory later on upcoming blogs. Stay in touch with KridhaTutor Blogs to find more of similar informative and useful blogs and increase your knowhow on education, learning, teaching and parenting. 

Burrhus F Skinner(1904-1990) was an American psychologist and professor of Harvard University. He further developed and propagated the behaviorism theory with concepts like principle of reinforcement, behavioral analysis and radical behaviorism. He used the operant conditioning to strengthen behavior where he considered that the rate of response to be the most effective measure of the readiness or strength of response. 

He also suggested that the concept of ‘free will’ for human beings is nothing but an illusion and considered all human behaviors are outcomes of some or other historical background of stimuli and response or what can be considered as the result of some conditioning in the past. 

Beside Thorndike, Skinner is also considered one of the founders of the theory of reinforcement in behavioral learning theory. Though the work of Skinner is based on that of Thorndike, Skinner proceeded further to measure the rate of response and also the possibilities of extinction and recovery. His works were more based on real life probabilistic behavioral models or approaches applicable for human learning than those of Pavlov, Watson and Thorndike. 

He was closer to humanization of otherwise animal based behavioral theories by considering the presence of mind and cognitive roles in the process of human behaviors but still he just took that in casual account due to lack of measurement possibilities of such faculties. He stressed only on the measurable behavioral patterns of human beings but with not only the considerations of occurrence of conditioning but also measuring the extent and rate of conditioning with possibilities of fading to extinction and recurrence cases.

Skinner performed his experiments on rats with a device well known as Skinner Box. There he demonstrated the way behaviors can be conditioned on rats, the change of rate of behaviors with the change in the rate of favourable stimuli and the rate of extinction of the conditioned behavior with the diminishing rate of the effective stimuli. He also demonstrated how rats can anticipate the occurrence of stimuli and thus conditioning can be done on the basis of that anticipation, with associating one response with another response. This was closer to human responses than the previous models of Pavlov, Watson and Thorndike.

A mouse can be conditioned to respond anticipatorily to the probabilities of occurrence of positive or negative stimuli even though the original stimuli is not present. This anticipation and probabilistic behavioristic models can indicate the presence of mind but as that is beyond measurement and hence not considered to be a factor for behavioral learning. 

We will discuss more on Skinner’s Theory and his experiments in another forthcoming blog article here in KridhaTutor Blogs. Please stay connected and continue reading more educational blogs. 

Albert Bandura(1925-2021), a Canadian-American psychologist and professor of psychology in Stanford University was one of the most prominent names with some latest additions to the behaviorism theory in educational psychology. 

He worked on more contemporary models of human behaviorism specially those based on the social models. This also includes the more recent social media behaviors. Thus his theory gets a high number of applications and citations in different sectors of human interaction including the social media to consumer behavior. 

So this was a brief history of the foundation of behavioral learning theories. A lot of work has been done on application of these theories in practical life in the area like education, business and marketing, psychological therapies and much more. We will keep most of our forthcoming discussions on the application in the sector of education. As education is an intrinsic part of psychology hence we will frequently need to plunge into the domain of psychology, but I will try to keep that minimal. 

The next few articles will be mainly on the detailed theories and application notes of the behavioral learning theories developed by Watson, Thorndike, Skinner and Bandura. I expect that teachers, tutors, students and parents all will be benefited by these articles, improving their performances and effectiveness.