BEHAVIOURISM

In 19th century the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning while
studying digestion. He found that dogs automatically salivate at the sight of food—an unconditioned
response to an unconditioned stimulus. If Pavlov always rang a bell when he offered food, the dogs began
slowly to associate this irrelevant (conditioned) stimulus with the food. Eventually the sound of the bell
alone could elicit salivation. Hence, the dogs had learned to associate a certain cue with food. Behaviorists
see salivation as a simple reflex behavior.
The most forceful leader of behaviorism was B. F. Skinner, an American psychologist who began
studying animal learning in the 1930s. Based on his experiments with rats and pigeons, Skinner identified
a number of basic principles of learning. He claimed that these principles explained not only the behavior
of laboratory animals, but also accounted for how human beings learn new behaviors or change existing
behaviors. He concluded that nearly all behavior is shaped by complex patterns of reinforcement in a
person’s environment.
Strict behaviorists hold that all behavior, even breathing and the circulation of blood, is learned;
they believe that animals are, in effect, born as blank slates upon which chance and experience are to write
their messages. Through conditioning, they believe, an animal’s behavior is formed.
Skinner presented his vision of a behaviorist utopia, in which socially adaptive behaviors are
maintained by rewards, or positive reinforcements.
In an article published in the early part of the twentieth century, two psychologists, Watson and
Raynor, reported the results of an experiment they had carried out with a young boy called Albert (Watson
and Raynor 1920). When he was nine months old they discovered that the easiest way to frighten him was
to make a loud noise by striking a steel bar with a hammer. At various intervals over the next three months
they frightened Albert in this way while he was in the presence of various animals (a rat, a rabbit, and a
dog). The result was that after three months Albert showed fear when confronted with these animals even
when the noise was not made, and furthermore, showed unease when a fur coat was put in front of him.
Pleased with their progress, the scientists then proposed to continue their experiment by turning the young
baby's fear back to pleasure but they were unable to do so because, unsurprisingly, Albert was withdrawn
from the experiment by his parents.
Despite its age Watson and Raynor's experiment is of more than academic interest because the
'conditioning' it demonstrated - and the way that such research into conditioning led on to the theory of
Behaviourism - had a profound effect upon teaching of all kinds. This is especially true of language
teaching where, arguably, Behaviourism still exerts a powerful influence.
 To a modern sensibility Watson and Raynor's work with poor little Albert seems extraordinarily
unethical, yet they were merely substituting a human being for the various animals who were conditioned
to behave in certain ways. Pavlov's dogs, after all, were trained/conditioned to salivate when they heard a
bell even if food was not produced.
In Behaviourist theory, conditioning is the result of a three-stage procedure: stimulus, response,
and reinforcement. For example, in a classic experiment, when a light goes on (the stimulus) a rat goes
up to a bar and presses it (the response) and is rewarded by the dropping of a tasty food pellet at its feet
(the reinforcement). If this procedure is repeated often enough, the arrival of the food pellet as a reward
reinforces the rat's actions to such an extent that it will always press the bar when the light comes on. It
has learnt a new behaviour in other words.
In a book called Verbal Behaviour the psychologist Bernard Skinner suggested that much the same
process happens in language learning, especially first language learning (Skinner 1957). The baby needs
food so it cries and food is produced. Later the infant swaps crying for one- or two-word utterances to
produce the same effect, and because words are more precise than cries he or she gradually learns to
refine the words to get exactly what is wanted. In this Behaviourist view of learning a similar stimulus-
response-reinforcement pattern occurs with humans as with rats or any other animal that can be
conditioned in the same kind of way.

Learning a foreign language as an adult may be very different from the baby's acquisition of a
mother tongue, but many methodologists supposed that Behaviourist principles could still apply. As we
shall see in the next part of the book, Audio-lingual methodology depended quite heavily on stimulus,
response, and reinforcement, and much controlled practice that still takes place in classrooms all over the
world can trace its heritage back to the influence of Behaviourism.