Behaviorist Learning

Theory
B.F Skinner’s Operant
Conditioning
Presented by:
Shah Nawaz
18320702-013
 What is language

• Language is a medium through which one can express one’s ideas,

thoughts, feelings, and message.
Language acquired in two ways
• Language acquisition
When language is learnt naturally and without any systemic practice
that is called acquisition
• Main points
• Language learning
On the other hand language leering is a process in witch learner learnt
the rules of grammar and vocabulary
Main points
Introduction
• Father of Behaviorism
The term behaviorism refers to the school of psychology founded
by john B. Watson.
Behaviorism was established with the publication of Watson's
classic paper "Psychology as the behaviorist Views" in (1913)
B.F Skinner
• Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist,
behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was the
Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until
his retirement in 1974.
Behavioral theory
• The study of human behavior
• B.F skinner proposed this theory as an explanation for language
acquisition in human.
• Involves Appling reinforcement or punishment after a behavior
• Focus on strengthening or weakening voluntary behavior
Operant Conditioning
• Conditioning deals with operant intentional actions that have an
effect on the surrounding environment.
• Skinner set out to identify the processes which made certain
operant behaviors more or less likely to occur
• Example.
His work was based on Thorndike's law of
effect.
• Skinner is regarded as the father of Operant Conditioning, but his
work was based on Thorndike's law of effect.
• Skinner introduced a new term into the Law of Effect - Reinforcement.
• Behavior which is reinforced tends to be repeated (i.e. strengthened);
behavior which is not reinforced tends to die out-or be extinguished
(i.e. weakened).
B.F. Skinner Experiment on Rat
Types of behavior
• Skinner distinguished between two different types of behaviors
• Respondent behavior
• Operant behaviors
• Key component of operant conditioning
• Reinforcement
• punishment
Reinforcement and Punishment
• Reinforcement any event that strengthens or increase the behavior it
follows.
• There two kind of reinforcement
Positive and negative reinforcement
• Punishment is the presentation of an adverse event or outcome that
causes a decrease in the behavior it follows.
• There are two kinds of punishment.
Positive and negative punishment
SLA And Behaviorism
• According to Skinner, the learning of a habit occurred through
imitation or reinforcement. It means the learner is able to make a
connection with consequences associated with his/her behavior
through positive (rewarding) and negative (punishment)
reinforcement.
Continue…..
• Theories of Habit Formation could be and were applied to language
learning.
• In L1 acquisition, children were said to master their mother tongue
by imitating utterances produced by adults . Their efforts at using
language were either rewarded or corrected.
• It was also believed that SLA could proceed in a similar way.
Continue…
• Habit formation theory provided a theoretical account of how the
learner’s L1 intruded into the process of SLA.
• It also explained why the L2 learners made errors.
• According to behaviorist learning theory, old habits get in the way of
learning new habits.
Patterns And Habits
Sometimes the patterns or habits of the L1 are as same as L2.
is quit possible that the means of expressing a shared meaning are the
same in the first and second language.
Transfer Process
• Transfer will take place from the first to second language.
• Differences between the first and second language create learning
difficulty which results in errors while the similarities between the
first and second language facilitate rapid and easy learning.