B F SKINNER Alex Champion and Niamh Jarvie

B. F SKINNER Alex Champion and Niamh Jarvie

ABOUT B. F Skinner was born on March 20 th 1904 in Pennsylvania He was an American psychologist, behaviourist, author, inventor and social philosopher He was influenced by Ivan Pavlov, William James and Charles Darwin. He died August 18 th 1990 in Massachusetts Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20, 1904, in the small town of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, where he also grew up. His father was a lawyer and his mother stayed home to care for Skinner and his younger brother. At an early age, Skinner showed an interest in building different gadgets and contraptions. As a student at Hamilton College, B. F. Skinner developed a passion for writing. He tried to become a professional writer after graduating in 1926, but with little success. Two years later, Skinner decided to pursue a new direction for his life. He enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology.

BEHAVIOURAL THEORY B. F. Skinner was one of the most influential of American psychologists. A behaviorists, he developed theory of operative conditioning-- the idea that behavior is determined by its consequences, be they reinforcements or punishments, which make it more or less likely that the behavior will occur again.

RAT EXPERIMENT Skinner experimented on a rat in order to prove his theory In his experiment he placed a rat in a box and allowed the sound of food coming out of a dispenser become a reinforcement the rat soon approached the dispenser when it heard the food falling into the bowl a small lever was then placed in the box and everytime it was pressed food was dispensed. After the rats first self induced meal it continuously pressed the lever for more food. Soon after the lever was disabled the rat stopped coming to it for food

RAT EXPERIMENT NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT An electric current was sent through the box and as the rat ran around the box it hit the lever and the electric current stopped. The rats quickly learned that when they were placed in the box to run to the lever and turn it off The rats were further taught to touch the lever and turn off the current before it even started when a light turned on.

HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO CHILDREN? One of the aspects important to human behaviour, though, is the feelings associated with behaviour that is controlled by conditioning previous actions have positive consequences children will happily repeat it but when their actions have negative consequences they are less likely to repeat the action.

https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Mt 4 N 9 GSBo. MI

DO WE AGREE WITH HIS THEORY?