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BF Skinner
Biography
Theory
References
BF Skinner, Behavioralism,
& Language Behavior
Biography
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born and raised in Susquehanna,
Pennsylvania. He earned his BA in English and hoped to be a writer.
However, this profession did not work out, and at the age of 24, he
applied and was excepted to the psychology graduate program at
Harvard. Here he happened to meet William Crozier in the
physiology department. Young Skinner was taken by Crozier, an
ardent advocate for animal studies and behavioral measures, and
began to tailor his studies according to Crozier's highly functional,
behaviorist framework. Working across disciplines, he integrated
methods and theories from psychology and physiology and
developed new ways of recording and analyzing data.
As he experimented with rats, Skinner noticed that the responses he
was recording were influenced not only by what preceded them but
also by what followed them. The common behavioral approach at
the time was influenced by the work of Pavlov and Watson, both of
whom focused on the stimulus-response paradigm. Their form of
classical conditioning focused on what occurred prior to a response
and how these stimuli affected learning. Skinner, however, focused
on what occurred after a behavior, noting that the effects or
repercussions of an action could influence an organism's learning. By
1931, he had his PhD in psychology and was well on his way to
developing operant conditioning, the behaviorist paradigm that ruled
for the second part of the 20th century.
He continued to do research at Harvard until 1936, when he moved
to Minneapolis with his new wife. In 1945, he and his family moved
to Bloomington, Indiana, where he served as the chair of the
psychology department until 1948, when he was offered a position
at Harvard. He remained at Harvard for the rest of his intellectual
career. During the 1950s and 60s, Skinner published and
experimented extensively. Working with numerous graduate student
who themselves became eminent psychologists, he formalized his
theory or schedules of reinforcement and operant conditioning.
In 1957, Skinner published his book Verbal Behavior, in which he
attempted to account for language development in humans. During
his later years, Skinner turned his attention to the social implications
of his theory until he of leukemia in 1990.
Behaviorist Theory & Language Learning
Core to all of behaviorism is the assumption that human and animal
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behaviors are determined by learning and reinforcement. Whether
by classical conditioning or operatant conditioning, species acquire
new skills, deepening on the effects these skills have on the specie's
environment. If an action proves to have a positive outcome (e.g., if
by pressing a button, a rat receives food), the organism is more likely
to continue to repeat this behavior. However, if the outcome is
negative (e.g., if by pressing a button, a rat rat receives a shock), the
organism is less likely to repeat the behavior.
Skinner, and Stimulus-Response (S-R) adherents, believed that
behaviorist theory could be used to infer a learning history. They
held that one could take an animal or person, observe its/his/her
behavior, and figure out what had been reinforced previously.
Behaviorist reduced all responses to associations, to a pattern of
positive and negative reinforcement that establishes links between
stimuli and their environmental antecedents and consequences.
Responses that were reinforced would be repeated, and those that
were punished would not. Thus, if a dog brought its human a ball
and the human pet it, the dogs behavior would be reinforced, and it
would be more apt to getting the ball in the future. Likewise, if the
dog brought its human a ball and the human kicked it, the dogs
behavior would be punished, and it would be less likely to do it.
These associations between stimuli, actions, and responses could
explain virtually every aspect of human and animal behavior and
interaction, but one seemed particularly problematic for the
behaviorist theory: language. In 1957, Skinner published his book,
Verbal Behavior, in which he attempted to apply his form of operant
conditioning to language learning.
A basic assumption of his was that all language, including private,
internal discourse, was a behavior that developed in the same
manner as other skills. He believed that a sentence is merely part of
a behavior chain, each element of which provides a conditional
stimulus for the production of the succeeding element (Fodor,
Bever, & Garrett, p25). The probability of a verbal response was
contingent on four things: reinforcement, stimulus control,
deprivation, and aversive stimulation. The interaction of these things
in a childs environment would lead to particular associations, the
basis of all language.
Skinner proposed that language could be categorized by the way it
was reinforced. He claimed that there were four general types of
speech: echoic behavior, mand, tact, interverbals and
autoclitic.
Echoic behavior is the primary form of verbal behavior of language
learners. These verbalizations include repeated utterances, as in (1)
(1) PARENT: [pointing to cookie] Thats a cookie. Can you
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say cookie?
CHILD: Cooookie
Mands (short for deMANDS) are defined as utterances that are
reinforced by the elevation of deprivation. So for instance, if a child
were hungry or cold, her requests (as in (2))
(2) Cookie.
Directives such as Stop, Go, and Wait also count as mands.
However, in (3), the child may be simply naming the object or stating
what she likes.
(3) Cookie!
Utterances that are produced when the speaker is not deprived are
called tact (short for conTACT). Tacts are verbalizations that the
speaker produces to provide information instead of attending to
states of deprivation. While on the surface, tacts and mands may
seem similar, their underlying motivations (stimuli) and their
reinforcements are different. When a mand is reinforced, the need
is sated. When a tact is reinforced, there is no need to sate.
The fourth type of utterance is the interverbals. These include such
things as Please and Thank you. These utterances are not
necessary to provide information. Rather, they are used in discourse
situation and pertain to the interactive nature of dialog. So for
example, in (4), the second utterance, the response to the question,
is an interverbal. Likewise, the associative response in number (5) is
also an interverbal.
(4) SPEAKER A: Whos your favorite graduate student?
SPEAKER B: You
(5) WORD: CAT
RESPONSE: Dog
With the final category, autoclitics, Skinner attempted to deal with
internal speech, or thought. Autoclitics, by his account, are subject
to the same effects of reinforcement as verbalized speech and that
previously reinforced internal, or thought behaviors, will influence not
only current and future thought but also current and future verbal
behavior.
Whether the speech was internal or dialogic, reinforced positively or
negatively, all language can be considered behavior that is
conditioned and learned. When Skinner wrote Verbal Behavior he
attempted to explain the most complex human behavior:
communication. This included all forms of language comprehension,
from dialog to thought.
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Though a tribute to the behaviorist paradigm, Skinners book
generated more questions and concerns than it explained. After his
book was published and critiqued by Noam Chomsky, Skinner
failed to respond immediately to the issues and problems raised. His
slow response coupled with both a growing disdain for the
behaviorist paradigm and the influence of technology, computers,
and information processing led to the strengthening of the cognitive
movement in psychology and other social sciences.
References & Resources
Fodor, JA; Bever, TG; & Garrett, MF. (1975) The Psychology of
Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics and Generative
Grammar. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lana, Robert E. The cognitive approach to language and thought.
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 23(1-2) Win-Spr 2002, 51-67.
Inst of Mind & Behavior, US
Behaviorism Page (Part of the History of Psychology web site)