April 2024
Cumulative Record. Chapter 46: How to Teach Animals. Quote 13
Important among human reinforcements are those aspects of the behavior of others, often very subtle, which we call “attention,” “approval” and “affection.” Behavior which is successful in achieving these reinforcements may come to dominate the repertoire of the individual. (p. 611)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 46: How to Teach Animals. Quote 9
… you can make it appear that a pigeon can be taught to read. You simply use two printed cards bearing the words PECK and DON’T PECK, respectively. By reinforcing responses to PECK and blacking out when the bird pecks DON’T PECK, it is quite easy to train the bird to obey the commands on […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 46: How to Teach Animals. Quote 8
The best way to reinforce the behavior with the necessary speed is to use a “conditioned” reinforcer …. For a conditioned reinforcer you need a clear signal which can be given instantly and to which the subject is sure to respond …. A convenient signal is a rap on a table with a small hard […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 46: How to Teach Animals. Quote 5
The second thing you will need [to test a teaching technique] is something your subject wants, say food. This serves as a reward or—to use a term which is less likely to be misunderstood—a “reinforcement” for the desired behavior. (p. 605)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 46: How to Teach Animals. Quote 4
“Catch your rabbit” is the first item in a well-known recipe for rabbit stew. Your first move, of course, [to test a teaching technique] is to choose an experimental subject. Any available animal—a cat, a dog, a pigeon, a mouse, a parrot, a chicken, a pig—will do. (p. 605)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 45: John Broadus Watson, Behaviorist. Quote 8
… Watson was to be remembered for a long time, by both laymen and psychologists alike, for a too narrow interpretation of self-observation, for an extreme environmentalism, and for a coldly detached theory of child care, no one of which was a necessary part of his original program. His brilliant glimpse of the need for, […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 45: John Broadus Watson, Behaviorist. Quote 7
[Watson] thought he saw the seeds of many behavior problems in early home experiences, and in his Psychological Care of the Infant and Child—a book he later publicly regretted—he cautioned parents against the unconsidered display of affection. (Current “mother love” theories are the other swing of that pendulum.) (p. 603)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 45: John Broadus Watson, Behaviorist. Quote 6
The same taste for polemics led him into an extreme environmentalistic position . . . Like all those who want to do something about behavior, he had emphasized the possibility of environmental modification, and this was widely misunderstood. Under the stress of battle he was led at last to the well-known cry: “Give me a […]