Developmental psychology.pdf

Learning as Conditioning 191
1,000
Б
ъ
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750
500
87th Congress
Jan. 1961—Oct
E
О
250
M M J S N
-1st session
90th Congress
Jan. 1967—Oct. 1968
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I
J M M J S N
2nd session-
Months
high rate. In the case of an avoidance response, however, as occurred with the cats,
intermittent reinforcement may be unnecessary or impossible. They ran away at every
cough anyway; there was no need for a further beating. Thus the cats never discovered
that the cough was really harmless.
Influence of Operant Conditioning
With these methods dogs have been trained for police work, horses for farming, monkeys
for tricks, and pigeons for roles as bombardiers. Pigeons also have served as inspectors
in a pill factory, a job for which they were well suited because of their high
visual capacity. They identified defective products with 99 percent accuracy, using their
beaks to knock them off a slowly moving conveyor belt. Their performance was superior
to that of human workers in the same role, and special safeguards were set up
against possible errors. But the pigeons were never hired, partly due to management's
fear of adverse publicity (Verhave, 1966).
At the human level, operant conditioning procedures are widespread in childrearing,
industry, education, and therapy. Earlier we described their use for reinstating
speech in a psychotic patient; later we shall note their role in programmed instruction
and weight control. They are employed in a wide variety of contexts too numerous to
describe further here: They concern the control of deviant sexual behavior, physical
exercise, disruptive acts on school buses, and noncompliant patients in the dentist's
chair (Reekers & Lovaas, 1974; King & Frederickson, 1984; Greene, Bailey, & Barber,
1981; Iwata & Becksfort, 1981).
In the novel Walden Two, B. F. Skinner advocates operant conditioning techniques,
colloquially known as "cultural engineering," for establishing a Utopian society.
He urges their use in redesigning cultures and improving human life, and
communities have been created on this basis. The issue is highly controversial, for it
seems to call for shaping and reshaping human behavior through rearrangement of the
environment by social scientists. These views have found considerable support, nevertheless
(Fawcett, Mathews, & Fletcher, 1980).*
In another book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner emphasizes that there
is a selection process in the environment, and it pertains to behavior as well as to physical
structure. Darwin was concerned with the influence of the environment on the
physical structure of the species over the millennia—the survival of the fittest organisms.
Skinner is concerned with the influence of the environment on individual behavior
over the lifetime of the organism—the survival of reinforced responses. According to
Skinner, virtually all of our major problems of overpopulation, energy depletion, pollution,
and the nuclear threat stem from an inappropriate environmental structure. To
control human behavior we need to alter our environment.
Figure 7.15
Fixed Intervals: Human Beings.
The number of bills passed by each
of four Congresses was extremely
low at each beginning. Near the end
of each session the response rate
rose rapidly (Weisberg & Waldrop,
1972).
*My ten-year-old brother was
having difficulty learning some
knots in order to pass a Tenderfoot
test for Boy Scouts. My mother,
noticing that he was having a hard
time with them, tried to help him.
Being the youngest, my brother
enjoys attention and saw a good
opportunity to keep it for a while.
He became very obstinate with my
mother and played up the act of
being totally frustrated with the
whole procedure. She in turn had fo
become progressively more
cajoling. Suddenly, without warning,
she stood up quietly and suggested
that he work on it by himself. No
amount of sighing and frustrated
exclamations would draw her back
into her role of helper. Finally my
brother settled down and began
working in earnest on the knots. At
this juncture, my mother returned to
his side and thereby kept him
working, rather than sighing and
acting frustrated.