Behaviorism
Founded by John B. Watson and embraced and extended by Edward Thorndike, Clark L. Hull, Edward C. Tolman, and later B.F. Skinner, behaviorism gained popularity as a guiding psychological theory during the early decades of the 20th century. Its development was partly due to the success of laboratory based animal experimentation and partly in reaction to Freudian psychodynamics which tended to rely on case studies and clinical experience. Freud's theories and practice focused on the resolution unconscious conflict often arising from childhood experiences to treat psychological trauma and psychosis. However, it was argued that Freud's theories were difficult to test empirically. Behaviorists claimed that the methodology of psychology should be operationalized with standardized procedures and objective. The behaviorist focused almost entirely on external behavior, and believed the mind or consciousness should not be part of the objective science of psychology.[8] They doubted the validity of introspection for studying internal mental states such as feelings, sensations, beliefs, desires, and other unobservable entities.[8] In "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" (1913),[9] Watson argued that psychology "is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science," that "introspection forms no essential part of its methods," and that "the behaviorist recognizes no dividing line between man and brute." Skinner rejected hypothesis testing as a research method, considering it to be too conducive to speculative theories that would promote useless research and stifle good research.[10]
Behaviorism was the dominant paradigm in American psychology throughout the first half of the 20th century. However, the modern field of psychology is largely dominated by cognitive psychology. Linguist Noam Chomsky helped spark the cognitive revolution in psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, in which he challenged the behaviorist approach to the study of behavior and language dominant in the 1950s. Chomsky was highly critical of what he considered arbitrary notions of 'stimulus', 'response' and 'reinforcement' which Skinner borrowed from animal experiments in the laboratory. Chomsky argued that Skinner's notions could only be applied to complex human behavior, such as language acquisition, in a vague and superficial manner. Chomsky emphasized that research and analysis must not ignore the contribution of the child in the acquisition of language and proposed that humans are born with a natural ability to acquire language.[11] Work most associated with psychologist Albert Bandura, who initiated and studied social learning theory, showed that children could learn aggression from a role model through observational learning, without any change in overt behavior, and so must be accounted for by internal processes.[12]
Comments :
Post a Comment