Question

summarize

Behaviorist theory, which is basicalIy a psychological theory in its essence, founded by J.B. Watson, is actualIy a theory of native lan- guage learning, advanced in part as a reaction to traditional grammar. The supporters of this theory are Leonard Bloomfield, O.N. Mowrer, B.F. Skinner, and A.W. Staats. Behaviorism was advanced in America

as a new approach to psychology in the early decades of the 20th-cen- tury by making a particular emphasis on the importance of verbal be- havior, and received a considerable trust from the educational world of 1950s.

The m~jor principle of the behaviorist theory rests on the analyses of human behavior in observable stimulus-response interaction and the association between them. E.L.T. Thorndike was the first behaviorist to explore the area that learning is the establishment of associations on particular process of behavior and consequences of that behavioL Ba- sically, "the behaviorist theory of stimulus-response learning, particu-. larly as developed in the operant conditioning model of Skinner, con- siders all learning to be the establishment of habits as a result of rein- foreement and reward" (Wilga Rivers, 1968, 73). This is very reminis- cent of Pavlov's experiment which indicates that stimulus aLL(~response work together. According to this category, the babies obtain native language habits via varied babblings which resemble the appropriate words repeated by a person or object near him. Since for his babblings

and mutterings he is rewarded, this very reward reinforces further articulations of the same sort into grouping of syllables and words in a similar situation. In this way, he goes on emitting sounds, groups of sounds, and as he grows up he combines the sentences via generalisations and analogy (as in *goed for went, *doed, for did, so on), which in some complicated cases, condition him to commit errors by articulating in permissible structures in speech. By the age of five or six, or babblings and mutterings grow into socialized speech but little by little theyare internalized as implicit speech, and thus many of their uttarences be- com e instinguishable from the adults. This, then, obviously, means that behavio?rist theory is a theory of stimulus-response psychology.

"Through a trial-and-error process, in which acceptable uttarences are reinforced by comprehension and approval, and un acceptable ut- tarences are inhibited by the lack of reward, he gradually learns to make finer and finer discriminations until his uttarences aproximate more and more dosely the speech of the community in which he is growing up

(Wilga M. Rivers, 1968; 73). To put it in other words, children develop anatural affinity to learn the language oftheir social surroundings whose importance both over language learning and teaching must never be underestimated. In this respect behaviorist theory stresses the fact that "human and animallearning is a process of habit formation. A highly complex learning task, according to this theory may be learned by being broken' down into smaIl habits. These are formed correct or incorrect responses, are rewarded or,punish€d, respectiveli'. (Hubbard Jones

Answer 1

J.B. Watsons theory named behaviorists theory is a theory of psychology. It is a language learning theory and includes the responses to the ggrammar from the traditional ages in the advanced form. It is mainly supported by Leonard Bloomfield, O.N. Mowrer, B.F.Skinner and A.W. Staats. It wwas highly popular in america. The reason of its popularity is that it displays new aspects of behavior which are berbal in mature. This was a very novel idea and hence attracted the academics. It is based on the stimulus response interactions and their analyses along woth the associations between E.L.T. The pioneering study was done by thorndike. He studies that the association betqeen a behavior and its consequences is learning. This directly links behavioral theory to the classical conditioning of pavlov which is also based on association of stimuli. Botb of the concepts are further linked to the operant conditioning showing learning bia rewards and reinforcement. A very popular example of this is the baby learning the native language by starting babbling and getting reward for it. Due to the reward the baby starts with babling and further improves to a level of speeach used for social and personal interactions. This exmole provides a clear indication of the process of learning being a stimulus response phenomenon hence linking behavioral theory to stimulus response psychology. According to wilga m. Rivers statement of 1968 and 1973 the individuals learn to discriminate between acceptable and unacceptable as they learn it by the process of rewards and punishment and this makes one learn more about the community they belong to. Learning and teaching language is of utmost importance as it helps in this process. A term habit formation is given to the process of elarning in humans and animals. A study by hubbard jones hence display that the learning of complex tasks can be made easy by breaking it into small pieces of habits and then rewrding or punishing them accordingly.