PSYCH 2GG3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: David Premack, Reinforcement, B. F. Skinner
20 Mar 2018
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Document Summary
Behaviour should be studied and explained in the most direct way possible. Analysis of behaviour without appeal to subjective mental events or speculative physiological events. One of the giants of 20th century psychology. As a child, read a lot; desired to become a novelist. He displayed remarkable mechanical skills; he put these skills to good use in devising and constructing the devices he later used in his experiments. As an undergraduate, skinner majored in english. Skinner was recognized as the leading proponent of the behaviouristic position, a position that he continued to develop and defend throughout his life. His theory is based on 2 fundamental assumptions: human behaviour follows certain laws, causes of behaviour are outside the person, and that these can be observed and studied. Responses elicited by a stimulus are labelled respondents: organism reacts to the environment. Responses simply emitted by an organism are labelled operants: organism acts on the environment, voluntary.
