EDU 310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Test Anxiety, Operant Conditioning, American Psychologist
Document Summary
An attempt to make psychology more scientific by studying only external behavior. Behavior: response of an organism to stimuli; objective and observable. The study of how environmental stimuli bring about changes in people"s behavior. Behaviorists ignore what goes on inside our head since it cant be seen or measured. According to behaviorists, we are born as: Blank slates one"s environment writes on; vessels to pour knowledge into. Lumps of clay that can be shaped by one"s environment. Believed the environment (extrinsic forces) is the only thing that matters. Learning = behavior change due to experience. Very popular in u. s. before piaget and vygotsky"s writings were translated and brought here. Behaviorism via thorndike beat out john dewey"s theories to become the dominant theory in the u. s. U. s. schools were structured after behaviorism rather than dewey"s model. Americans very interested in a scientific way to parent and educate. Theory begins in u. s. around 1910 with e. thorndike.
