APPROACHES OF SKINNER AND HARLOW

Approaches of Skinner and Harlow to investigating influences on behaviour

Approaches of Skinner and Harlow to Investigating Influences on Behaviour

Introduction

The origins of contemporary research into plasticity derived from two lines of investigation, in rodents and in primates. In the early 1960s, Mark Rosenzweig and colleagues discovered that raising rats in enriched environments produced smarter rats with bigger brains. At about the same time, Harry Harlow was interested in finding out how infant monkeys fared when they were removed from their mothers and raised with surrogate mothers made from wire mesh. He found that monkeys raised with surrogate mothers showed severe emotional and behavioral deficits and had small, underdeveloped brains. The Rosenzweig and Harlow experiments demonstrated that the impact of environment had a profound effect on the brain. The brain was changed not only in size and structure but also in the way that it would subsequently deal with life's challenges.

The learning model of Skinner does not refer to systems or internal causes because it is difficult to observe and probably involve mechanisms or forces whose existence cannot be denied nor confirmed. Operant methodology can be used to test theoretical problems and hypotheses through experimental arrangements (Brace & Byford, 2010). Operant conditioning rejected speculation about the causes of behavior, and seeks to demonstrate experimentally in a direct current and historical determinants of behavior. The behavioral characteristics and their probability of occurrence are determined by environmental conditions, by events that precede or accompany the behavior, environmental events that change as a result of conduct and the previous experience of the body; within the context of this statement of conditioning operant behavior studies (Brace & Byford, 2010).

On the other hand, a middle-aged primate researcher named Harry F. Harlow introduced himself in the late fifties, an unusual mission: He wanted to build for the baby monkey in his lab a perfect mother. Of course, it appeared to some practical problems. The mothers had the irrepressible tendency of small monkeys stand up to nibble at everything in their cage, to dismantle and demolish. In the beginning, tried to Harlow and his students, who head the mother's cost-saving manner from pine, cones, but the little animals had chewed it in a flash heads to a pulp.

"Professor Harlow" remarked one of the students concerned, "the baby monkeys their mothers. Destroy" Harlow was rather amused. He lit another in an endless series of cigarettes and said dryly: “Destroy children ever since her parents' (Brace & Byford, 2010)

Discussion and Analysis

Operant Conditioning

The American psychologist BF Skinner was the most renowned expert on the phenomenon, as explained to strengthen the induction of a pattern of behavior determined by the repeated presentation of positive or negative after the execution of behaviors that resemble or differ from the pattern is to be established. In this theory, there is no particular importance to emotional and physiological factors. The reinforcement theory is the basis of the work of Skinner on the prediction and control of behavior in applied areas of psychology, ...