Learning and behavior

Understanding human behavior (and even animal behavior) is of great use to society as a whole and of special importance to psychology. The greater the knowledge of psychology about behavior and the learning of new behaviors, the greater the possibility of change, aiming at the well-being of all.

In this text, we will present three concepts of behavioral psychology that are very important: 1) behavior and respondent conditioning, 2) operant behavior and 3) modeling.

Behavioral psychology seeks to study and understand behavior. In English, this approach to psychology is called behaviorism (behavior + ism; the English word behavior means behavior).

At this point, we can ask ourselves: how does the learning of new behaviors take place?

Learning can be understood as a change in behavior, a change that remains relatively stable in the future.

That is, there were a series of behaviors, and now we find a new behavior in the repertoire – the organism learned and maintained a new possibility of altering its environment.

It could be said that the learning of human beings, peculiar and with great potential, represents their possibility to evolve, and succeed in their evolutionary process. It is this learning potential that allows social, cultural and technological transformations, which lead the human species to important changes in its environment.

respondent conditioning

Respondent conditioning is particularly important with regard to the organism’s survival, in addition to maintaining its proper functioning, as it enables rapid and relatively simple learning.

In human beings, the respondent conditioning allows the organism a successful adaptation to the environment, as for example we have the case of a person who ate feijoada, which was the consequence of malaise.

Subsequently, the slight smell of feijoada elicits responses in the organism of malaise, which allowed it to protect itself from a possible malaise if it ate that dish.

Operant Behavior

Operant behavior – behavior that operates on the environment and therefore modifies it – is mainly controlled by the consequences that the organism’s response to the environment causes.

The difference between the operant and the respondent is that the first one produces original behavior, that is, subject to change when the consequences are changed, while the respondent only puts the reflex behavior under the control of new stimuli.

Operant behavior has three components:

1) the antecedent stimulus

2) answer

3) consequences

That is: the antecedent stimulus, which establishes the occasion for the response that in turn will produce consequences.

Most human behavior can be described as operant behavior.

If a new consequence is introduced, the response changes. Or, on the contrary, if a certain consequence is withdrawn, there is a probability that the person will no longer present the same response.

For example, a couple of lovers love each other very much. One fine day, for a number of reasons, she breaks up with him.

At first, with her absence (antecedent stimulus), he calls (response) her (who answered him when they were dating).

Since they broke up, she no longer takes his calls. What happens?

He starts to have, little by little, a new behavior – that of not calling her.

Modeling

Modeling takes place when a specific answer is reached with successive approximations to the desired answers. These approaches are similar, though less specific, to the ultimate response, so that over time they enable the organism to achieve that ultimate response through positive reinforcement of those early responses.

Through this process, which takes place over a period of time, the new operant is produced and inserted into the organism’s behavioral repertoire.

As an example of modeling, we have the learning of a musical instrument, the guitar. Initially, the teacher demands and reinforces simple and slightly wrong answers, and later, over time, he starts not reinforcing such answers, focusing the reinforcement only on the desired, more specific and complex answers. Likewise, learning to write a language, whether native or foreign, as well as learning a sport, such as football.

Related