Understanding Learning through Behaviorism - Essay Example

Watson and Thorndike. The last section focuses on the process of how an individual learns a new behavior while following the guidelines of behaviorism. The invention of behavioral psychology or behaviorism came into existence with the experiment conducted by Pavlov on his dog and in this experiment was regarded as classical conditioning. The title of the founding father of behaviorism can easily be awarded to John B. Watson who first came up with the concept of psychological behaviorism. Watson first described the term in an article that was published during the period of 1913 (Smith, 1986, p.61). He stated that those psychologists were not comfortable with the methods of introspection as well as analogy because both these methods were highly biased.

He believed that the belief that an individual’s actions are a result of his/her unconscious mind is a superstitious way of studying behavior. After Watson, B.F. Skinner was one of those well-known behaviorists who further explored the field and distributed different ways of studying behaviorism into methodological and radical behaviorism. There are three essential components of behaviorism and these components should exist in order to help individuals and animals learn new behavior. These components include the stimulus (Ogden, 2011).

The term stimulus refers to any external object or element in an environment which can cause an individual to act in a certain manner. The second component is the response which basically the actions that humans or animals carry out as a result of being in contact with a particular stimulus. The third components is reinforcement which is the consequence that an individual may experience and this consequence is provided by the reinforce to help strengthen a behavior. One of the most renowned experiments that were conducted in the field of behaviorism based learning was conducted by Ivan Pavlov and his experiment is well recognized as