1. Listen and put the following summary sentences in the appropriate order.
___ a A modern view of Watson and Raynor’s experiment is that it wasn’t very ethical.
___ b An example of behaviourist research is the work of Watson and Raynor.
___ c Conditioning is not the only way of learning.
___ d Behaviourism involves habit formation.
___ e Experiments with dogs and rats have shown behaviourism at wotk.
___ f The theory of behaviourism has had a big impact on learning.
___ g There are different theories of learning.
___ h Watson and Raynor wanted to reverse their experiment.
2. Listen again, and put the following in the correct place in the table. Some words can go in more than one column.
|
bar |
frightened |
noise |
|
bell |
fur coat |
phobia |
|
dogs |
habit formation |
prize |
|
1900-1950 |
influential |
rabbit |
|
food |
light |
Russia |
|
Albert |
Behaviourism |
Pavlov |
Rats |
|
|
|
|
|
3. Answer the questions.
a What do you understand by ‘habit formation’?
…………………………………………….
b What did Pavlov’s dogs think when they heard the bell?
…………………………………………….
c What did the rats learn to do in the end?
…………………………………………….
d Who was Albert?
…………………………………………….
e Why did Albert become frightened of his pet rabbit?
…………………………………………….
f What was the effect of other animals and fur on Albert?
…………………………………………….
g What was the response of Albert’s parents to the researchers’ desire to reverse the experiment?
…………………………………………….
Answers
1
The correct order is g, f, d, C, b, h, a, c.
2
Albert: frightened, fur coat, noise, phobia, rabbit
Behaviourism: 1900-1950, habit formation, influential, prize
Pavlov: bell, dogs, food, Russia
Rats: bar, light
3
a Habit formation is training people or animals to do something through repeated controlled practice tied to stimulus-response and rewards.
b They thought they were going to be fed.
e They learnt to press a bar when a light went on.
d He was a young boy who had a pet rabbit.
e Because the scientists made a loud and frightening noise every time he was near his rabbit.
f He became frightened of them too – because of the experiment.
g They were not keen on the idea.
Audioscripts
RADIO ANNOUNCER: Good afternoon and welcome to our second programme called ‘How do people learn’. The speaker is Professor Randy Onnix, head of Applied Linguistics at the University of Hameltown.
ONNIX: As I said last week, many people have tried to explain how we learn things, like how to drive, how to play a musical instrument, or how to speak a foreign language. There are many different theories for this, of course, and people are coming up with new ideas every day.
One of the most popular theories in the first half of the 20th century was called behaviourism, and its influence is still felt 100 years on. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the central tenets of behaviourism are still present in much teaching and learning that goes on today.
The theory of behaviourism is this: if you make someone do something and give them a prize, a reward when they do it correctly, and if you do this again and again and again, then they’ll learn to do it every time, and once they have learnt to do it in this way it will, in the end, no longer be necessary to give them that prize. The whole theory of behaviourism, in other words, depends on habit formation – that is getting people so habituated to a task that they do it without thinking.
Now, there are many examples of this type of habit formation. The Russian researcher Pavlov, for example, taught his dogs that the sound of a bell ringing meant that they were going to be given food. As a result, every time he rang the bell the dogs salivated – even, in the end, when there was no food. Then there were all the experiments with rats. When the rats saw a light, they had to press a bar in their cages. When they pressed the bar they got some food. They did it again and again and again. In the end they learnt to press the bar every time they saw the light.
But perhaps my favourite example of this kind of experiment happened in the United States way back in 1920. Two researchers, called Watson and Raynor, experimented on a young boy who had a beautiful pet rabbit. Watson and Raynor wanted to see if they could train Albert to feel differently about his rabbit and so every time he went near the animal they made a terrible noise and, quite naturally, little Albert became frightened. They did this again and again until the poor boy developed a phobia, first just about rabbits, then about animals in general and finally anything with fur. Every time Albert came face to face with an animal or a fur coat, he’d start to show symptoms of terrible fear, crying, feeling sick and feeling faint.
Watson and Raynor were really pleased! ‘This just shows that our theory works!’ they said. Then they talked to Albert’s parents. ‘Can we go on with the experiment?’ they asked. ‘We can turn it round and make Albert love rabbits again.’ But Albert’s parents told them, for some reason, to go away!
Watson and Raynor’s experiment sounds absolutely terrible to us today, but the idea of conditioning is still around. If people do the same thing enough times and get continual encouragement (or discouragement), the doing of it will become automatic – they will be able to do it without thinking.
Not all learning is the result of conditioning though. Other researchers have said that intelligence and creativity matter too. But that’s the subject of my next talk. Until then, goodbye.
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