Open skinner's box. #4. Creation of Virtual Feed

Slide 10. Skinner's diversity of ideas

While studying psychology, Skinner designed various devices and educational technologies and even invented a playpen for young children. The playpen was something like a closet with a built-in cradle for the baby, lying behind transparent glass. The box maintained the optimal temperature and humidity for the child; it contained a special mattress that could be easily changed, as well as educational toys. Since the temperature in the box was always comfortable, Skinner recommended keeping the baby naked at all times so that his tactile senses would develop without interference. It was in such a playpen that he raised his own daughter.

Skinner invented the theory and technique of programmed learning and teaching machines. True, he began to develop his teaching machine after he visited the fourth grade in which his daughter was studying and decided that something needed to be done to improve the educational process.

He developed a program for behavioral control of society, the ideas of which were outlined in the novel Walden Two, which remained popular fifty years after its publication. And in 1971, his book “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” became a national bestseller.

All his ideas and inventions were based on the orthodox behaviorist view that such “subjective realities” as mind, thought, memory, and reasoning do not exist. In fact, they are only “verbal constructions, grammatical traps into which humanity fell in the process of language development,” “explanatory entities that are in themselves inexplicable.” Skinner's goal was not to understand the psyche, but to determine how behavior is shaped by external causes. He had no doubt about the correctness of his views and wrote that “behaviorism may need clarification, but there is no need to prove it.”

The influence of positivist philosophy on Skinner was mentioned above. One of the important elements of positivism is the operational approach or operationalism. Operationalism argues that the significance of theories or specific scientific data depends on the significance of the measurement operations that were used to obtain these data. All concepts lacking a physical measurement basis must be discarded.

The main principles of operationalism were first outlined by Bridgman in his book “The Logic of Modern Physics” (1927), which attracted the attention of many psychologists, especially behaviorists.

Behaviorists especially liked Bridgman's point about discarding pseudo-problems - that is, those problems for which the answers cannot be verified by objective experiments. All concepts or assumptions that cannot be subjected to experimental testing - such as questions about the existence or essence of the soul - have no meaning for science.

Skinner objectified and measured everything, that is, operationalized it. The picture shows a significantly modified Thorndike cell - Skinner's problem box, a device for studying patterns operant activity of experimental animals

Operant behavior occurs without the influence of any external observable stimuli. The body's response appears spontaneous in the sense that it is not externally related to any observable stimulus. This does not mean at all that the stimulus causing this or that reaction does not exist; this means that when a given reaction occurs, no stimulus is observable.

For which I thank her very much. I read it a long time ago, then re-read individual chapters, but I didn’t understand from which side to take up the review. And I still don't understand. So I’ll start as a C student - with a retelling of “what this book is about,” and then, you see, my thoughts will come up.

A book about ten experiments, events, phenomena that determined the development of social psychology in the 20th century, and the water ripples that they caused. The author interviews eyewitnesses, participants in experiments, relatives of experimenters, visits those same ones laboratories. This is the strong point of the book and what constituted its main value for me. Textbook stories acquire living color and scent.

1. First chapter - about Skinner and his black boxes . In America, this name is overgrown with eerie legends - they say that he kept his daughter Deborah in a box from birth, developing some kind of conditioned reflexes in her; Deborah, who grew up, tried to bring her father to trial for bullying, lost the trial and shot herself. Skinner himself admitted that his methods echoed fascist ones and could be used by totalitarian regimes. Lauren Slater found the same Deborah - alive - and Skinner's other daughter, recorded their memories of their father and the truth about the very box in which Deborah was placed. I met with his colleagues who jealously called him the author of the only overrated discovery. Meeting Skinner's family forced Lorin, a supporter of the humanistic trend in psychology, to reconsider her views on the founder of behaviorism and his
contribution to science.

2. Second chapter dedicated to the famous Milgram experiment . While studying obedience to authority, Stanley Milgram had subjects administer “electric shocks” to people, gradually increasing the voltage to dangerous and even lethal levels. The results of the experiment were shocking - the majority of the experiment participants obeyed the experimenter, even though they considered their actions to be wrong and harmful to another person.
Laurin found two participants in the experiment - one who obeyed the order and one who refused to follow the instructions. And this is perhaps the most interesting moment in the book - the explanations of each of them why they acted in this way.

3. The third experiment and the third chapter - Rosenhan's experiment showing the bias of psychiatrists . Rosenhan and his assistants in the 70s. came to the waiting rooms of psychiatric hospitals and said that they heard a voice in their heads that said the word “Plop!” All of them were hospitalized with psychiatric diagnoses, and although after hospitalization they reported that their voice had disappeared, they continued to be treated. Moreover, their life stories were interpreted by doctors to explain the “disease.” Lauren Slater decided to test for herself whether it is possible to repeat Rosenhan's experiment in the 21st century.

4. The fourth chapter is devoted to the case that led to a series of experiments on ignoring requests for help and the emergence Darlie and Lathan's Five-Step Guide . In 1964, America was shocked by the news that 38 witnesses silently watched from their apartment windows as their neighbor was stabbed for half an hour and heard her calling for help, but none of them called the police or an ambulance. Darlie and Lathan tried to understand why no one got help for the victim, even something as safe as calling the police. The results of their experiments turned out to be as shocking as the result of Milgram's experiment - people for the most part tend to remain inactive even when they have the opportunity to provide help, and it is safe for them. The experimenters compiled a guide, familiarization with which can increase the willingness of witnesses to help.

5. The fifth chapter is devoted to the favorite phenomenon of intellectual journalists - cognitive dissonance and its discoverer Leon Festinger . Festinger studied the rationalization mechanisms that people are forced to use when incompatible ideas arise in their minds or when faith and facts are incompatible. For example, Festinger observed how members of a sect that announced the date of the end of the world would behave at the moment when it became clear that the end of the world would not happen. Unfortunately, Lorin writes little specifically about the experiments of Festinger and his students.

7. The seventh chapter is the most controversial in the book. She about Bruce Alexander's theory of addiction and his rat park experiment . Alexander in the early 1980s. put forward the hypothesis that addiction does not have a physiological mechanism, only a psychological one. To prove the hypothesis, Alexander built an ideal place for the experimental rats, where there was plenty of space, food, water, shelter, and entertainment. They were also offered temptations, for example, morphine mixed into sugar syrup. The rats living in the park tried the drug once, but did not show any desire to receive it again and again, even though it was available. While rats living in cramped, dirty cages quickly abandoned water in favor of morphine syrup. Alexander tried to extrapolate his “rat” experience to people, collecting many cases of people starting to take alcohol or drugs while in unfavorable, traumatic conditions, and stopping taking it as soon as they found themselves in favorable conditions. He is inclined to explain cases that deviate from this scheme by saying that the environment is unfavorable for a person and there is no comfort.
Lauryn Slater decides to test Alexander's theory on herself and begins taking opiates orally, although she quickly quits this business without proving anything to herself.

8. The eighth chapter tells about Elizabeth Loftus's experiments with induced false memories . It is enough to ask questions correctly or convincingly tell a person the facts that allegedly happened to him, so that a conviction arises that something happened in the past that actually did not happen. These experiments cast doubt on many eyewitness accounts and court cases.

9. The ninth chapter is also about the mechanism of memory, more precisely, about Eric Kandell's experiments with sea slugs . Kandell studied the mechanism of memory at the neuronal level by training sea sleds. These experiments led to the discovery of the CREB molecule, which is responsible for the formation of long-term memory. In my opinion, the chapter really falls out of the book, since it is about psychophysiology, and not about social psychology, like the rest of the book. The author, of course, tries to draw parallels with the previous chapter and raise ethical questions arising from Kandell's discovery, but the contrast when reading is striking.

10. The book ends with a chapter about Moniz and lobotomy . The chapter is not so much about the history and current state of psychosurgery, but about the extent to which these are experimental procedures and how much they are based on facts, and how much on guesswork.

_______________________

The whole time I was reading this book, I wondered who it was for, and what its main idea was. Lorin Slater herself seems to consider her main task to outline the range of moral and ethical problems associated with each experiment. She does this in a very personal and very American manner - dumping on the reader the fear of a repeat of September 11, complaints about the fact that her two-year-old daughter does not sleep at night and the history of being in a mental hospital in her youth. The abstract introduces her as a famous modern philosopher, but her reasoning is quite primitive, at the level of a blog post or an article in a popular magazine. Probably, this is all to make it easier for the reader to get acquainted with difficult topics. The result is that the book is really easy to read. It just doesn’t leave a solid feeling. Many of the arguments are quite controversial. However, I really liked some of the chapters. As a book for additional reading and discussion for students of humanities - good. It may be interesting to the general reader, but it provides practically no real knowledge about these experiments. So, flair, atmosphere and thoughts about it.

I personally didn’t like the translation. Nora Gal's medal and book to the editor and translator for the word "leprechaun" and a bunch of inconsistent sentences.

I'm ready to send paper book further, who wants? Preference to mutual friends.

B. F. Skinner is responsible for a number of changes in ideas about what operant conditioning is and how to study it. His method of studying operant conditioning was simpler than Thorndike's (e.g., only one response was used) and became widely accepted.

<Рис. Б. Ф. Скиннер явился основоположником изучения оперантного обуславливания.>

Variations of the experiment. In Skinner's experiment, a hungry animal (usually a rat or pigeon) is placed in a box like the one shown in Fig. 7.6, popularly called "Skinner box".

Rice. 7.6. Operant conditioning device. The photo shows a Skinner box with a cassette for dispensing food balls. A computer is used to control the experiment and record the rat's responses.

The inside of the drawer is empty except for a protruding lever under which sits a food plate. The small light above the lever can be turned on at the experimenter's discretion. Left alone in the box, the rat moves around and explores it. By chance she discovers a lever and presses it. The frequency with which the rat initially presses the lever is the background level. After establishing the background level, the experimenter triggers a food cassette located outside the box. Now, every time the rat presses the lever, a small ball of food falls into the plate. The rat eats it and soon presses the lever again; food reinforces pressing the lever, and the frequency of pressing increases rapidly. If the food cassette is disconnected so that pressing the lever no longer delivers food, the frequency of pressing will decrease. Consequently, an operantly conditioned response (or simply an operant) with non-reinforcement fades in exactly the same way as a classically conditioned response. The experimenter can establish a differentiation criterion by presenting food only when the rat presses a lever while the light is on, thereby conditioning the rat through selective reinforcement. In this example, light serves as a differentiating stimulus that controls the response.

So, operant conditioning increases the likelihood of some response when a certain behavior is accompanied by reinforcement (usually in the form of food or water). Since the lever is always present in the Skinner box, the rat can press it as often or as often as it chooses. Thus, the frequency of a response serves as a convenient measure of the strength of an operant: the more often a response is made in a given time interval, the greater its strength.

It is worth pointing out the relationship between the terms “reward” and “punishment” on the one hand, and “positive” and “negative reinforcement” on the other. The term "reward" can be used synonymously with the term "positive reinforcer" - an event that increases the likelihood of a particular form of behavior if it follows that form of behavior. However, punishment is not the same as negative reinforcement. The term "negative reinforcement" means the cessation of the occurrence of undesirable events following a particular form of behavior; like positive reinforcement, it increases the likelihood of appropriate behavior. Punishment has the opposite effect: it reduces the likelihood of punished behavior. Punishment can also be either positive (exposure to an unpleasant stimulus) or negative (deprivation of a positive stimulus) (see Table 7.3).

Table 7.3. Types of reinforcement and punishment

Introduction

Skinner believed that humans are essentially no different from other animals and that we are more similar to them than we would like to admit. Studying the works of I.P. Pavlov led B. Skinner to the conclusion that predicting what the average individual will do is often of little or no significance when dealing with a specific individual. (This corresponds to the rule of logic: what is true for a collective concept may turn out to be false for the object included in this concept.) In addition, he became convinced that psychology would turn from a probabilistic science into an exact one. B. Skinner considered Darwin, D. Watson, I.P. to be his predecessors. Pavlova.

The study of philosophy led B. Skinner to the idea that behaviorism is not a science of human behavior, it is the philosophy of such a science. Behaviorism can formulate clearly questions to which answers can be found. He argued that one must proceed only from data. “Science is the desire to deal with facts, and not with what someone says about them... It is a search for orderliness, uniformity, law-like relationships between events in nature... It [science] begins... with observations of individual episodes, but quickly moves on to general rules and from them to scientific laws.”

Personality is viewed by Skinner as the sum of behavioral patterns. Different situations cause different reactions. Each individual reaction is based on previous experiences and genetic makeup. There is no personality other than the sum of behavior. Skinner is not concerned with the causes and motives of behavior, but only with the behavior itself.

During his experiments on animals, Skinner achieved his most significant achievements - he began to develop programmed learning. His research has shown that when people receive immediate and rapid feedback as they learn, their learning occurs much faster.

In late 1929 and early 1930, Skinner worked on a modification of a device that Yale behaviorist Clark L. Hull initially called the Skinner Box. Even earlier, Fred Skinner would construct a soundproof box that would help isolate the animal from distracting noises, thereby making the experiment more manageable.

Skinner made a treadmill out of spruce planks. The rat received food at the end of the track, then it was carried by hand back to the soundproof box for a new attempt. Moving the rat by hand was ineffective, so he designed a return path so that the rat could return without the intervention of the experimenter without swerving. The food stimulus encouraged her to try again. But a new unexpected effect was discovered: the rat did not always repeat the attempt immediately after eating the food. She waited for some time before trying again, and the animal's hesitation interested Skinner. What if you study the time between eating food and starting a new run? Soon he could control this variable (time) during the experiment. Skinner then shortened the rat's path to running along a tilting board. When the rat ran away, but along this shortened path, it tilted the board, and due to the tilt, the disk rotated, from which food began to pour into the feeder. Since the rat thus obtained its own food, it began to jog more often, and the kymograph mark was set further and further. By drawing lines between the marks, Skinner was able to graphically measure the time between individual runs - this was the most reliably measured value.

One thing clung to another, and now, an unexpectedly happy accident, an insight - perhaps the greatest success in Skinner's experimental career. The wooden disk that served to supply food had a central spindle, the protruding part of which the scientist did not cut off: one day it occurred to him to wind a rope around the spindle and let it unwind as the disk emptied. Thus, he received a new way of registration. Now, instead of marks, it had a curve - a curve that allowed changes in the rate of reaction to be detected, which was impossible to do with the help of marks. Skinner invented a storage recording device that recorded curves with remarkable accuracy. He obtained a food absorption curve and "the tangent of the curve indicated exactly how hungry the rat was at that moment in time."

Now there was no need for an inclined board: it was enough just a box with a wire bent horizontally, with the help of which food was supplied; when the rat was in a hurry, regular changes were noted on the curves of the cumulative recording device. On his 26th birthday, Fred wrote to his parents: “What has always been considered the “free behavior” of a rat turns out to obey a completely natural law, like its pulse rate.” An amazing scientific achievement of the young Skinner was the opportunity to see with his own eyes how something he had predicted in advance actually happened before his eyes.

In the spring of 1930, two more amazing discoveries occurred. Skinner recalls: "I was not at all trying to prove that 'reinforcement' changes behavior, but to my amazement I discovered that this is exactly the case." Indeed, the rat eventually presses the lever, the food spills out and is eaten. However, it is not food that provides immediate reinforcement. This is represented by the knocking of the feeder in which the food is located: “If I give an animal food, it does not happen at the same time. When the rat pushes the lever and a “bom” is heard, this “bom” is the main thing. It absolutely coincides in time with the movement of the rat , and this is what makes immediate reinforcement possible."

His interest in pigeons began in April 1940, while traveling by train to Chicago. Looking out the window at the landscape passing by, he drew attention to the birds that were flying next to the train, soaring up and describing circles, without disturbing the harmonious order in the ratio of groups. Birds seemed to him like mechanisms with extraordinary maneuverability and the ability to accurately navigate. Why not use them as a control device for missiles used to intercept enemy bombs - bombs that kill and maim thousands of civilians? This was the beginning of a government-funded program to develop the idea of ​​bird-guided missiles called Project Dove. Although the government eventually abandoned the use of pigeons for these purposes, Skinner's efforts to develop "pigeon technology" launched his career as a social inventor. The pigeons developed a conditioned behavior - they had to peck at the target inside the rocket, which would then disable the bomb. Pigeon technology was simply a way to achieve a social effect - minimal loss of human life during wartime bombing.

Skinner conducted studies with pigeons to study "superstitious" behavior. Some psychologists have argued that superstitions are an example of uniquely human behavior. In order to refute this, Skinner conducted an experiment. To do this, he built a food dispenser so that food pellets fell into the tray at intervals of 15 seconds, regardless of what the animal was doing at that time. Those. in this case, reinforcement was provided that was not random. In other words, the animals received reinforcement every 15 s, regardless of what they did. The test subjects in this study were 8 pigeons. They were fed less than their normal diet for several days, so at the time of testing they were hungry, and therefore highly motivated to carry out the activity necessary to obtain food. Each pigeon was placed in an experimental chamber for a few minutes every day, where it was free to behave in a pigeon-like manner. During this period, reinforcement was delivered regularly every 15 s. After several days of such conditioning, two independent observers recorded the birds' behavior in the chamber. As Skinner writes, in six of the eight cases the reactions were so clearly defined that the descriptions of both observers were completely consistent with each other. One of the birds developed a reaction consisting of moving around the cage counterclockwise and making 2 or 3 turns in between reinforcements. Another one stretched her head over and over again into one of the upper corners of the camera, the third demonstrated rocking movements, alternately as if sticking her head under an invisible barrier and lifting it up. Another bird exhibited movements resembling feather preening, directed toward the floor but not touching it. None of these movements had been observed in birds before the experiment. However, the birds behaved as if a certain action generated food, i.e. they became "superstitious".

Next, Skinner decided to see what would happen if the time interval between reinforcements was increased. For one of the head-shaking birds, the interval between food distributions was increased to one minute. As the interval increased, the pigeon's movements became more and more energetic, until finally, the steps forced by the intense movement of the head became so pronounced that the bird seemed to be performing some kind of dance during the minute interval between reinforcements. Eventually, the birds' newly formed behavior was extinguished. This means that reinforcement for that behavior has stopped. The “superstitious” behavior gradually faded away and stopped. However, in the case of the hoping pigeon, where the interval was increased to 1 minute, more than 10,000 responses were recorded before extinction occurred. The bird behaves as if there is a cause-and-effect relationship between its behavior and the appearance of food, although in fact there is none.

The next step is to apply this data to a person. Skinner described how the bowler, who has pushed the ball along the lane, continues to behave as if he were controlling its movement, bending and turning his arm and shoulder to follow the moving ball. Skinner noted. That it would not be entirely correct to say that there is no connection between the movements of the bowler's arm and shoulder and the movement of the ball. It is true that after the ball is released from the hand, the behavior of the bowler does not affect the ball, but the behavior of the ball does influence the bowler. The reason for the extraordinary resistance of superstitions to extinction was demonstrated by a pigeon that "hoped" 10,000 times before its "superstitious" behavior ceased. When a behavior is reinforced only occasionally, it is still more difficult to extinguish. This is driven by a strong expectation that superstitious behavior may “work” and produce reinforcing consequences. It is not difficult to imagine that if the connection between action and reinforcement occurred in each individual case and then disappeared, then superstitious behavior would cease quickly. However, in humans, situations in which such random reinforcements occur tend to occur over a long time interval, and as a result, superstitious behavior often persists throughout life.

Skinner left Harvard in 1936 to take his first teaching position at the University of Minnesota; he was no longer a bachelor; his wife was Yvonne Blue, the daughter of a prosperous ophthalmologist from Chicago. By 1944, the Skinner family already had two daughters, Julia and Deborah. Fred's closest social circle, his family, greatly influenced his activity as a social inventor.

Still reeling from the disappointment of the government's rejection of the Dove Project, in the summer of 1944, spurred in his creative efforts by the birth of his second daughter, Deborah, Skinner began building a special device. At first he called it a “mechanical nanny”, then the device received the trade name “air chamber”. Skinner's device provided a unique living space for his newborn daughter - a thermostat with adjustable environmental parameters, an enclosed chamber with a safety glass viewing window and an elastic floor with a gauze bedding that could be easily changed when dirty. The child was kept in ideal, comfortable conditions without any zip-up pajamas and even without diapers. Deborah enjoyed extraordinary freedom of movement and grew up to be a strong, healthy child. In addition, the camera freed his wife. She no longer needed to constantly monitor Dobora’s condition, although at any time she had the opportunity to take the child out of the cell to hold her in her arms or play.

Deborah Skinner is responsible for another invention that has great social potential. Deborah learned to read much more slowly than her sister Julia, which greatly upset both her and her father. Fred Skinner became concerned about the quality of teaching at Shady Hill, a private school attended by the children of many Harvard employees. One day, Skinner visited his daughter and was horrified by the way mathematics was taught in the classroom. Some children had already finished solving problems and had nothing else to do; others struggled unsuccessfully with the task; The test results could only be found out the next day. It occurred to him that there must have been a more rational way of teaching. And he designed the first primitive teaching machine - a device in which mathematical problems were printed on accordion-folded paper tape, and later on cardboard cards. The questions were selected with gradually increasing difficulty to ensure that the respondent was able to obtain the correct answers. The movable lever, using a transparent window, showed whether the problem had been solved correctly. If the student's answer was correct, another lever was moved, presenting the next question. If the answer to a question was incorrect, the lever could not move and the student was given the opportunity to try to solve the problem correctly. The machine could not read the correct or incorrect answer; all she could do was use a mechanical device to show whether the task was completed correctly.

The essence of Skinner's invention was the development of educational schemes in which the student was ensured to progress from the simplest task of arithmetic or spelling to increasingly difficult ones, but so gradually that the student rarely made mistakes. Reinforcement in the form of a demonstration in the box of the correct answer to a question encouraged the student to move on to the next question, then to the next, allowing, in the end, to completely master the subject.

Thus, the student mastered the topic not by trial and error, but driven by a stimulus in the form of reinforcements - his own correct answers to the questions appearing in the window. But Skinner realized that the success of his invention was hampered not only by his inability to find the right approach to American entrepreneurs. School teachers and administrators feared that teaching machines would put them out of work.

skinner programmed behavior training

Conclusion

Behaviorists have come to the conclusion that conditioning occurs without awareness. It is observed even in a dream. Conditioning is maintained independently of consciousness. This led Skinner to the conclusion that the power of consciousness to control behavior had been greatly exaggerated. But still, conditioning is most effective when a person is aware of it and actively participates in its development.

Skinner's developments on programmed learning are interesting. Here, each student moves at his own pace. He moves on to a more complex task after he has mastered a less complex one. Thanks to gradual progress, the student is almost always right (positive reinforcement), since he is constantly active and receives immediate confirmation of his success. In addition, the question is always formulated in such a way that the student can understand what is essential and give the correct answer. The program compiler is responsible for the content of the program and its accessibility; the teacher can only help individual students and organize class work outside of the programmed material.

Skinner's work has had a great influence on psychology, clinical practice and pedagogy. New schools of psychotherapy, new social practices, and new teaching technologies have emerged. Unfortunately, we stayed away from all this.

But even in the West, Skinner’s ideas were severely criticized by journalists for denying the ideas of freedom, creativity, personality, psychologists for not paying attention to other problems, philosophers and theologians for ignoring the problem of inner being. Nevertheless, Skinner offered his direct and clear view of human nature. It allows us to understand ourselves without resorting to intuition and divine intervention.

List of sources used

1. Litvak M.E. From hell to heaven: Selected lectures on psychotherapy / Textbook. - Rostov N/D: Phoenix Publishing House, 1997. - 448 p.

2. Hawk Roger R.40 studies that shocked psychology. Secrets of outstanding experiments. - St. Petersburg: “Prime-EVROZNAK”, 2003. - 416 p.

3. http/ www.bfskinner.org/ index.asp