The Learning Theory of B. F. Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist who researched and published within the field of behaviorism. One of the most important psychologists of his time, Skinner created the concept of operant conditioning, that is, the act of preparing a response in the body through differential reinforcement. The idea is that, conditioned to a specific stimulus, subjects generate a response that can be selected.

For example: Rats can be taught to press a bar to activate a water fountain. In this case, the reinforcement for pressing the bar is the satisfaction of the thirst stimulus.

Behaviorists focus on the analysis of behavior, so the skinner's learning theory revolves around providing appropriate stimuli, observing responses, and selecting desirable behaviors.

Teaching can be considered successful when its subject is able to emit certain behavior, such as answering questions correctly on a test.

Therefore, learning is nothing more than the incorporation of new behaviors into the repertoire. The teacher's role would be to present the content and, above all, to be able to observe the student's responses. students and select the desirable ones, suppressing the undesirable ones by extinction (lack of reward) or punishment.

In Skinner's view, education is something that comes from the environment to the individual, and not the other way around, as competing lines (cognitivism) sometimes suggest.

The idea that private events (which do not generate observable responses, such as “getting emotional”, “thinking silently”, etc.) should be understood as learned behaviors, and not as something innate to human beings – such as an unknown inner genius or fickle whims – was revolutionary in the psychology.

Today, this concept is widely applied therapeutically in practical contexts, such as in the treatment of phobias, substance abuse, in the organizational behavior management, speech induction in people with developmental delay and treatment of spectrum disorders autistic.