Behavioral psychology is the first force in psychology, which has brought substantial influence on the scientific status, research objects, research methods and practical application of psychology, and is still affecting the current psychological research. The following is what I recommend to you, I hope you like it!

A review of children's view in behavioral psychology.

Behavioral psychology, initiated by American psychologist Watson in 19 13, has occupied a dominant position in this field for half a century. Its long duration and great influence are considered as the first force in the history of western psychology. In fact, the development of behavioral psychology is a process of constant compromise and concession to internal psychological problems, and it is also a process of gradual integration of psychological theories. The development of children's view of behavioral psychology is a process from individualization to individualization, from narrow intellectual education to all-round development, from external control to self-reinforcement, and it is also a scientific view of children.

Keywords: behaviorism; Psychology; Children's perspective

Since the advent of behavioral psychology, scholars have conducted in-depth, extensive and comprehensive research on it for a long time, but little research has been done on behavioral psychology's view of children. It is true that behavioral psychologists have not directly discussed their views on children, but we can get a glimpse of their basic theories and research purposes. This paper discusses the children's views of Watson, Skinner and Bandura, three representatives of old behaviorism, new behaviorism and new behaviorism, in order to outline the general framework of children's views in behavioral psychology.

First, the representative of the old behavioral psychology ―― A brief introduction to Watson's view on children.

19 13, American psychologist Watson declared that the traditional psychology, which had been focusing on the study of consciousness for a long time, went bankrupt, and a new psychology with explicit behavior as the research object was born, namely behavioral psychology.

1. The old behavioral psychology thought that children of human beings and animals had no specificity compared with animals. Watson, an old behaviorist, believes that behaviorism is the direct result of studying animal behavior during the first decade of the twentieth century [1]. Whether it is true or not, Watson's early research on animals is of great significance to promote the occurrence and development of behaviorism. There are many * * * characteristics between humans and animals, but this does not mean that we can draw an equal sign between humans and animals. Watson, an old behaviorist, once advocated that "behaviorists admit that they don't draw a clear line between man and beast" [2], so it is not difficult to see that behaviorists confuse the line between man and animal and ignore the difference between man and animal.

2. Old behaviorists deny heredity and instinct, and insist on children's "habit theory". Watson, an old scholar of behavioral psychology, once came to a conclusion that "we have never inherited things like material, talent, temperament, temperament and characteristics. These things, like instinct, are all derived from learning and learned in the cradle" [3]60. It is not difficult to see that the old behavioral psychology believes that a person is born with a whiteboard, and there is no heredity and instinct. In other words, in the old behavioral psychology, children were considered immature and barren. Apart from the inherited physical structure, they are as empty as containers waiting for others to instill knowledge, skills and emotions.

3. Old behaviorists deny children's subjective initiative and insist on "mechanical reductionism". Watson pointed out that no matter how complex the behavior is, it can be established through the mechanism of conditioned reflex, thus drawing the conclusion that babies can be shaped at will [4], simplifying children into a machine that responds to the outside world and ignoring their subjective initiative. At the same time, Watson once claimed that "give me a dozen healthy babies without defects ... and you can also train him to be a beggar or a thief" [3]63, from which we can see that in the eyes of old behaviorists, the formation of children's behavior depends entirely on the passive connection between * * * and reaction, and children can only respond to the * * * of the environment, but their ability to control the environment is very weak. This undoubtedly exaggerates the role of environment and education, ignoring children's freedom of will and subjective initiative.

Second, the representative figure of new behavioral psychology ―― a brief introduction of Skinner's view on children.

During the 65,438+00 years after the 1920s, the old behaviorism was too simple to study low-order psychological processes such as feelings and actions, and a change was brewing inside behaviorism, which formally formed a new behavioral psychology in the early 1930s.

1. The new behavioral psychology thinks that man and beast are the same thing. Skinner once talked about the difference between * * *, saying that "people are much bigger than dogs, but within the scope of scientific analysis, people and dogs are the same thing" [2]. It is not difficult to see that the new behaviorism, like the old behaviorism, has completely animalized people's psychology, although it admits the differences between people and animals to a certain extent.

2. Neo-behaviorists did not openly deny heredity and put forward the concept of "genetic environment". Skinner admits the existence of innate behavior, that is, he no longer holds children's "whiteboard theory" view and superficial environmental determinism view. But deeply influenced by Watson, he responded to Watson's environmental determinism in another way, that is, innate behavior is determined by another form of environment-genetic environment. Skinner saved the troubled old behaviorism with the concept of "play", but there was no innovation in essence, but it is gratifying that the child in the eyes of the new behaviorist is no longer a blank sheet of paper or a container waiting to be smeared and filled.

3. Neo-behaviorism recognizes the existence of people's inner psychological process, and at the same time acknowledges that people have self-cognition. Skinner said: "A proper behavioral science must consider the internal activities of biological groups" [2], which means that the new behavioral psychology recognizes that these people's internal psychological processes not only exist but also can be used as psychological research objects, although Skinner did not take them as research objects. Skinner admits that people are self-aware, but he opposes introspection, but he thinks that people can't accurately report what they know. It is not difficult to see that although the new behaviorism admits that people have self-awareness and can know themselves, it also believes that people are incompetent and cannot accurately report their self-awareness.

4. The operant conditioning of new behaviorism recognizes children's subjective initiative to some extent. It must be pointed out that Skinner did not openly admit that children have subjective initiative, but it is not difficult to find this from his theory. Skinner opposes Watson's S-R theory, and in its operating conditioning principle, it requires that when a child makes an expected behavior, he presents a positive * * *, or withdraws a disgusting * * *, and the child's behavior will reappear, and vice versa. It can be seen that children in the eyes of new behaviorism admit that people are alive, at least they think that children are individuals who have the subjective initiative to choose to pursue happiness and avoid pain.

Three. A New Representative of New Behavioral Psychology ―― A Brief Introduction to Bandura's View on Children

In 1950s, the strict environmentalism of old behaviorism and new behaviorism, as well as the views of human beings and animals, met with more and more opposition. At the same time, the rise of cognitive psychology makes the concepts of consciousness, thinking and memory, which are excluded by behaviorism, become the legal research objects of psychology again. In this situation, behaviorists represented by Bandura, Rolt and Mitchell boldly absorbed some reasonable viewpoints and achievements in cognitive psychology on the premise of adhering to the basic viewpoints of behaviorism, and new new behaviorism came into being. Its main representative theories are: Bandura's social learning theory, Mitchell's cognitive social learning theory and Mahoney's cognitive learning psychotherapy theory [5].

1. New behaviorism recognizes the particularity of human beings compared with animals. The new behaviorism, which developed in the opposition between traditional behaviorism and animal view, mainly takes people as the research object, abandons the alienation and distortion of children's view brought by the popularization of early animal research machinery, and recognizes that children are individuals different from animals.

2. Neo-behaviorism dialectically analyzes the relationship between congenital inheritance and acquired learning. Bandura believes that the human body has innate cortical structure, sensory-motor and other physiological characteristics, which leads to different behaviors of individuals. Therefore, Bandura believes that both innate physiological factors and acquired factors determine behavior, but acquired factors play a leading role [6]. It can be seen that the new behaviorism does not hold the "whiteboard theory" view of the old behaviorism, nor does it hold the concept of "genetic environment" of the new behaviorism, but believes that both heredity and environment determine human development, which is undoubtedly a great progress compared with the previous behaviorism.

3. New behaviorism emphasizes that self-regulation is the intermediary of behavior. Bandura denies the mechanistic view that behaviorism's environment determines behavior, advocates that man is the product of environment, and at the same time admits that man can actively adjust and transform the environment, affirming man's intrinsic motivation and individual initiative. In his view of children, children are no longer animals passively accepting the environment, but unique individuals with subjective initiative, self-regulating behavior and transforming the environment.

Fourthly, the evaluation of children's view in behavioral psychology.

How to evaluate behaviorism is often mixed. One view holds that behaviorism is a revolution in the history of western psychology, while the other holds that it is worthless. In the face of this mixed evaluation, the evaluation of behaviorist view of children should proceed from an objective standpoint, not only to see the progress of his view of children under the restriction of the development of social science at that time, but also to see the shortcomings of his view of children compared with that of contemporary children.

As far as its progress is concerned. First of all, behaviorists have changed from studying animals to studying people, which shows that with the passage of time and the progress and development of science, behaviorists have gradually realized that there are essential differences between humans and animals. The study of animals cannot be simply and mechanically extended to people, who have unique things besides the characteristics of animals. Secondly, behaviorism is the basic premise of his view on children from the consciousness of exclusion to the recognition of research consciousness. Studying people's inner psychological process is the premise of establishing people's uniqueness and the process of scientific psychology. Thirdly, behaviorists later realized and proved through experiments that children are individuals with self-awareness and subjective initiative, which was the most valuable at that time, especially in today's education and teaching. Finally, behaviorists constantly develop their own views on children while absorbing the strengths of other psychological schools, so that they are in constant development, evolution and progress, so that future generations can sort out and study their views on children vertically.

As far as its shortcomings are concerned. First of all, the early behaviorists mainly studied animals and extended their research results to humans, confusing the boundaries between people and animals and obliterating the differences between people and animals; Secondly, the early behaviorists denied the role of heredity in children's development, and thought that children were immature and barren, except for the inherited body structure, which was as empty as a container waiting for others to instill knowledge, skills and emotions, which made the view of children at that time fall into the "whiteboard theory" view; Finally, in theory, learning advocates mechanical training, treating children as containers of acceptance, ignoring children's willingness to learn independently. Therefore, in the eyes of behavioral psychology, children are completely passive individuals, no different from animals. As long as the conditions are carefully designed and controlled, people and behaviors that meet the requirements can be "created", which completely denies children's freedom of will and subjective choice, and children are regarded as the objects of mechanized operation. Therefore, it should be pointed out that the view of behavioral psychology on children is still extremely one-sided, and there is no complete system. While seeing its progress, we should also pay attention to its shortcomings, which can neither be completely denied nor overestimated.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) conclusion

In fact, the development of behavioral psychology is a process of constant compromise and concession to internal psychological problems, and it is also a process of gradual integration of psychological theories. The development of children's view of behavioral psychology is a process from individualization to individualization, from narrow intellectual education to all-round development, from external control to self-reinforcement, and it is also a scientific view of children. Children are people in a society, and their views on children are also the result of social construction. Children are children living in social changes, social structures and specific environmental circumstances [7]. Therefore, the concept of children in an era or a theoretical school is not eternal and fixed, but changes with the development of society and is always at a specific stage. The current view of children can criticize the behaviorism view of children, but the scientific view of children can not bypass this process. Therefore, an objective analysis of the evolution of this school's view of children is of great significance for understanding children and creating a better future for them.

References:

[1] Li Yang, Xiao Wen, Li Xiaojun. Analysis of three theories of psychological counseling [J]. Medicine and Philosophy: Humanities and Social Medicine Edition, 20072.

[2] Le Guoan. From Watson to Skinner ―― Comparison between old and new behaviorists [J]. Foreign Psychology, 19826.

[3] Zhang Houcan Behavioral Psychology [M]. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Education Press, 2003.

[4] Pauline. History of experimental psychology [M]. Beijing: Commercial Press, 198 1.

[5] YeHaoSheng. The evolution of behaviorism and new new behaviorism [J]. Psychological dynamics, 19927.

[6] Che Wenbo. History of western psychology [M]. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Education Press, 1998: 442.

[7] Wang Haiying. Reflection on China's View on Children in the 20th Century [J]. East China Normal University Press: Education Science Edition, 20086.

Click next, and more >>& gt?