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My Favorite Method of Teaching 3

Discussion in 'Snippets of Life (Non-Fiction)' started by sojourner, Mar 27, 2011.

  1. sojourner

    sojourner Silver IL'ite

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    I have been alluding a lot to psychology, learning theory, behavior and the like, without getting technical. In fact, I have been avoiding getting technical. The time has come now to do so, however.

    Let's say that a pigeon is housed in a housing with access to grain that will keep it at 80% of its free feeding weight. Let's also say that everyday at 3 PM, it is taken out and put in a chamber where it has the chance to peck at a key (like a piano key). Key packs are automatically recorded. It will be seen that the rate of responding will be a low number. You can repeat this experiment for 60 days and the rate will remain low.

    Let's say that a crucial change is made on the 61st day. A switch is thrown that causes each key peck to deliver grain for the pigeon to eat. Something dramatic happens to the rate of pecking. What had remained low for 60 days, immediately becomes hight due to the changed consequences of pecking, namely access to grain. This is called the law of effect.

    Like it or not the claim is this:

    All behavior (including thinking, talking, writing, and typing) in all animals (including humans) is shaped by the law of effect.

    This is the heart of it. Of course, there are details and details.

    This should sound incredible. (But so should be the claim that by adding impurities to something from sand, we can make microprocessors in a chip that will allow us to blog or watch Youtube videos.)

    The teaching techniques that I have been writing about try to make use of the law of effect, to shape desired behaviors in students.

    Here are some examples of desired behavior:

    A student is able to describe correctly how a periodic signal can be represented by a Fourier series.

    A student is able to recite correctly the Tamil poem கீறா

    A student is able to derive e = m c **2 from first principles

    :)
     
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  2. shivachoubey

    shivachoubey IL Hall of Fame

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    Dear Soujourner,

    The law of effect makes complete sense. I never knew about it but once I read this, I found it interesting.

    So something that will give a satisfying result will occur more.

    It must be really useful when trying to train someone for a particular task.

    Thanks for sharing :).

    regards

    Shiva
     
  3. sojourner

    sojourner Silver IL'ite

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    Shiva,

    Thanks for your comment. I was prepared for not getting a single comment for this blog entry. I am delighted to get one.

    > So something that will give a satisfying result will occur more.

    Many of the reinforcers are indeed satisfying. However, psychologists are careful. All they will say is there are consequences that act as reinforcers, i.e., make the preceding response more likely to occur under the current conditions. This has been experimentally observed hundreds of thousands of times.

    > It must be really useful when trying to train someone for a particular task.

    People have done all kinds of exciting things by designing contingencies that take advantage of the law of effect.

    1. The teaching methods that I have been writing about design setups that allows learning to occur using the law of effect. In other words, things are optimized so that the law of effect does the right things as opposed to the wrong things. Skinner once went to a 4th grade class where his daughter was studying. This was in Cambridge, MA, the home of Harvard University. (Skinner was a professor at Harvard then. This lady is an acquaintance of mine now.) He found that the teacher was reinforcing a lot of wrong behavior, in spite of the best of intentions. This is what spurred Skinner's interest in education.

    2. A couple of people used the law of effect to get animals to do all sorts of neat things for entertainment in a humane way. A chicken would grab a "record", put it on a turntable and spin it (which will start a song), and then dance to the song. Training of dolphins, whales, and the like also use the law of effect. Here are some links: Link 1, Link 2.

    3. Dr. Mary Joan Willard has trained small monkeys to help people who are severely disabled (those who cannot use their arms and legs), using the law of effect. This kind of training would be impossible without the scientific knowledge. I have already written about her in one of my blog entries here.
     

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