Behaviorism is one of the main theoretical currents that have explored and attempted to explain human behavior. From a perspective that aims to work solely from verifiable and objective empirical data, this approach represented a great revolution at the time and has represented a notable advance in developing new perspectives and improving existing ones.
Over time, different subtypes of behaviorism have emerged, focusing on different elements or making various relevant theoretical contributions. One of the existing subtypes of behaviorism is William David Timberlake’s biological behaviorism.
Behaviorism, as a science that studies human behavior based on empirically evident objective elements, has analyzed human behavior based on the capacity for association between stimuli and responses and between the emission of behaviors and the consequences of these that will cause the behavior to be reinforced or inhibited.
However, although it has diverse and very useful applications, behavioral practices and techniques have traditionally been carried out in non-natural contexts, located in a controlled environment in which other multiple facets that can affect the behavior are not taken into account. .
Furthermore, the subject is usually considered to be a merely reactive entity, which receives the properties of the stimuli and reacts accordingly, producing learning. It is not usually taken into account that the subject has characteristics that influence behavior, with traits and abilities being rather the result of learning. Various neobehaviorist authors have varied this approach, taking into account the capabilities of the subject himself and the inheritance of behavior patterns and partially innate abilities.
The perspective defended by Timberlake’s biological behaviorism proposes that learning is a biologically based phenomenon that occurs from behavioral patterns and constitutional dispositions that are innately given and that are linked to the niche or environment in which the subject it develops.
This is a version of behaviorism in which both functional and structural factors of behavior are combined. Natural selection has generated the evolution of perceptual dispositions, the skills and behavioral patterns that allow conditioning to be generated and certain ways of understanding or acting to be learned more or less easily. In other words, Timberlake defends the existence of variables and brain structures that help explain behavior.
The role of context
The niche or functional context is the place in which the subject develops and that allows the organism to evolve. This niche has a structure and properties that allow, through learning, modifications to be generated in the elements already pre-existing in the subject.
So, the experience and activity of the individual generate a modification of the responses to the environment and a change in preference and perception of stimulation. In other words, we learn from experience to generate alterations in the body. The characteristics of the stimulus will be perceived differently as the subject acts.
In this aspect, biological behaviorism is novel, since it assumes that behavior is not generated by the stimuli themselves but only causes a change in already pre-existing conditions. It is the subject who actively generates structural changes that allow him to react to reality in certain ways, but it is taken into account that there are elements that are relevant to the environment and learning.
Timberlake’s biological behaviorism proposes the existence of behavioral systems groups of independent functional patterns organized hierarchically and that describe the organization of the basic functions for the survival of the individual even before learning, which will vary said structuring.
This system is configured by various behavioral subsystems, which specifies a part of the function that generally explains the type of action that is carried out.
These subsystems, in turn, are configured by the modes or ways in which each action is performed or reality is perceived, which is part of the different behavioral subsystems. In these ways modules or categories are derived that group various actions. And in each module specific responses appear that can be provoked by environmental stimulation.
The learning
Although William D. Timberlake’s biological behaviorism is based on an ecological conception that takes into account the existence of internal aspects that allow learning to be directed, the truth is that Timberlake defends that learning is still an effect of behavior itself. And the different systems need learning at a behavioral level to be able to develop and modify effectively.
Each organism comes with a set or set of skills that allow it to learn certain behaviors when faced with certain stimuli. For example, if we had no perception of pain we would not remove our hand from the fire. But having this perception of pain will not keep us from reaching out to the bonfire either. We will not learn to do it if we do not make, through experience or learning, the set of associations between stimulus and response.
Biological behaviorism is a subtype of behaviorism that part of BF Skinner’s radical behaviorism and that studies behavior through operant conditioning, but takes into account the existence of an exploratory contact of the elements of a system before the association begins to be made. In order for the study subject to carry out real conditioning, it is necessary to tune the environment and the subject so that what can be learned adjusts to the subject’s possibilities and the subject can learn.
Bibliographic references:
Timberlake, W. (2001). Motivational modes in behavioral systems. In RR Mowrer and SB Klein (Eds.), Handbook of contemporary learning theories (pp. 155-209). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Timberlake, W. (2004). Is the operant contingency enough for a science of purposive behavior? Behavior and Philosophy, 32, 197-229.
