The current movement of behaviour modification wherein tokens are awarded for correct responses, is a reflection of

Let us observe a child learning to ride a bicycle. Perfection in riding the bicycle is not achieved through one trial. The child makes many attempts to acquire mastery over the skill. At the initial stage, he/she makes errors and gradually the errors are minimized. The child makes a number of attempts for a particular task or problem and finds his/her attempts ultimately rewarding.

• The Theory of Trial and Error Learning was developed by the American psychologist E.L.Thorndike through a series of experiments conducted on different animals, mostly on cats.
• From this experiment, Thorndike developed the following three laws of learning: Law of exercise, Law of readiness, and Law of effect.

Key Points

Law of Effect: Of the several responses, that occur just before a satisfying state of affairs tends to be learned easily. Those that occur before an annoying state of affairs tend to be forgotten or rejected.

• In other words, if the consequence to behavior is satisfying, then the behavior is likely to be learned.
• In this connection, the role of reward and praise have positive effects of strengthening the learned behavior whereas punishment and rebuff have the negative effect on the behavior being learned.

Thus, it is concluded that the current movement of behavior modification wherein tokens are awarded for correct responses, is a reflection of Thorndike’s Law of Effect.

Hint

• Law of Exercise:
  • Repetition of the activity makes the student retain the activity for a longer period. This essentially constituted of two laws: the law of use and law of disuse.
  • The first relates to the strengthening of the connection of stimulus (cause) and response(the behavior) by repetition and the second, the opposite of the first, relates to the weakening of connection when not used frequently.
• The five stepped system of lesson planning was started by J. Friedrich Herbert, a German psychologist. His five-stage system of lesson planning involves five discrete steps including preparation, presentation, association, generalization, and application.
• John Locke is famously attributed for holding the proposition that the human mind is a Tabula Rasa, a "blank slate,". He gave the theory of empiricism which states that a child is born with a clean slate that is to be filled with knowledge, data, or information in the later years.