A Behaviourist perspective: reading as decoding

Behaviourism essentially developed in reaction to the ―introspective psychology‖ that developed during the late 19th _{and early 20}th _{centuries. Instead researchers focused} on instructional approaches which gave rise to the theoretical perspective of Behaviourism and remained the predominant educational and psychological theory for well into the 1960s (Tracey & Morrow, 2006:32). Behaviourism drew on Positivism (see 2.1) and called for ―experiment, control, objectivity and careful record keeping, concise definitions of behaviour and statistical analysis‖ (Willis, 2008:188). Watson (2008:6) states that Behaviourism asks ―Why don‘t we make what we can observe the real field of psychology?‖ Models about language that emerged from the Behaviourist period were based on observation, often because the study of language evolved from the interests of anthropologists and psychologists who were primarily concerned with the study (observation) of human beings. Fieldwork was emphasized and linguists were advised to study the behaviour of native speakers. Claims about language were viewed as legitimate only if they could be supported by proof of meticulous observation and analysis of as much data as possible (Chapman, 2006:29). Little importance was given to unobservable mental functions, internal processes, emotions or the context in which thoughts evolved. Two underlying assumptions tend to be present in Behaviourism: that behaviour is the result of an

organism‘s response to stimuli, and that external stimuli can be manipulated to strengthen or reduce behaviour.

The resulting theories of reading during the Behaviourist period were based on attempts to determine the process of reading and comprehension from observable behaviours or test results. Two influential behavioural theories that emerged during the period were Connectionism, usually attributed to Thorndike (1874-1949) and the Operant Conditioning Theory, usually attributed to Skinner (1904-1990).

Thorndike is credited with developing psychological connectionism. He believed that ―neural connections‖ were formed between perceived stimuli and emitted responses through experiences, that intellect played a part in the formation of neural bonds and, therefore, that people of ―higher intellect‖ could form more bonds and form them more easily than people of lower ability (Plucker, 2007). Thorndike proposed the three laws that were considered to have had a considerable effect on learning (the law of Effect, the law of Readiness and the law of Exercise) which highlighted the importance of linking new knowledge to existing knowledge in a learning situation (Tracey & Morrow, 2006:35-36; Plucker, 2007). The laws also placed focus on the social side of learning, i.e. the importance of learners‘ interaction with teachers (even if in terms of Thorndike‘s laws the ―interaction‖ would merely entail praise from the teacher upon the successful completion of a task by the learner).

Skinner‘s work was largely a continuation of Pavlov and other Behaviourists‘ work on the importance of association in learning and the relationship between behaviour and its consequences. However, his work differed in the sense that he believed Connectionism accounted for a very small part of learned behaviour. Skinner believed not all human learning was automatic and unintentional but rather that people deliberately ‗operated‘ in their environments to produce different kinds of consequences. He described these deliberate actions as ―operants‖ (Woolfolk, 1998:208). In essence Skinner believed that it was not as important to identify the stimulus which started behaviour, as to inspect the consequences of the behaviour – if consequences were rewarding, behaviour would be maintained and be ―increased in strength and perhaps frequency‖ (Brown, 1987:17). An underlying assumption of his work was that behaviour could be altered through the use of reinforcement and punishment (Tracey & Morrow, 2006:37).

2.2.1 Behaviourist perspective and reading instruction

During the Behaviourist period teaching was seen as a process of transmitting external knowledge to learners through ―demonstration, reinforcement and controlled and sequenced practice‖ (McInerney, 2005:588). Behaviourism created a new perception of the task of reading as a complex act consisting of component parts (Tracey & Morrow, 2006:39). Reading was broken down into narrow skills which had to be learned through ―reinforcement systems‖ (Gillen & Hall, 2003:4). The skills included visual and aural discrimination, sound-symbol relationships and word recognition. Little or no attention was given to teaching comprehension and reading instruction was strongly characterized by phonics instruction and basal readers (McLaughlin, 2007:84; Willis, 2008:190). The understanding of the reading process focused on decoding, and spelling, handwriting and writing were seen as separate skills. Reading instruction was broken down into separate lessons: phonics, flashcard drills, comprehension, supplementary reading, etc. (Turbill, 2002).

Lessons were broken down into ―small, successive steps‖ designed to elicit the maximum success from learners and minimise failure as far as possible (Tracey & Morrow, 2006:38). The knowledge and experience that a learner brings to the reading situation was not acknowledged. As stated by Gillen & Hall (2003:4), Behaviourists saw no point in investigating or even considering what young children were thinking about, since the possibility of children having their own thoughts had been ―defined out of existence until they arrived in school and faced a teacher‖. Rather, Behaviourists believed that learning occurs by accumulating bits of knowledge, that learning is tightly sequenced and hierarchical, that testing should occur often to ensure mastery before moving to a subsequent objective and that motivation is external and based on positive reinforcement (Sheppard, 2000:5). It does, however, seem a bit of a contradiction to claim that learning is ―sequenced and hierarchical‖ without explaining ―unobserved learning‖, namely any learning that takes place outside a structured environment or without instruction or supervision.

The Behaviourist period saw the emergence of standardised tests of comprehension (after silent reading of a passage) and a furthering of the reading readiness concept (see 2.5.1). Standardised comprehension tests usually asked multiple-choice format questions from which the reader had to choose the correct answer. On occasion the reader was required to make inferences and draw conclusions. Teachers at the time were not familiar with teaching silent reading and found that their students struggled

with standardised tests. As part of the solution to this problem, ―remedial reading‖ was born (Robinson, Hittleman & Unruh, 1990:75) and with it the use of exercises and drills related to the skills assessed in the standardised tests and learning how to read instructions. Although researchers found that these drills and repetitive exercises made learners more ―test wise‖ and therefore increased their scores, they were ―uncertain whether it increased reading comprehension‖ (Robinson, Hittleman & Unruh, 1990:76). The lack of a focus on comprehension in reading instruction in general meant there was no clear definition of reading comprehension, which in turn resulted in tests which differed widely in what was measured and viewed as ―reading comprehension‖ (Willis, 2008:195). Vocabulary, word attack skills, memory, problem solving and ―gaining meaning from print‖ were all tested under the label of reading comprehension.

Some researchers, however, realised that reading, and more specifically reading comprehension, was about more than observable, measurable processes. Robinson (1954), in her article What research says to the teacher of reading, made a variety of observations that were well ahead of her time, such as the fact that comprehension began before school started and continued through school and well into a learner‘s college years. She also observed that teachers should be ―prepared to start where each student is in comprehension and direct his growth in harmony with his potentiality‖ and recommended the use of more informal assessment types (as opposed to standardized tests) to include ―more complex comprehension skills‖ (Robinson, 1954:118). Robinson‘s statements are echoed by Emergent Literacy researchers, and in particular Clay (see 2.5). Similarly, Willis (2008:195) points out that Rosenblatt argued in as early as 1938 for a ―wider view of reading‖ that included a more active role of the reader whom she viewed as an ―active, decision-making participant‖ whose ―cognitive processing did not necessarily proceed in a linear fashion‖ and whose response to text was affected by various ―affective, experiential and social influences‖.

Other than an increased focus on standardised testing and the perpetuation of reading readiness, the Behaviourist period does not seem to have contributed much to the development of reading and reading comprehension. In fact, the Behaviourist approach can almost be viewed as an interruption of progress in thinking about the ‗internal‘ processes of reading that had started to emerge during the late 19th century. The focus of Behaviourism remained instead on drills, learning rote steps and processes, decoding, word recognition, vocabulary and grammar. Reading and

writing were still regarded as separate processes and taught as separate entities. Reading and reading instruction was still very much a ‗technical‘ process which focused on what could be observed. The reader was mostly regarded as a passive participant who was not expected to initiate interaction with a text. Meaning was seen to reside in the text and the reader was expected to reproduce that meaning (Dole et al., 1991:241). Olson (1977) described this view of texts as the text being

autonomous: there was only one meaning in a text, namely that of the author, and it

was up to the reader to find it. What was needed in reading was a return of a focus on the meaning-making processes of the reader, and the importance of constructing meaning from a text that allowed different reader interpretations.

2.2.2 A return to meaning making in reading

Throughout the pre-1900 perspective of reading and till the end of the Behaviourist perspective of reading, it can be said that reading was not yet viewed as a language process as such, but instead a rather straightforward perceptual process. Reading took place through translating printed symbols (text) into an ―oral code‖ (Pearson & Stephens, 1998:78). Comprehension was regarded as little more than comprehension of speech. Not only was reading viewed to be a process that could be analysed and explained by studying observable phenomena (such as readers‘ successful translation of sound and letter correspondences), but it was as if the text was regarded as superior to the reader in the reading process - the reader was expected to simply

reproduce the text instead of construct meaning from it.

However, views held by researchers like Robinson and Rosenblatt (see 2.2.1) indicated a growing awareness that comprehension involved much more than a perceptual or linear process of reading, in other words, comprehension couldn‘t simply be a case of ―stringing together the meanings of adjacent words‖ (Pearson & Stephens, 1998:81) as claimed by Behaviourists. How else would a reader know that the words player and felt are related as subject and verb in a sentence where other clauses have been added: The tired player, exhausted from running at his hardest all

night and aware that his efforts had contributed to his team‟s victory, felt that he had earned the applause.

The focus in research started to turn to the nature of language and language acquisition. Pearson & Stephens (1998:81) point out that researchers, such as Chomsky (1965), came to two contrasting conclusions, namely that language is

―incredibly complex‖ and yet ―acquired easily and naturally by children‖ in an environment where they are exposed to the language of their community without necessarily being taught anything. This view, that children (humans) possessed some special cognitive ability for inferring linguistic rules, sparked research into the study of the links between the linguistic features of language and the cognitive processes of the language learner.