Behaviourism
John Watson - Classical Conditioning
Aims
Procedure
Findings
Criticisms
Conclusion
Successfully demonstrated that behaviour can be modified to produce and control phobias. Generalisation was formed, reacting to similar objects.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Reconfirmed 1 month later by repeating the experiment
Ensuring the environment was controlled and consistent
A babies reliability is far from that of an adult
Debatably unethical research
Short-term research not testing or monitoring the long-term affects of the experiment and now long the phobias remain for
No base line to compare to as one one baby was used for the experiment
Little Albert elicited an unconditioned response to the object (happiness) but when this was paired with a loud bang with a metal pole it created an a conditioned response of fear within Albert. When compared a month later, Watson found that Albert was pre-conditioned to feel fear when shown the objects that we're coupled with the long bang.
John Watson showed Little Albert various objects including a rat, a rabbit, fire and various other animals/ objects.
He favourited the Rat but the Rat was then coupled with a long bang on a metal pole.
This conditioned a fear into Little Albert of the rat and he began to elicit fear when shown the object.
To condition a fear into an 8 month old baby Albert by using responses & corresponding stimulus
Ivan Pavlov - Classical Conditioning
Criticism
Weaknesses
Strengths
Findings
Aims
Procedure
Conclusion
To discover if Dogs can be conditioned to react to the prospect of food when linked with an environmental stimulus
He was able to successfully manufacture the salivation reaction by using environmental stimulus. E.G the dogs would salivate when they heard the footsteps of someone coming down the corridor.
He initially started by taking a baseline of salvation by directly tapping into the salivary gland using a cannula
He then introduced an environmental stimulus prior to the dogs being fed to see what the reaction would be overt time
Eventually the dogs learned that when presented with that environmental stimulus they would usually be getting food afterwards so they would salivate before actually sighting the food
Controlled environment
Using the same environmental stimulus
Not repeated after time
Dogs are much less reliable than humans
Short term research
Arguably unethical research
More than one Dog used to test
Albert Bandura
Procedure
Thorndyke's Puzzlebox