Behaviourist Approach.

What is it?

Behaviourists believe that when we are born we are a blank slate therefore, support the nurture side of the debate.

They believed that all behaviour is learned through learning.

Based off experience!!

Behaviourists believed all behaviour was explained using classical and operant conditioning.

They believed that animals and humans learn in the same ways so behaviourists carry out experiments on animals and generalise to humans.

Classical conditioning.

Believed that it should be like other sciences. And that psychology should only study observable, quantifiable behaviour

Learning through association.

  • Classical conditioning is a theory of learning.
  • It examines how a response is associated with a stimuli to cause conditioning.

How it works:

The new stimulus is presented at the same time as another stimulus that already produces the response. After the two have been presented together many times, the new stimulus should produce the response even if the original stimulus is not present.

Experiment:

Aim:

  • Pavlov wanted to study how the cerebral cortex works and to do so he started with natural associations between stimuli and reflex responses in organisms.
  • Pavlov chose dogs as they have some higher-order thinking and are manageable during testing.
  • He wanted to look at reflexes and work out pathways in the brain, looking for a mechanism linking to reflexes in the cerebral cortex.

Procedure:

  1. Dogs are presented with food and salivate.

It is when a neutral stimulus is consistently being paired with an unconditioned response. Eventually it takes on the prosperities of the this stimulus and produces a conditioned response.

  1. Food is the unconditioned stimulus.

Salivation is the unconditioned response.

  1. Immedicably before the dogs are given food a bell rings.
  1. The bell is the neutral stimulus.
  1. The dogs start to associate the bell with the food. So, they salivate when the bell is heard.
  1. This becomes a conditioned response.

Classical conditioning may also play a role in the learning of phobias. Behaviourists argue that phobias are learned when a neutral object is associated with a stimulus that already causes fear.

Operant conditioning.

It is learning though reinforcement or punishment. It focuses on the consequences of the behaviour to increase or decrease the likely of the behaviour being repeated in the future

Three types:

Positive reinforcement:

Receiving a reward for good behaviour.

Negative reinforcement:

something uncomfortable or otherwise unpleasant is taken away in response to a stimulus.

Negative punishment:

For bad behaviour there is an unpleasant concernence.

Skinner:


Skinner created the Skinner box which was designed control extraneous variables and therefore, increase how scientific his experiment was.

Skinner investigated how the type of reinforcement or punishment given and the rate of reinforcement or punishment affected the rate of learning.

Procedure:

  • In his experiment, a rat would be placed in the box. On one side was a lever and a place where food could be delivered if the lever were pulled by the rat.
  • At first, the rat would wonder around aimlessly and accidentally press the lever.
  • Skinner measured how frequently the lever was pressured.
  • The frequency should indicate the strength of the conditioning of the behaviour.

Operant conditioning also plays a secondary role in explaining phobias. Avoidance learning occurs when moving away from the source of the phobia provides negative reinforcement for the behaviour by reducing anxiety. This can help to maintain phobias once they have been learned.