4.4 key question + 4.5 practical (learning) Flashcards
what is the key question for learning theories?
what are the implications for society if anorexia is a learned disorder?
what are the symptoms of anorexia?
- intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, or persistent behaviour that interferes with weight gain even though at a significantly low weight
- disturbance in the way in which one’s body weight or shape is experienced or persistent lack of recognition of seriousness of current low body weight
- restriction of energy intakes (calories) leading to a significantly low body weight in the context of age, sex and physical health
why’s anorexia an issue in society?
- over 1 million people in the uk have an eating disorder
- 90% of anorexia cases are female with average onset age of 15
- 20% have one episode and recover completely and 60% follow an episodic pattern of weight gain and relapse
- long term effects include heart damage and neurological disease
why should we care about anorexia in society?
- people are being influenced and pushed into it
- disproportionality affects women which affects school and focus
how can social learning theory explain anorexia?
attention: observes people (eg models) who glamorise being skinny. models could be role models due to their desirable characteristics eg being famous
retention: through maintenance rehearsal they remember the body image of models
reproduction: copying model’s behaviour when appropriate e.g in teenagehood you adapt their diet
motivation: you see models being rewarded by compliments and fame and wanna be like that
celebrity culture could be partly responsible for the increased prevalence of anorexia
how can operant conditioning explain anorexia?
- positive reinforcement
—> gives compliments so that increase or maintain weight loss - positive punishment
—> insults so that decrease behaviour of eating - negative reinforcement
—> removing name calling to maintain or increase weight loss - negative punishment
—> lose compliments to decrease gaining weight
what was the aim of the learning practical?
to investigate whether there are differences in the learned helping behaviour of younger and older people
what was the procedure of the learning practical?
- observed on public transport during morning and afternoon
- helpful and unhelpful behaviours tallied up e.g giving up seat or smoking
- event sampling
what was the findings of learning practical?
-
make up a tally in the exam for younger helpful, older helpful, younger unhelpful and older
unhelpful - found that older people were more helpful
- chi squared test used
what’s a strength of the learning practical?
- high in ecological validity
- we observed in a natural environment, covertly so no demand characteristics shown by those using public transport
- therefore, findings are representative of average young/old ppl using transport
what’s a weakness of the learning practical?
- only one observer
- researcher bias into observation as they can **unconsciously categorise **behaviour such as justifying certain behaviours for older people
- therefore, results not very reliable
what are two improvements to the learning practical?
- more than one observer improves reliability
- can’t see all behaviours as we’re not God so we should’ve accessed CCTV footage
