Behaviourism (app)

Question 1

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 1

learning by association. Occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired together - an unconditioned (unlearned) stimulus (UCS) and a new ‘neutral’ stimulus (NS). The neutral stimulus eventually produces the same response that was first produced by the unconditioned (unlearned) stimulus alone

Question 2

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 2

a form of learning in which behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences. Possible consequences of behaviour include reinforcement (positive or negative) and punishment.

Question 3

What is a neutral stimulus?

Answer 3

an element in the environment that, prior to conditioning, does not elicit any specific, automatic response. It is neutral as it has no impact on behaviour

Question 4

What is an unconditioned stimulus?

Answer 4

naturally triggers a reflexive response without prior learning or conditioning e.g. smell of food causing hunger

Question 5

What is an unconditioned response?

Answer 5

an unconditioned response is an automatic, unlearned reaction that occurs naturally in response to an unconditioned stimulus. It is a reflex that doesn’t require prior learning

Question 6

What is a conditioned stimulus?

Answer 6

a previously neutral stimulus that becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus through repeated pairings. This association leads to the conditioned stimulus eliciting a response similar to the unconditioned stimulus.
something we’ve learnt to respond to

Question 7

What is a conditioned response?

Answer 7

it is a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus. It is produced after someone develops an association between a stimulus and another stimulus that naturally triggers a reaction

Question 8

What is an association?

Answer 8

Learning to link two stimuli together (classical conditioning: NS and UCS)

Question 9

What is positive reinforcement?

Answer 9

receiving a reward when a certain behaviour is performed, e.g. praise from a teacher, in class making the behaviour more likely to be repeated in the future

Question 10

What is negative reinforcement?

Answer 10

When a human or animal carries out a behaviour to avoid an unpleasant experience e.g. handing in an essay to avoid getting told off, or a rat may learn pulling a lever stops and electric shock, this makes the behaviour less likely to reoccur in the future.

Question 11

What is punishment?

Answer 11

An unpleasant consequence of a behaviour e.g. being shouted at for misbehaving

Question 12

What is a stimulus?

Answer 12

Anything, external or internal, that elicits a response i.e. a behaviour

Question 13

What is a response?

Answer 13

Any reaction in response to a stimulus?

Question 14

What is generalisation?

Answer 14

When the CR is produced to stimuli similar to the CS (being scared of furry things because you are scared of spiders)

Question 15

What is one trial learning?

Answer 15

When an association between the NS and UCS is formed after one pairing

Question 16

How does the behaviourist approach say behaviour is learnt?

Answer 16

From out environment, we learn through classical or operant conditioning

Question 17

Who was first to explain the idea of classical conditioning?

Answer 17

Pavlov

Question 18

What was the aim and procedure of Pavlov’s study?

Answer 18

He rerouted the salivary glands to outside the dogs’ cheeks so he could measure how much saliva was produced. He found that dogs salivate when their tongue touches food. So he learnt dogs anticipate food and so produced saliva before being presented with food.
He added screens so the dog couldn’t see the food and when they would food he added a stimulus unrelated to being fed (a metronome).
He presented the metronome sound then the food. He repeated this a lot so eventually when the metronome played, the dog would salivate.

Question 19

What did Pavlov find?

Answer 19

That dogs salivate when their tongue touches food. But when the metronome had been repeatedly presented with the food, the dog would eventually salivate when the metronome sound was presented.

Question 20

What did Pavlov conclude?

Answer 20

That animals learn through association, called classical conditioning.

Question 21

How is Pavlov’s research an example of behaviourism?

Answer 21

We learn behaviour through association - by studying animals he could generalise to humans so said he had studied observable behaviour.

Question 22

What is a Skinner box?

Answer 22

An animal chamber used in behavioural psychology to test hypotheses about behaviour and learning

Question 23

Findings in Skinner’s study

Answer 23

Every time the rat activated a lever (or pecked a disc in the case of a pigeon) within the box it was rewarded with a food pellet. -> positive reinforcement

Every time the rat was in the cage it was subjected to unpleasant electric shocks. When it hit the lever, the shocks stopped. -> negative reinforcement

Question 24

How can the use of Skinner boxes allow behaviourists to meet their assumption about controlled experimental research?

Answer 24

Soundproofed
Automatically dispense food
Small but still allowed to move freely

So we can be more confidence we can see cause and effect between the consequences of behaviour and whether the animal repeats the behaviour in the future as extraneous variable such as humans feeding the rats are controlled.

Question 25

Assumptions of the behaviourist approach

Answer 25

— When born our mind is a blank slate. — There is little difference between the learning that takes place in humans and that in other animals. Therefore research can be carried out on animals as well as humans. — Behaviour is the result of stimulus – response (i.e. all behaviour, no matter how complex, can be reduced to a simple stimulus – response association) - reductionism — Psychology is a Science so behaviour must be measured in highly controlled environments to establish cause and effect. Therefore, they mainly rely on laboratory experiments.

Question 26

Who proposed the idea of operant conditioning?

Answer 26

Skinner

Question 27

Real world application for behaviourism

Answer 27

Operant conditioning is the basis of token economy systems which have been used successfully in institutions such as prison and psychiatric wards. These work by rewarding appropriate behaviour with tokens. When enough tokens are earned, they can be exchanged for privileges. This makes the prisoners/patients more likely to behave appropriately as their positive behaviour is being reinforced Classical conditioning used for treatment of phobias (systematic desensitisation), faced with CS which causes fear (CR) but this eventually peaks and fades so there is a new CR to the CS HIGH EXTERNAL VALIDITY as can explain a lot of behaviours, less effort and don't have to talk about feelings

Question 28

What did Watson and Rayner do?

Answer 28

* They presented Little Albert with a number of objects that he wasn't afraid of e.g. Fire, monkey, dog, rabbit, white rat. The white rat was chosen because Little Albert liked it best and so would be the strongest evidence of learning by association if this changed during the study. Therefore when he was presented with the white rat, a loud bar was struck which made Albert scared. This was repeated numerous times until he formed an association between the white rat and the loud noise, leading him to learn a new behaviour (phobia of white rats).

Question 29

How does Watson and Rayner's study fit into the behaviourist ?

Answer 29

It fits into the behaviourist approach because we are studying observable behaviour. It's a study about learning behaviour.

Question 30

How to write about classical conditioning

Answer 30

Same as the: NS -> no response UCS -> fear but in prose

Question 31

Supporting evidence for behaviourism (Watson and Rayner)

Answer 31

supports the validity of the behaviourist approach as it suggests that behaviour can be learned through association (classical conditioning) , **explain what they did with little Albert**

Question 32

Weakness of the behaviourist approach (simplistic)

Answer 32

From a behaviourist’s perspective, animals (including humans) are seen as passive and machine-like responders to the environment with little conscious insight into their behaviour. By treating humans as the product of conditioning alone means that we ignore the evidence for the role of other factors in shaping behaviour. Other approaches in psychology, such as the social learning theory and the cognitive approach, have emphasised the importance of mental events during learning. These processes, which mediate between the stimulus and response, suggest that people may play a much more active role in their own learning. E.G. in cognitive approach: Behaviour is influenced by conscious and unconscious thoughts. These internal mental processes mediate between the stimulus (input) and response (output). These internal processes can and should be studied scientifically and objectively. The approach also ignores the potential impact of emotional states on behaviour e.g. Johnson and Scott (focus on weapon so forget everything else) This suggests that learning theory may apply less to human than to animal behaviour, or at least may not be able to completely explain all behaviour and so cannot be considered a completely valid explanation of behaviour. However, Skinner rejected this claim, arguing that these internal states are scientifically untestable and therefore the behaviourist approach is more scientific by not studying these factors.