Behaviourist approach Flashcards
(10 cards)
What are the basic assumptions of behaviourist approach?
behaviour is learned from experience
it is valid to study the behaviours of animals
born a blank slate
only observable behaviour is measured scientifically and only these behaviours should be studied due to through processes being subjective and difficult to test
What did Pavlov study?
Pavlov did a study presenting classical conditioning
dogs associating a bell with food
What did Pavlov discover?
Timing - association only occurs if the US and the NS are presented at/around the same time, if the time lapse is too great there will be no association.
Extinction - CR isn’t a permanent response so the CR will eventually die out.
Generalisation - once an animal has associated something with a certain stimulus it will react the same to similar stimuli.
What is positive reinforcement?
giving something good
Key study: Watson and Raynar
form of classical conditioning
demonstrated how a little boy can acquire a fear of white rats
whenever 11 month old Albert played with a white rat a metal bar would be struck with a hammer behind his head
terrified him so much the rat alone would scare him
started to acquire fears similar to the white rat e.g small white dogs
What is operant conditioning?
when someone is able to change a behaviour of a human or animal through reinforcement and punishment
What did Skinner do?
placed a hungry rat into a box and then when the rat would press the lever the rat would receive a pellet of food - behaviour is more likely to happen - +ve reinforcement
when the rat hit the lever loud noises would be switched off - -ve reinforcement - behaviour is more likely to happen
delivered an electric shock whenever the rat hit the lever - punishment - behaviour is less likely to occur
What is negative reinforcement?
taking away something bad
What is positive punishment?
giving something bad
What is negative punishment?
taking away something good
