Issues and debates: how psychological understanding developed over time (learning)

Question 1

INTRO

how psychological understanding developed over time?

Answer 1

Scientific processes evolve over time. This means that new psychological theories build on ones that came before it. Psychology has developed alongside science and in turn become more advanced and accurate, using more empirical evidence, sometimes to verify or debunk previous theories. It also adds more components and variables that can affect certain behaviours aside from science, that seem to expand our knowledge of influences on behaviour.

Question 2

A01 & A03 (has)

Answer 2

A01:
- Early forms of behaviourism such as classical conditioning identify very small components of behaviour focussing only on how the immediate environment will cause a particular response.
- This was further developed over time by Skinner in the 1930’s to account for motivation in learning, ie people (and animals) learn through the introduction of rewards or punishments.
- The study of behaviourism further developed with the work of Bandura who introduced a more social aspect to learning.
- He suggested that observation of others learning was a crucial factor in how humans learn and therefore explored the role of vicarious reinforcement to understand how children may learn aggression.

A03:
- Classical conditioning theory involves learning a new behaviour via the process of association. In simple terms two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person or animal as supported by Watson and Rayner, the study with Little Albert confirmed that a phobia of an object that was not previously feared could be learned (white rat). They also proposed that, because the fear response was evident a month after the initial conditioning took place, such conditioned emotional responses could last a long time.
- Behaviourism was further developed over time by Skinner in the 1930’s to account for motivation in learning, le people and animals) learn through the introduction of rewards or punishments (reinforcement), Skinner’s box experiment supports this. Operant conditioning principles remain in use for many reward systems, such as token economy programmes in education systems to increase desirable behaviour.
- Then Bandura in 1960s introduced a more social aspect to learning. He suggested that observation of others learning was a crucial factor in how humans learn and therefore explored the role of vicarious reinforcement to understand how children may learn aggression. Bandura’s research in the 1960s showed role models could increase aggression through modelling in his Bobo Doll Study.

Question 3

A01 & A03 (hasn’t)

Answer 3

A01:
- The principles of classical conditioning from 1920s led to the development of treatments which are still used today with individuals who have phobias.

A03:
- For example treatments such as systematic sensitisation and flooding which are still used to treat phobias today and use the principles of classical conditioning. Gilroy (2003) found that patients with arachnophobia who were given SD were significantly less fearful of spiders at a 3 and 33 month follow up compared to a control group only treated with relaxation, but no exposure.

Question 4

Judegement

Answer 4

Overall, our understanding of how we learn has developed from classical conditioning, to operant conditioning to social learning theory. However, some aspects of early learning theories (Pavlov’s classical conditioning) are still used today in our understanding of phobia accuisition and treatment.