Learning approach: Behaviourism

Question 1

What was the approach’s main assumptions?

Answer 1

• The behaviourist approach to learning studied changes in behaviour that are caused by a person’s direct experience of their environment.
• The behaviourist approach made a deliberate effort to be more scientific, and therefore, unlike Wundt refused to discuss mental processes that might be involved in learning because they are not observable and could not be studied objectively. To be like other sciences, for psychology should only study observable, quantifiable behaviour.
• For this reason, behaviourist explanations are sometimes called stimulus-response (S-R) explanations, because they only refer to observable stimuli and responses, and ignore everything else.
• The approach assumes all behaviour is learnt and can be explained using classical and operant conditioning.
• The approach did almost all of its research using laboratory experiments involving animal behaviour and introspection was rejected as a tool, by behaviourists like, John Watson, as it involved too many concepts that were vague and difficult to measure.
• In behaviourist research, animals could replace humans as experimental subjects.
• Humans are only animals and should not be treated as any more complex. Because humans are only animals, research on animal behaviour will be directly relevant to humans.

Question 2

Pavlov - Classical Conditioning

Answer 2

• Classical conditioning is learning through association and was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov.
• Pavlov revealed that dogs could be conditioned to salivate to the sound of a bell if that sound was repeatedly presented at the same time as they were given food.
• Gradually, Pavlov’s dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell (a stimulus) with the food (another stimulus) and would produce the salivation response every time they
  heard the sound.
• Thus, Pavlov was able to show how a neutral stimulus, in this case a bell, can come to elicit a conditioned response through association.

Question 3

Skinner - Operant Conditioning

Answer 3

• To study operant conditioning in as scientific a way as possible, Skinner created an experimental tool called the ‘Skinner box’ that allowed complete control of the organism’s environment, the behaviours that were available to it and the reinforcement or punishment it would receive.
• Skinner investigated how the type of reinforcement or punishment given and the rate of reinforcement or punishment affected the rate of learning.
• In a typical experiment, a rat or pigeon would be put into the Skinner box in which temperature, light and noise could be kept constant. On one wall of the box, there would be a lever and a hopper that could deliver a food pellet to the animal when the lever was pressed. Initially, the rat is likely to wander around the box aimlessly until it accidentally presses the lever and receives a food pellet. Skinner would leave the animal in the box and measure how frequently the animal pressed the lever over time. The frequency should indicate the strength of the conditioning of the behaviour. This would then be repeated with other animals.

Question 4

Operant Conditioning - Skinner’s research

Answer 4

Positive reinforcement - occurs when a behaviour (response) is followed by a favourable stimulus (commonly seen as pleasant) that increases the frequency of that behaviour. It is receiving a reward when a certain behaviour is performed; for example praise from a teacher for answering a question correctly.

Negative reinforcement - occurs when a behaviour (response) is followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus (commonly seen as unpleasant) thereby increasing that behaviour’s frequency. In the Skinner’s box experiment, negative reinforcement can be a loud noise continuously sounding inside the rat’s cage until it engages in the target behaviour, such as pressing a lever, upon which the loud noise is removed.

Punishment - is an unpleasant consequence that causes a behaviour to occur with less frequency.

Question 5

Strength

Answer 5

Scientific credibility

Behaviourism was able to bring the language and methods of the natural sciences into psychology by focusing on the measurement of observable behaviour within highly controlled lab settings. By emphasising the importance of scientific processes such as objectivity and replication, behaviourism was influential in the development of psychology as a scientific discipline, giving it greater credibility and status.

Question 6

Strength

Answer 6

Real-life application

The principles of conditioning have been applied to a broad range of real-world behaviours and problems. For instance, operant conditioning is the basis of token economy systems that have been used successfully in institutions, such as prisons and psychiatric wards. These work by rewarding appropriate behaviour with tokens that can then be exchanged for privileges. Treatments such as these have the advantage of requiring less effort from a patient because the patient doesn’t have to think about their problem (as they do in ‘talking therapies’). Such therapies are also suitable for patients who lack insight.

Question 7

Weakness

Answer 7

Environmental determinism

The behaviourist approach sees all behaviour as determined by past experiences that have been conditioned. Skinner suggested that everything we do is the sum total of our reinforcement history. This ignores any possible influence that free will may have on behaviour. Skinner suggested that any sense of free will is simply an illusion. When something happens we impose a sense of having made the decision but, according to Skinner, our past conditioning history determined the outcome.

Question 8

Weakness

Answer 8

Mechanistic view of behaviour

From a behaviourist perspective, animals (including humans) are seen as passive and machine-like responders to the environment, with little or no conscious insight into their 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 stimulus and response, suggest that people may play a much more active role in their own learning. This means that learning theory may apply less to human than to animal behaviour.