Assessment 2 Behaviourist approach and research methods Flashcards
What is classical conditioning?
When a neutral stimulus is consistently paired with an unconditioned stimulus so that it eventually takes on the properties of this stimulus and is able to produce a conditioned response.
What is operant conditioning?
learning through reinforcement or punishment. If a behaviour is followed by a desirable consequence then that behaviour is more likely to occur again in the future.
What Pavlov’s research into classical conditioning?
Pavlov (1927), dogs not only salivated with food but when stimuli that coincided with the presentation of food happened, also salivated. The unconditioned stimulus was the food and salivation was the unconditioned response. Neutral stimulus (NS) is presented shortly before the UCS which eventually leads the NS to produce the response in the absence of the UCS.
What are other important features of classical conditioning?
- Timing - if the time between the NS and UCS is too great or after then conditioning does not take place
- Extinction - After a few presentations of the CS in the absence of the UCS, it loses its ability to produce CR.
- Spontaneous recovery - following extinction if the CS and UCS are paired the link is made much more quickly.
What are the two types of reinforcement?
Positive
Negative
What is the basic idea behind Skinner’s theory (1938) of operant conditioning?
Organisms spontaneously produce different behaviours and these behaviours produce consequences for that organism - positive and negative.
What is positive reinforcement in operant conditioning?
Occurs when a behaviour produces consequences that is satisfying or pleasant for the organism - praising a child.
What is negative reinforcement in operant conditioning?
Works because they remove something aversive (unpleasant) and restore the organism to its pre-aversive state - hitting the ‘off’ button or the alarm to return to restful state.
What are other important features of operant conditioning?
- Continuous reinforcement (repeated) is most effective in establishing a particular response.
- Punishment, a behaviour is followed by a response that is undesirable, decreases the chance of behaviour recurring.
What is a strength of classical conditioning?
Led to treatments for reduction of anxiety associated with various phobias (systematic desensitisation) - where the therapist eliminates the CR (anxiety) and replaces it with relaxation.
What is a weakness of classical conditioning?
Different species have different capabilities to learn through classical conditioning
Seligman (1970) proposed animals are prepared to learn associations that are significant to their survival needs.
What is the limited perspective of classical conditioning?
Behaviourists have been criticised for ignoring other levels of explanations such as those that emphasise the importance of cognitive factors and emotional states.
What is a strength of operant conditioning?
Skinner’s reliance on experimental method. Skinner’s box, the rat pushes the lever to get more food by manipulating the independent variable to measure the dependent variable, it allowed him to study a cause and effect relationship.
What is a limitation of operant conditioining?
Skinner experimented on animals rather than humans, may not be exactly the same as human behaviour.
Skinner argued human free will is an illusion which is also criticised.
