Behaviourist Flashcards
Blank Slate Assumption
-Behaviourists believe that babirs are born a blank slate or ‘tabula rasa’ with only a few basic innate reflexes to survive, e.g, crying, pain, hunger.
-All of a persons complex behaviours are shaped and learned by their environment they grew up in, known as ‘environmental determinism’.
Bandura’s Bobo Doll study.
-36 children age 3-6 watch an adult role model play either aggressively or non-aggresively.
-They found that those who observed the aggresive role model displayed significantly higher levels of aggression towards bobo than the other group.
-They modelled the physical (e.g, hitting) and verbal (e.g. BASH) aggression (novel hostile remarks).
-Suggests that aggression is not innate but learnt through observation and imitation.
Classical conditioning
-New behavious are learned through forming an association between a stimulus and a response.
Pavlov’s experiment
-Ivan Pavlov was a russion scientist investigating the digestive system of dogs. He found that dogs salivate when presented with food.
-He then found that if a bell is rung at the same time as the food is presented, the dog will eventually salavate at the sound of the bell even when food is no longer presented.
Operant conditioning
-New behaviours are learned through the consequences of actions (rewards/reinforcements and punishments).
Positive reinforment
-Gaining something pleasant as the result of an action increases the probability of it being repeated again in the future.
Negative reinforcement
-Avoiding something unpleasant as the result of an action increases the probability it will be repeated again in the future.
Skinners rat experiment
-Skinner built the skinners box and placed a rat in it.
-When the rats try to get out of the box, they accidently hit the hidden levers on the side of the box, which release food.
-Rats began to intentionally press the levers to get food (positive reinforcement).
-He decided to see if he could teach the rats to not press the lever
-He switched the lever to cause the rat an electric shock, and they immediately stopped pressing it to avoid punishment.
-Finally, he constantly shocked the rats until they learnt once again to press the lever to stop the shock through negative reinforcement.
Humans and animals learn in similar ways assumption
-Behaviourists assume that the same basic principles of learning are common to all species, so humans learn the same way as other animals.
-Behaviourists believe there are only quantitative differences between humans and animals, e.g, brain size.
Therefore, it is appropriate to use animals and generalize the findings to human behaviour.
Aversion therapy applied to blank slate
-Unlike biological approach, they believe addictions have been developed through experience rather than a biological or physical cause
-Behaviourists say we can unlearn undesirable behaviours and relearn a more appropriate behaviour.
Aversion therapy applied to classical conditioning
-Behaviours view addictive behaviour as bring learnt through conditioning.
-The thing we are addicted to starts out as the neutral stimulus, and we come to associate it with a positive outcome (UCR).
-AT aims to countercondition the person by creating a negative association (UCR) with the source of addiction.
Aversion therapy applied to operant conditioning
-Operant conditioning plays a role after classical conditioning
-Once a person has a new associatilinked go their addiction (e.g, between alchohol and the unpleasant response of being sick), they are negatively reinforced to avoid the addictive behaviour to avoid the conditioned response.
-Helps maintain abstinence.
Counterconditioning
-Client is presented with an aversive stimulus (UCS), e.g, electric shock or drug=pain or feeling sick (UCR)
-This is repeatedly paired with the undesirable behaviour e.g alcohol (NS)
-Client now associates their undesirable behaviour e.g alcohol (CS) with a new negative response, e.g, pain/sickness (CR)
Forms of aversive stimulus (Antabuse)
-This drug affects how the body metabolises (breaks down) alcohol by blocking the action of the enzyme ‘aldehyde dehydrogenase’
-Causes build of acetaldehyde with a toxin and causes sickness.
-Person taking antabuse will feel unwell 10 minutes after drinking alcohol.
-Antabuse stays in the system for 14 days.
Forms of aversive stimulus (Rapid smoking)
-Used to treat smoking addictions.
-Smokers sit in a room and take a puff of a cigarette every 6 seconds until they finish a specific number of cigarettes or feel sick.
-May be repeated over serveal sessions to make a strong association between sickness and smoking to develop an aversion.
