Behaviourist

Question 1

Blank Slate Assumption

Answer 1

-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’.

Question 2

Bandura’s Bobo Doll study.

Answer 2

-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.

Question 3

Classical conditioning

Answer 3

-New behavious are learned through forming an association between a stimulus and a response.

Question 4

Pavlov’s experiment

Answer 4

-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.

Question 5

Operant conditioning

Answer 5

-New behaviours are learned through the consequences of actions (rewards/reinforcements and punishments).

Question 6

Positive reinforment

Answer 6

-Gaining something pleasant as the result of an action increases the probability of it being repeated again in the future.

Question 7

Negative reinforcement

Answer 7

-Avoiding something unpleasant as the result of an action increases the probability it will be repeated again in the future.

Question 8

Skinners rat experiment

Answer 8

-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.

Question 9

Humans and animals learn in similar ways assumption

Answer 9

-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.