behaviourist approach

Question 1

explain the behaviourist assumption ‘ humans are born blank slate’

Answer 1

Def ; Tabula rasa, meaning blank slate refers to the theory that humans are born with no inbuilt content. All emotions and behaviours are learnt through social interactions and environmental factors. ex
Ex ; Environmental determinism refers to the theory that the environment a person is born into and develops in will account for the majority of their behaviour. behaviourist suggest that people do not have free will over their own behaviour . our personality and behaviour is determined by environment .
Exa ; Bobo doll study - children that observed models being aggressive to the doll were aggressive to the doll as well and the children that observed models that were not aggressive to the doll mirrored the same behaviour toward the doll .this is because of environmental determinism and determinism

Question 2

explain the behaviourist assumption that ‘ behaviour is learned through conditioning

Answer 2

there are two types of conditioning , operant and classical.
Operant conditioning is learning through consequence (1). Operant conditioning uses positive and negative reinforcement to encourage desirable behaviour to be repeated. (1) For example, giving a child a sticker when they tidy their room is positive reinforcement, a reward to encourage them to repeat the behaviour.(1) An example of negative reinforcement is plugging in your seatbelt to stop the beeping noise – this is an unpleasant experience that is removed, to produce the desired behaviour (1). Punishment is also used in operant conditioning to stop undesirable behaviour – for example, getting a detention for not doing your homework (1). ​
classical conditioning which concerns involuntary behaviour. In the case of classical conditioning behaviour is learnt through stimulus-response associations. Pavlov demonstrated the principles on dogs. Before conditioning, food was an unconditioned stimulus that created the unconditioned response of salivation. The sound of a bell was a neutral stimulus and elicited no response. During conditioning food was paired with the sound of a bell to produce salivation. After conditioning the bell acts as a conditioned stimulus to produce the conditioned response of salivation

Question 3

according to behaviourist , ‘ humans and animals learn in similar ways. Using an example , explain this assumption.

Answer 3

def ; animals are used in experimental methods , under laboratory conditions , because the laws of learning are the same for both humans and animals , enabling generalisation to be made about human behaviour . is more ethical to try experiment on animals than humans.
Exa ; classical condition of Pavlov where he studied dogs to see if he could produce a given response by using neutral stimulus .
this same principle is applied to humans with the little Albert study , he conditioned in child through association