behaviourist approach

Question 1

Who was wundt?

Answer 1

father of experimental psychology

Question 2

What university did wundt go to?

Answer 2

leizburg and heidelburg

Question 3

What did he do a university?

Answer 3

delivered first university course on scientific psychology

Question 4

What did he do?

Answer 4

wrote first text book on principles of physiological psychology

Question 5

What did he set up st leizburg university?

Answer 5

he set up first laboratory of experimental psychology

Question 6

What did he discover?

Answer 6

he separated psychology from philosophy and biology and became the first person to be called a psychologist

Question 7

What did he discover?

Answer 7

showed that introspection could be used to study mental states in replicable laboratory experiments

Question 8

What is introspection?

Answer 8

the first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures or thoughts images and sensations

Question 9

Summarise Wundt’s method of studying introspection

Answer 9

he introduced a stimulus to the participant and ask the participant to record their thoughts and feelings, images and sensations, the participant was Wundt’s PHD students -simple sensory process

Question 10

What are empirical methods?

Answer 10

scientific research methods that uses observeations and experiments to find concrete evidence

Question 11

How was Wundt criticised?

Answer 11

Watson said that it was subjective( that it was only opinion based )
Watson believed that introspection wasn’t an empirical method
Watson argued that behaviourism was a more appropriate approach

Question 12

Why was introspection not reliable?

Answer 12

We can only report a fragment of what we are thinking and often have little awareness of the process that influences are decisions

Question 13

What is behaviour?

Answer 13

Behaviour is the way we act around people in certain situations

Question 14

No mental process

Answer 14

Ignores mental processes of the mind as it focusses on behaviour that can be observed-cognitive

Question 15

Controlled and measurable

Answer 15

Study behaviours in labs
high control over variables
highly scientific

Question 16

Assumptions of behaviourist

Answer 16

-Behaviourists don’t lie introspection as they believe its too vague
-we are born as a blank slate, as everything we become is shaped by the process of learning from our environment
-They rely on labs to acheive this

Question 17

key points of behaviourism

Answer 17

no mental process
controlled and measurable
human learning is the same as animal learning

Question 18

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 18

classical conditioning is learning through association and first demonstrated by ian pavlov

Question 19

Describe pavlovs method of classical conditioning

Answer 19

First the dogs were presented with the food, they salivated. the food was the unconditioned stimulus and salvation was an unconditioned innate response
Then Pavlov sounded the bell,(neutral stimulus) before giving the food. After a few soundings the dogs salivated when they heard the bell eve when no food was given . The bel had become the unconditioned stimulus and salvation had become the the conditioned response

The dogs had learnt to associate the bell with the food and the sound of the bell and salvation was triggered by the sound of the bell.

Question 20

What did skinner do?

Answer 20

Discover operant conditioning

Question 21

What did Skinner argue?

Answer 21

That learning is an active process

Question 22

What is positive reinforcement?

Answer 22

Receiving an award for good behaviour

Question 23

What is negative reinforcement?

Answer 23

Occurs when performing an action stops something unpleasant happening

Question 24

What is a punishment?

Answer 24

This is an unpleasant consequence

Question 25

What are the strengths of a behaviourist?

Answer 25

-very scientific and usually uses controlled experimental methods
- Allows psychologists to investigate the effect of the environment on behaviour
-Many useful applications such as desensitisation

Question 26

What are the limitations of behaviourist?

Answer 26

• scientific experiments which lack ecological validity
  -many animal studies are used which open up the ethical debate and cause problems when generalising to humans
  -it is reductionist as it ignores the influences of nature and cognition on behaviour