Behaviourist approach

Question 1

What does the behaviourist approach suggest?

Answer 1

• behaviour can be explained through learning by conditioning

e.g:

classical conditioning (learning by association)

operant conditioning (learning by reinforcement)

Question 2

What is Pavlov’s dog study concerning classical conditioning?

Answer 2

• salvation at the sight of food is a natural/innate reflex, Pavlov used dogs to investigate whether he could turn salvation into a conditioned response via classical conditioning

UCS= food, UCR=salvation
NS=ringing bell
NS is present during UCS, over time the dog is conditioned to associate NS with UCS making it a CS
CS (bell) = CR (salvation)

Question 3

What are some of the conditions/variables regarding classical conditioning?

Answer 3

• timing - if the time interval between the NS + UCS is too great, or if the NS doesn’t occur first, conditioning is unlikely/won’t happen
• extinction - CR isn’t permanent, if UCS (food) not present, after a few presentations of CS (bell), the CR stops + conditioning is extinct
• spontaneous recovery - after extinction, if CS + UCS paired, the link produces CR very quickly again
• stimulus generalisation - once the dog is conditioned, it responds to stimuli similar to CS, not just the bell

Question 4

What is Skinner’s rats study concerning Operant Conditioning?

Answer 4

• consequences make some behaviours more likely to be repeated than others
• positive/negative reinforcement= rewarding= more likely to be repeated e.g in skinners rat if it pulls the lever it gets food (positive reinforcement) so it repeats pulling the lever. if no food comes out after some time, extinction occurs
• punishment = behaviour results in something bad happening to you, this decreases the likeliness of a behaviour being repeated

Question 5

Evaluation of the behaviourist approach

Answer 5

(+) classical conditioning has led to the developments of treatments to phobias + anxiety associated with the phobia whereby participants are conditioned to associate relaxation with their feared objects instead
(-) classical conditioning varies depending on how valuable it is to survival e.g dog will learn to associate smell of meat with food faster than the sound of a bell with food
(-) skinner’s research it too dependant on animals which tells us little about human’s