Five Schools of Behaviourism Flashcards
Define behaviour.
Any activity of an organism that can be observed or measured.
Define learning.
A relatively permanent change in behaviour that results from some experience.
What is a relatively permanent change in behaviour that results from some experience?
Learning.
What is any activity of an organism that can be observed or measured?
Behaviour.
Learning can be: (2)
Immediate or delayed.
Give two other names for classical conditioning.
Pavlovian conditioning or respondent conditioning.
Explain classical conditioning at its most basic level.
The process by which certain inborn behaviours come to be produced in new situations.
What kind of behaviours are typically involved in classical conditioning? (2)
Reflexive or involuntary.
Explain operant conditioning.
The strengthening or weakening of a behaviour as a result of its consequences.
What kind of behaviours are typically involved in operant conditioning? (2)
Goal-directed or voluntary.
How does observational learning work?
The act of observing someone else’s behaviour facilitates the development of a similar pattern in yourself.
Give a type of behaviour patten that is inherited and not learned.
Fixed action patterns.
Aristotle is responsible for: (2)
Empiricism and the Laws of Association.
What did Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, believe about learning?
That it was inborn, and learning was a process of inner reflection to uncover existing knowledge.
In what way did Aristotle disagree with Plato?
He thought that knowledge was not inborn, but acquired through experience.
What is Aristotle’s disagreement with Plato an example of?
The debate between nature and nurture.
Give another name for the nature side of the debate.
Nativism.
Give another name for the nurture side of the debate.
Empiricism.
What does the nativist perspective argue?
A person’s abilities and tendencies are inborn.
What does the empiricist perspective argue?
A person’s abilities and tendencies are learned.
Name Aristotle’s four laws of association.
The law of similarity, the law of contrast, the law of contiguity, and the law of frequency.
Explain the law of similarity.
Events that are similar to each other are readily associated with each other.
Explain the law of contrast.
Events that are opposite from each other are associated.
Explain the law of contiguity.
Events that occur in close proximity to each other in time or space are associated.
Explain the law of frequency.
The more frequently two items occur together, the more strongly they are associated.
Which of Aristotle’s laws of association was added later?
The law of frequency.
What is Descartes famous for?
Mind-body dualism.
Explain mind-body dualism.
Some human behaviours are reflexes and some are freely chosen and controlled by the mind.
What did Descartes believe about the behaviour of animals?
That it was entirely reflexive.
What did Descartes believe only humans possessed?
A self-directing mind.
How did Descartes’ theories aid the scientific investigation of learning and behaviour? (2)
Suggesting that the study of animal behaviour may provide insights into human behaviour, and, due to the mechanical nature of reflexes, they could be studied
What did the British empiricists maintain?
That all knowledge is a function of experience.
Who proposed that a newborn’s mind was a blank slate?
John Locke.
Name a famous British empiricist.
John Locke.
What did John Locke believe about a newborn’s mind?
That it was a blank slate upon which environmental experiences are written.
What does tabula rasa mean?
Blank slate.
What did the British empiricists believe the mind was made up of?
A finite set of basic elements that were combined through the principles of association into complex sensations and thought patterns.
Who was the first to propose a scientific method to investigate the structure of the mind?
William Wundt.
Give two people who are responsible for the development of structuralism.
Edward Titchener and William Wundt.