L8 Behaviourism Flashcards
What were Edward Thorndike’s two laws of learning? And what else did he begin that Skinner took up?
Law of effect: Annoyers and satisfiers promote certain stimulus - response connections and weaken or eliminate others (operant conditioning)
Law of exercise: A response will be more strongly connected to a stimulus in proportion to the number of times it has been connected with that situation
Puzzle boxes
Describe how classical conditioning works
learning process whereby two stimuli are repeatedly paired: a response which is at first only elicited by the first stimulus is eventually elicited by the second stimulus alone.
unconditioned stimulus –> unconditioned response
= unconditioned reflex
conditioned stimulus –> conditioned response
= conditioned reflex
What did John Watson write that some call the behaviourist manifesto?
“Psychology as the Behaviourist Views it”
What are the three kinds of unconditioned emotional responses that John Watson named?
Fear response (falling, loud noises)
Rage (being held down)
Love (touch)
What did John Watson work on with his graduate student Rosalie Rayner?
The Little Albert Study
What was the main hypothesis behind John Watson’s “Psychological Care of Infant and Child”
conditioning: manipulative control over the child’s environment
independence: self-reliant behaviour encouraged
Name Karl Lashley’s two main hypotheses
Law of mass action: efficacy and accuracy of learning depend on the amount of cortex available
Law of equipotentionality: one part of the cortex can take over the functioning of another part
What are the misconceptions of behaviourism that Burrhus Frederic Skinner outlined?
Behaviourism:
ignores biology and genetics
denies the existence of thoughts, emotions, feelings
is against theory
denies conscious experience
denies the uniqueness of the individual
robs behaviour of its meaning and purpose
What was Clark Hull’s main contribution to psychology?
Equations: being math-oriented, Hull devised complex equations that explained how reinforcement and learning worked.
Clark Hull and Edward Tolman often disagreed with each other - Tolman’s theories explained learning, but in a much more logical and accessible way.
What was Edward Tolman’s main contribution to psychology?
latent learning (cf. Clark Hull): learning without any reinforcement or associations- this obviously challenged radical behaviourism
Tolman drew on Gestalt theory to explain how the rats were able to form cognitive maps of the maze, and learn how to find their way through without being reinforced.
