Paper 2: Approaches Flashcards
Who is Wundt?
Wundt - referred to as the father of psychology
Opened the world’s first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in 1879
Helped to move psychology away from philosophy and towards the scientific method
Used introspection to try and investigate the nature of consciousness
what was the procedure of introspection?
Introspection - investigating internal events by examining present conscious thoughts and feelings
He gave the participants the same procedure, instructions, and tries to minimise the effects of extraneous variables.
what are the assumptions of the behaviourist approach?
Classical conditioning - learning by association.
Our tendency to react to certain stimuli (eg jumping at loud noises) are unconditioned responses (UCR). the things that produce the responses (eg loud noises) are unconditioned stimuli (UCS). when a neutral stimulus (NS) that normally does not affect us, is paired over time with an unconditioned stimulus, the two become associated. Once conditioning has happened, the previously neutral stimulus is now a conditioned stimulus (CS) and will produce conditioned response (CR)
what was pavlov’s theory/experiment of classical conditioning?
Pavlov
Rang a bell before feeding dogs. Dogs would salivate when receiving the food. Over time the sound of the bell was associated with the food, so they would salivate at the ring of a bell. Before conditioning, bell = NS salivating = UCR, after conditioning bell = CS salivating = CR
what is operant conditioning?
Operant conditioning - learning through reinforcement and punishment.
Positive reinforcement rewards desired behaviour by adding something pleasant. Makes behaviour more likely to occur.
Negative reinforcement rewards desired behaviour by removing something unpleasant. Makes behaviour more likely to occur.
Punishment is when undesirable behaviour produces an unpleasant consequence. Makes behaviour less likely to occur.
what was skinner’s research into operant conditioning?
Skinner investigated operant conditioning;
To test positive reinforcement, a rat received a food pellet every time it pressed a lever.
Negative reinforcement - an electric shock turned off if they pressed the lever.
Punishment - received an electric shock if they pressed the lever.
evaluation of behaviourist approach?
Pavlov + skinner - supporting research
Strict scientific method - used standardised procedure etc, meaning method is reliable
Reductionist approach - reduces humans to stimulus and response. Ignores eg biological factors which suggest behaviour is innate, as well as the complexity of humans in general
Determinist - suggests all behaviour is environmentally determined
Socially sensitive
what are the assumptions of the social learning theory (SLT)?
This is the assumption that behaviour is learned through observing others being operant/classically conditioned. It suggests behaviour is learned by vicarious reinforcement. This is where a person indirectly learns behaviour, and may imitate it.
Mediational processes - this is where SLT considers the role of cognition. The mediational process are:
Attention
Retention
Motivation
Motor production
Identification - SLT suggests children are more likely to imitate behaviour when they identify with the role model carrying out the initial behaviour.
what was bandura’s experiment?
Bandura’s experiment
Aims: to demonstrate aggression can be learned through modelling.
Procedure: 72 children aged 3-6; half saw male role models and half saw female models. They all watched one aggressive model hitting the bobo doll and a non-aggressive model playing quietly with something else. They observed this with the bobo doll in the room.
Findings: children who saw the aggressive model acted more aggressively with the bobo doll. Boys imitated male role models more than female models.
Conclusion: aggression can be learned through modelling
evaluation of SLT?
Evaluation of SLT:
Lots of support from the fact that children who play violent video games display more aggression
Takes into account the cognitive approach through idea of mediational processes. Therefore it is less reductionist than the behaviourist approach, which reduces behaviour to learning by punishment/reinforcement/association.
what are the assumptions of the cognitive approach?
Cognitive approach
Focuses on how internal mental processes affect behaviour.
It argues internal mental processes should be studied scientifically. Comparisons are often made between how a computer processes info and how a human does. Therefore cognitive psychology looks at how the human brain inputs, processes, and outputs info. This has led to the development of computer models like the MSM. The cognitive approach assumes that processing can be affected by
schemas - these are a mental framework of beliefs and expectations derived from experience. Schemas help us interpret incoming info quickly, but they can also lead to a distortion of information, eg creating prejudice.
These internal mental processes cannot be observed directly, but we can infer what someone is thinking depending on how they act.
what is cognitive neuroscience?
The emergence of cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the influence of brain structures on internal mental processes - goes a step further than cognitive psychology, which just studies the mental processes themselves.
It does this using brain imaging techniques, eg fMRI or PET scans.
what are applications of the cognitive approach?
Applications of the cognitive approach
Has been applied to therapies such CBT in which faulty internal mental processes are challenged.
Schemas - they explain how EWT can be distorted and therefore inaccurate.
evaluation of the cognitive approach?
Evaluation
Strength is that it has a wide range of practical applications - for example CBT (explain CBT)
One limitation of this approach is that it has been criticised for machine reductionism. This is because it reduces complex human processing to inputs, processes and outputs. This is an issue because human behaviour is more complex than this - for example, it may differ between different people eg neurotypical vs neurodivergent people may have different processes.
what are the assumptions of the biological approach?
Biological approach
The biological approach assumes that genes drive behaviour. Genes are sections of DNA that code for specific characteristics.
The biological approach also explains behaviour as a result of biological structures and neurochemistry. For example, different brain regions have been linked to different functions - eg Broca’s area is linked to speech production.
The brain is broken down into two different hemispheres (left/right) and 4 different lobes (frontal - personality/higher thought processes/temporal - sound/hearing/parietal - interpreting sensory info/occipital - sight/visual info)
