Semester 1 Theorists

Question 1

Pavlov

Answer 1

Classical conditioning - Pavlov first set out to study a dog’s digestive system. He saw that when he started preparing food the dog started to salivate. The dog’s unconditioned stimulus is food and its unconditioned response was to salivate. Pavlov then paired a bell(a neutral stimulus the dog gave no response to) with food. Over time Pavlov found that the dog would salivate with only the sounds of the bell (without being presented with food). Therefore the conditioned stimuli was the bell and the conditioned response was the dog’s salivation.

Question 2

Ainsworth

Answer 2

Mary Ainsworth conducted a study on attachment of children and developed the Stage Situation Classification. She discovered three types of attachment; secure attachment, insecure resistant attachment and insecure avoidant attachment. Later insecure disorganised attachment was also added.

Question 3

Thorndike

Answer 3

Operant Conditioning - Law of effect; behaviours that offer rewards will be continued, whereas behaviours that give unpleasant consequences will not continue.

Question 4

Bowlby

Answer 4

Attachment - Infants are programmed to form attachments with their caregivers. The first attachments bond influences future relationships; if infants were deprived of their mother, this could cause negative consequences later. He believed infants had a critical tie period in which to develop these attachments.

Question 5

Chomsky

Answer 5

Innate language development - Language Acquisition Device (LAD), people are innately predisposed to language, they are born with universal grammar.

Question 6

Harlow

Answer 6

Attachment - Experimented with monkeys to determine the behavioural theory of attachment. Some monkeys were removed from their mother and raised not heron, these monkeys showed abnormal behaviours. The other monkeys were raised with a choice of two surrogate mothers, one wire mother who gave food and a soft mother without food. The monkeys would feed from the wire mother but send most of their time with the soft mother. Harlow concluded tat for normal development and behaviour the moneys needed security and interaction from heir caregiver.

Question 7

Bruner

Answer 7

Learned language development - Language acquisition support system (LASS), LAD needs LASS, child learns language through intra lion with caregivers. Bruner believed language was developed through routines by; scaffolding, referencing and book reading.

Question 8

Bandura

Answer 8

Observational Learning - Bobo doll

Social Learning Theory - Revised Bobo doll theory

Question 9

Bernstein

Answer 9

Social background in communication

• Restricted code is used by the working class, short simple sentences, few descriptive words and informal language.
• Elaborated code for middle class, formal language, context of conversation and abstract ideas are used.

Question 10

Atkinson and Shiffrin

Answer 10

Multi-store model of memory -

Question 11

Labov

Answer 11

Social background in communication
Disagreed with Berenstein, studied New York African Americans and Black English Vernacular, belied BEV was not a deficit, but simply a different form of language that is just as complex.

Question 12

Baddeley and Hitch

Answer 12

Working memory model - Their central executive is split into two sections: phonological loop which is the rehearsal of sounds, and phonological sketchpad which is the processing of information in visual form.

Question 13

Tannen

Answer 13

Gender differences in communication - men use report tax, similar to public speaking and demand attention
Women use Rapport talk, like to develop personal relationships and share experiences

Question 14

Millar

Answer 14

Short term memory - capacity of 7 items, plus or minus 2

Question 15

Sagi

Answer 15

Cultural differences in attachment - Early child rearing practices can lead to differences in the proportion of each
attachment type. Further investigated the reasons behind Type C (resistant) being in a higher proportion in Israel. The proportion of children raised in communal arrangements who were found to fall into the Type C categories was more than double those raise in the home.

Question 16

Watson

Answer 16

Classical conditioning - Little Albert
Exposed the child to a series of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks and burning newspapers and observed the boy’s reactions. Initially showed no fear of any of the objects he was shown. The next time Albert was exposed the rat, Watson made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer, Albert began to cry after hearing the loud noise. After repeatedly pairing the white rat with the loud noise, Albert began
to cry simply after seeing the rat.

Question 17

Baumrind

Answer 17

Styles of parenting - Conducted extensive observations of parents interacting with their children
in their homes
◦ She concluded that four dimensions of parent-child interactions could predict reliably children’s social, emotional, and cognitive functioning
◦ The dimensions reflected levels of responsiveness and control

Question 18

Skinner

Answer 18

Operant conditioning - Reinforcement and punishment.
Reinforcement causes behaviour to occur more frequently.  Positive- Addition of a pleasant reward  Negative- Removal of an unpleasant outcome 

Punishment causes behaviour to less frequently  Positive- Addition of an unpleasant consequence  Negative - Removal of a pleasant stimulus

Question 19

Lorenz

Answer 19

Critical period - Goslings
Found if he took the place of the mother goose in daily care during the critical period of infancy, the gosling became permanently attached to him

Question 20

Rutter et al

Answer 20

Critical period - studied Romanian orphans who had been placed in orphanages with minimal adult contact.
◦ When these children were adopted by US and UK families in their first year of life, they were able to form strong and stable attachments with their adopted parents.
◦ Bowlby’s theory argues that after 2.5 years of age the infants would not be able to form an attachment, however when older infants were also adopted by US and UK families they made slower progress than their younger counterparts, but they did develop attachments.
◦ This shows that attachments can be formed outside the critical period, but that they develop much more slowly, and that the idea of a critical period outside of which an attachment cannot be formed should be modified to a sensitive period during which attachments form more easily.

Question 21

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg

Answer 21

Cultural differences in attachment - 32 samples from 8 countries
All 3 types of attachment were found in all cultures
The proportionality differences within cultures were greater then the differences between cultures.
Secure attachment is most common in all cultures.
Anxious-Avoidant Attachment more common in Western European countries, while Anxious-Resistant Attachment was more common in Japan and Israel.