week 2 Flashcards
Historical context
Behaviourism developed in the 1920s as a critical reaction to Freud. Freud focused on understanding the unconscious mind, the unconscious mind is not measurable.
What is classical conditioning
explains how we learn through association
Little albert
Case study focused on one participant with no pre-set experimental design
At the start little albert showed no fear to the white rat however did have fear to a loud noise
The white rat was paired with the loud noise triggering a fear response
Then the white rat alone gave a fear response showing that we learn through association
other white fluffy objects where shown and a fear response was given to them all.
After a little while the fear response began to become weaker so they began to associate it again
After a while the fear response was still shown
Problems with the little albert study
Ethical issues: Albert was removed before deconditioning
Methodological issues: lacked control- would not be published today
Measurement issues: lack of objective clearly operationalised DV
Field
attempted to use more ethical means of inducing a fear response
Research question 1- an paring stimuli with negative information create a fear response in children
Research question 2- can this associative learning result in attentional bias towards negative material
Field method
50 children aged 8-10 years old
allocated to one of two conditions- in each condition, they were presented with images of three unfamiliar animals with an accompanying description
Varied whether description was positive, negative or neutral
Completed fear beliefs questionnaire and a dot probe task
Field results
study showed that presenting negative information about an animal was sufficient to induce attentional bias, no difference in immediate and delayed conditions, participants also reported greater fear beliefs towards that animal and increase fear beliefs mediated the attentional bias
Operant conditioning
involves learning from the consequences of our behaviour: in other words, behaviour changes according to reaction the behaviour receives from the environment
Bobo doll study
Early behaviourist theories fail account for behaviours that have not been conditioned.
aimed to investigate whether aggression be learned through observation in the absence for behaviour
72 children aged 37-39 months
Aggressive model (same sex) Aggressive model (different sex)
Non-aggressive model (same sex)
Non-aggressive model (different sex)
Aggressive model (same sex)
Aggressive model (different sex)
Non-aggressive model (same sex)
Non-aggressive model (different sex)
control
Bobo doll findings
males more likely to engage in physical aggression then girls
Male children exposed to aggressive males models engaged in more imitative and non-imitative then girls
Female exposed to aggressive female models engaged in more imitative verbal aggression and more non-imitative aggression than boys
Social learning theory
argues that children learn through conditioning, also through observational learning or modelling and Vicarious learning.
SLT provides a micro-level of how socialisation occurs
SLT modelling process
Attention, Retention, Reproduction, Motivation
Triadic Reciprocal Determinsim
Environment, Behaviour, Person
Self efficacy
refers to an individuals domain-specific beliefs about their abilities and characteristics. Affects their actual behaviour-determines how and whether individual put into action knowledge they have
Includes belief about effectiveness, competence and ability to cope
Imitation in infants
imitation occurs infants too: week-old infants have been observed imitating tongue protrusion
Meltzoff and Moore 1977
