P1:
Behaviourist Approach.
An introduction into this perspective is that it studies how conditioning, reinforcement and social learning influence behaviour. It does this through laboratory experiments and observations. In witch they use animals and humans. It is a scientific approach to measure behaviour and investigate how behaviour is learned. They argue that the environment shapes behaviour. Also argued that genetics and cognition are deemed as unimportant in determining behaviours.
There are three main theories to this perspective which are:
Classical conditioning
Operant conditioning
Social learning.
Classical conditioning:
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was working with dogs to investigate their digestive systems; he noticed that one dog began to salivate when Pavlov assistant entered the room with food. Pavlov thought the dog had learned to associate the assistant with food. This meaning food automatically lead to response of salivation, this is called an unconditioned response. The food was the unconditioned stimulus. As the production of saliva was automatic and not learnt. With this, an unconditioned stimulus leads to an unconditioned response. Pavlov then introduced a bell at feeding time, the bell was a conditioned response as the dog then produced saliva on the bell ringing as the dog associated the bell with feeding time. This happened over several trails and then the dog learned this. Eventually it began to salivate when only the bell was rung and no food was presented. Bell ringing is a conditioned stimulus.
Three key points about classical conditioning are that this is the idea that humans learn behaviours through association with environmental stimuli. Behaviours can be conditioned through a stimulus response actions. Finally thought processes of participants are not considered when examining behaviours.
Operant conditioning:
Burrhus