learning theory/behaviourism

• classical condition ?

  learning by association, associate a stimulus with response
• food produces a sense of pleasure, person who feeds the infant becomes assosciated with food, so the mother becomes a source of pleasure even when not present, this association is what builds the attachment bond
• operant conditioning is learning by reward, food i a primary reinforcer as it rewards the babies hunger and allows it to avoid hunger, the person providing the food becomes assosciated with hunger and becomes a secondary reinforcer, the infant wants to be close to the caregiver and attachment is formed
• strength ?

  based on scientific experiments vcarried out on animals in lab conditions, this means there is a high control of extraneous variables which means we can infer cause and effect
• weakness ?

  it is not feeding that leads to attachment, harlows monkeys is evidence for this, monkeys preffered the mother that offered comfort and not he one with food, this proves the idea as flawed
• weakness ?

  schaffer and emerson found in about 40% of human infants the adult who fed the infant was not the person who the infant was most attached too, infants are more likely to be attached to responsive adults and provided them with stimulation which proves the idea of learning theory as flawed
• weakness ?

  theory is too simple, it reduces complex human behaviour down to learning through sanction and association , it is reductionist as it ignores all other explanations, it only considers the role of nurture and not nature