Behaviourist approach

• Assumptions:

  Only interested in studying behaviour that can be observed and measured.

  • All behaviour is learnt.
  • describes a baby's mind as a blank slate which can only be written on through experience.
• Classical conditioning

  Pavlov -1927

  • Learnt through association
  • Shows how dogs could learn to salivate at the sound the bell as long as the bell is repeatedly rung at the same time as when they are given food.
  • Gradually the dog learns to associate the sound of a bell which was a neutral stimulus with food which is a unconditioned stimulus to salivate (conditioned response).
  • This would mean the bell as become the conditioned stimulus
• Operate conditioning:

  Skinner 1953

  • Learnt through concequences
  • Active process whereby animals and humans operate on their environment

  Skinners rats:

  Positive reinforcement: where put in a box when they pressed the leaver they got given food.

  Negative reinforcement: put in a box where they were given electric shocks, when they pressed the leaver the shocks would stop.