Behaviourist approach

• Behaviour is learnt by conditioning, eg. formation of learned associations between stimuli in the environment and an organism's responses
• classical conditioning


  a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired and an association is formed
• Operant Conditioning


  Learning behaviours through the consequences of punishment and reward.
• Positive Reinforcement 


  A stimulus that increases the probability that a behaviour will be repeated as it is pleasurable
• Negative Reinforcement 


  A stimulus that increases the probability that behaviour will be repeated as it leads to the escape of an unpleasant situation and is experienced as rewarding.
• Punishment


  A procedure that decreases the probability of a behaviour being repeated because the overall experience is unpleasant
• Stimulus Generalisation


  If a stimulus has characteristics close to the conditioned stimulus, then the association would also be made to that new stimulus. For example, Little Albert
• Stimulus Discrimination


  When a stimulus is not linked with the conditioned response as it is different from the original stimulus
• Hard determinism - behaviour is environmentally determined by external influence that we cannot control