They believed that behaviour is learned through our environment through operant or classical conditioning and that behaviour is just a response to a stimulus. Operant conditioning is a learning method to change behaviour through reinforcement to produce the desired response. Classical conditioning requires a stimulus to trigger a response by pairing with an unconditional stimulus. Skinner and Harlow’s aims were to look into the understanding of the different influences on human behaviour. Skinner was interested in the behaviourist way of observing and measuring behaviour.
2. Operant Behaviourism is a term used to define how we learn. It’s a theory of learning that a person’s behaviour can be altered though conditioning (classical & operant). Operant conditioning is a theory that moderates behaviour though giving an award or punishment. Behaviour that’s seen as acceptable results in positive reinforcement which is a pleasurable reward, so behaviour is repeated.
But, he also noticed that when the person who usually fed them was present they started to produce saliva. He called this a conditioned response (Chang, R. 2004 p1-23). This experiment has also been repeated on humans in an experiment known as fear conditioning where a neutral stimulus i.e. a sound will follow something unpleasant like an electric shock, and experimenters found that even after one attempt it would cause a response (Maron, S:2001 p897-931). Operant conditioning which is was developed by Skinner, there are four contexts of this.
Unit 8- P1 and M1: (Health and Social Care but relates to Psychology) The Behaviourist Approach: Behaviourism is an approach focuses primarily on behaviour in a sense of it’s ability to be observed through focusing on the way that we, as human beings, are able to learn and the impact this has on our behaviour as well as how we interact and form relationships with others. As well as the observation of behaviour, behaviourists believe certain facts to do with behaviour including the believe that all behaviour is a result of experiences and they behaviour is likely to be repeated in a reinforcement occurs. The behaviourist approach holds two main assumptions. These are the assumptions that behaviour can be explained in terms of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning refers to the process of learning through association.
Learning is said to occur as a result of associations being made between stimulus and responses that didn’t exist before learning takes place. “Conditioning” is a term that is used to describe associative learning. Rats and pigeons which were his preferred animal species to study. He designed a simple box (which became known as the “Skinner Box”) that contained a lever or a key. The learning outcome (desired behaviour) was for the rat to press the lever, or the pigeon to
Social psychological theories propose that the causes of aggressive behaviour arise out of our interactions with others in our social world. Social learning theory (SLT) proposes that aggressive behaviour is learned either through direct experience or by vicarious experience. It claims that children learn to be aggressive by observing the behaviour of those around them particularly the behaviour of significant others, such as parents or elder siblings. By seeing others being rewarded or punished for their aggressive behaviours, the child experiences vicarious reinforcement. From these models, children therefore learn about the nature of aggressive behaviour, the situations where it is appropriate and its likely consequences.
The social learning theory suggests that aggressive behaviour is learnt through observation and imitation of models. It is mostly the work of bandura which formed the basis of this theory. His ‘Bobo Doll’ study supported this idea as it found that children imitated the behaviour of the model they were exposed to. The idea of ‘vicarious learning’ was later added to the theory. Children learn for themselves whether and when certain behaviours are worth repeating by witnessing the consequences of actions carried out by others.
Both classical and operant conditioning are basic forms of learning (Corey text). Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism learns to transfer a natural response from one stimulus to another, previously neutral stimulus. Manipulating reflexes does this. Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which the likelihood of a behavior is increased or decreased by the use of reinforcement or punishment. Operant conditioning deals with more cognitive thought process.
He tried presenting a number of different objects in front of the dog and eventually discovered that it would salivate when every object was presented and named this response as a conditional reflex. Pavlov also discovered that these types of reflexes would originate from the cerebral cortex of the brain. (This is shown in the image to the right) * Operant Conditioning (B.F. Skinner): This is another behaviourist theory which was introduced by Burrhus.F. Skinner in 1930. His experiment was called “Skinners Box” Skinners focus was based on reinforcement and this can be a positive outcome or it is a behaviour to avoid any negative consequences.
1b: Describe the social learning theory of aggression The social learning theory of aggression aims to explain how behaviour can be explained not just by our own direct experiences but through observations of the experiences of other people (learning through observation, imitation and modelling). This theory is a behaviourist approach created by Albert Bandura who aimed to explain how children imitated aggressive behaviour or acts. SLT takes into account the thought process of an individual- unlike operant and classical conditioning. Bandura argued that children imitate aggressive acts through four processes; the first of process is attention where the model is being observed rather then just present. The second being retention where the observer must remember what they have seen or learnt.