The behaviourist approach

The behaviourist approach

1. Classical conditioning

   • Pavlov (1927) - He was investigating the salivary reflex in dogs when he noticed that the animals not only salivated when food was placed in their mouths but also reacted to stimuli that coincided with the presentation of food, such as the presence of a food bowl or the person who fed them
   • Process
     • 1) NS (food bowl) presented shortly before UCS (food)
     • 2) After many pairings of NS and UCS, the NS now produces the same response (saliva) in the absence of the UCS
     • 3) The NS is now referred to as a conditioned stimulus (CS) and the response it produces is called a conditioned response (CR).
   • Other important features
     • Timing - conditioning does not take place if the NS is not presented shortly before the UCS
     • Extinction - after a few presentations of the CS in the absence of the UCS, it loses its ability to produce the CR
     • Spontaneous recovery - following extinction, if the CS and UCS are then paired together once again, the link between them is made much more quickly
     • Stimulus generalisation - Pavlov discovered that once an animal has been conditioned, they will respond to other stimuli that are similar to the CS

2. Operant conditioning

   • Skinner (1938) developed a special cage in order to investigate operant conditioning in rats. The rat moves around the cage, and when it accidentally presses the lever, a food pellet (the reinforcer) falls into the cage. In no time at all, the hungry rat begins pressing the lever in order to obtain food. If the food pellets stop, the rat presses the lever a few more times and then abandons it (extinction)
   • Positive reinforcement - When behaviour produces a consequence that is satisfying or pleasant for that organism
   • Negative reinforcers - They remove something unpleasant as a consequence
   • Punishment - A behaviour is followed by an unpleasant consequence which decreases the likelihood of a behaviour recurring

3. Evaluation

   • Classical conditioning
     • Development of treatments for the reduction of anxiety associated with various phobias. E.g systematic desensitisation
     • Different species face different challenges to survive so have different capabilities to learn through classical conditioning. Seligman (1970) proposed the concept of preparedness to explain this. Animals are prepared to learn associations that are significant in terms of their survival needs
   • Operant conditioning
     • Reliance on the experimental method, which uses controlled conditions in an attempt to discover a possible causal relationship between two or more variables
     • Non human animals - critics claim that his reliance on rats and pigeons means that Skinner's studies can tell us little about human behaviour as humans have free will rather than having their behaviour determined by positive and negative reinforcement