The Behaviourist Approach

The Behaviourist Approach

1. Operant Conditioning

   • Positive Reinforcement
     • Learning phrases and reward
     • Reward
   • Negative Reinforcement
     • Laziness
     • crime
     • Rule Breaking
   • Behaviour learnt through reinforcement
   • Examples
     • Manners
     • Law
   • Skinner and Bird
     • Bird learnt by reinforcement where there was a reward at stake

2. Classical Conditioning

   • Assumption 2
   • Nehaviour learnt through association
   • Example: Watson and Rayner
     • To see if it's possible to induce fear of a previously un-feared object through classical conditioning
     • To see if fear is transferred onto other similar objects
     • To see if the fear can be taken away

3. Assumptions

   • 1: The Blank Slate
     • Tabula Rasa
     • Operant Conditioning
     • Enter world with no pre-conceptions
   • 2: Behaviour learnt through conditioning
     • Classical conditioning
     • association
     • UCS
     • Pavlov's Dog
       • Bell was originally a neutral stimulus and then eventually becomes condtioned
       • Meat powder was unconditioned
   • 3: Humans and Animals learn in similar ways
     • generalistations
     • similar

4. Conditioning used on children?

   • SSDP (Seattle Social Development Project)
     • To prevent childhood deliquency
     • Trained teachers and parents
     • Successful?
       • By 5th grade, more committed to school and less likely to drink
       • By aged 18= higher academic achievement
       • By aged 21, more successful in school and work and less likely to get a criminal conviction
     • Compared to control group
     • Ethical
       • Not fair on control group; don't get to experience benefits
   • Schools
     • Teachers taught to provide rewards and punishments
     • Remind who's in charge
     • Can miss out on valuable learning
   • Peers
     • Influenced by friends
     • Have fun= feel good about themselves
     • Peer Pressure
   • Home
     • Encouraged to include children in family activities
     • Same child= may lose effect
     • Naughty Step

5. Systematic Desensitisation

   • Treatment for phobias
   • Based on classical conditioning; behaviour is learnt through association
   • Token Economy
     • Autistic spectrum
     • Positive reinforcement
     • Operant conditioning
     • encourage desirable behaviour
     • Can be quite difficult to reduce the reward
   • 1:Relaxation techniques
   • 2: hierarchy of fear
   • 3:Patient works way through hierarchy
   • 4: Move onto next step whilst using relaxation techniques
   • 5:reach top of hierarchy and mastered the fear
   • In vitro: visualise feared stimuli
   • In vivo: relax when directly experiencing feared stimuli
   • How links with assumptions
     • Classical conditioning; stimuli associated with fear and leads to extinction of fear response
     • Generalisation; fear could be incorporated with a similar stimuli