Behaviourist approach
In Psychology learning is seen as a change in behaviour caused by an experience. Behaviorism, is seen as a learning theory; an attempt to explain how people or animals learn by studying their behaviour. The Behaviourists Approach has two theories to help explain how we learn, Classical conditioning and operant conditioning. In this task I will attempt to describe and evaluate this approach.
Ivan Pavlov was a Russian Physiologist. At the end of the 19th century Pavlov was conducting research into the physiology of digestion in dogs. During an experiment he discovered something very interesting about the dogs’ behaviour and started studying it. He came up with the theory of classical conditioning, which lead on to more research into behaviour.
During Pavlov's experiment dogs were hooked up to a machine that collected and measured saliva. He noticed that the dogs started salivating not only when offered food, but also in response to events immediately preceding the feeding. He referred to the salivation that occurred when the dogs where presented with food as an unconditioned response, an inborn reflex or instinct that did not require learning, caused by the presence of the food which he referred to as an unconditioned Stimulus; as food is necessary for survival it is instinctual to crave it. Through his experiments he discovered that if a particular neutral stimulus, with no inborn reflex response, such as a bell ringing, was combined with an unconditioned stimulus such as food then the dogs would learn to associate that Neutral stimulus with the Unconditioned Stimulus, and the neutral stimulus would trigger salivation on its own. The neutral stimulus had now become a conditioned stimulus, and the unconditioned stimulus a conditioned reflex,
References: http://www. Innovativelearning.com http://www.playtherapywinchester.com http://www.simplypsychology.com/behavioursm