Watson's Theory Of Behaviourism Essay

The study of behaviourism, as Watson outlined was the idea: of only focusing on physical behaviour Watson’s study was first developed by Pavlov called classical conditioning: Pavlov found that dogs salivate when they see food and attempted to provoke salivation with an alternative stimulus. To achieve this Pavlov sounded a bell whenever food was presented. Later the bell became a trigger for the dog and even if there were no food present the dog would still salivate. Pavlov found that for the associations to be made the two stimuli had to be presented close together in time. He called this the law of temporal contiguity. The study of Pavlov therefore explained that there was great influence from the environment to shape behaviour, so behaviour was explained through interactions with the environment you might hear the music the stimulus (S) and start to dance the response (R). Pavlov clearly explained that
This as skinner called positive reinforcement, however there was negative reinforcement as well, punishment (such as electrical shock). Skinners work of operant conditioning however was found from Edward Thorndike (1905), Thorndike studied learning in animals using a puzzle box to propose the theory known as “law of effect”, “One effect of successful behaviour is to increase the probability of that behaviour being repeated in similar circumstances”. Skinner later on introduced a new topic in Thorndike’s Law of effect theory called reinforcement. Behaviour that is usually reinforced tends to be strengthened however behaviour that is not reinforced tends to