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Behaviourism/classical conditioning (Lesson questions/hand-out) These are some of the questions we will be looking at during the lesson. When asked you should work in small groups and attempt these on a separate piece of paper. This is important. These are the main assumptions that the assignment asks you to outline initially 1. The main assumptions of behaviourism are that: - All behaviour is observable and it is impossible to understand the mind - The majority of all behaviour is learned from the environment after birth. Therefore, psychology should investigate how people learnt their behaviour (e.g. afraid of spiders) - We are all born a blank slate (tabula rasa) - Look at the assumptions of behaviourism. Identify two different types of behaviour and comment on how you think behaviourists might explain that behaviour. 2. Do you think all behaviour can be explained in this way? Give an example to support your answer. Your answers to 3 and 4 are the sorts of comments that are ‘evaluative’ 3. Ivan Pavlov used dogs in his groundbreaking experiments concerning association learning. Give one critical comment about this. 4. Pavlov also based his findings on lab experiments. Give two critical comments concerning this. 5. Think of your own example of classical conditioning using appropriate terminology. Also use the three stages, before, during and after conditioning. Where do you think this type of learning is important? M. Morgan Page 1 Classical conditioning Classical conditioning (Pavlov) argues that we learn through a process of association of a stimulus (what causes the behaviour – e.g. the lead) with a response (e.g. wag tail and think of walkies). This can be thought of as occurring through a series of 3 stages. In Pavlov’s experiment this can be thought of in the following way. A real life application of classical conditioning Imagine a six year old child, Sam, who is shy and does not enjoy being with lots of different people. Sam’s parents decide to take him to karate/martial arts classes to meet other people, M. Morgan Page 2 in an attempt to help him overcome his shyness. Before each session, Sam feels anxious and does not look forward to it. After a few weeks his parents buy him the suit to wear to the weekly sessions. Sam puts it on just before setting off for the class. Soon, just the sight of the outfit hanging in his wardrobe is enough to make him feel anxious as he has learnt to associate it with the anxiety of attending the classes. Now, have a go at filling in the blanks in the table below. UCS UCR Karate class Anxiety UCS -------------- + CS ---------------- UCR Anxiety CS CR -------------- --------- Now have a look at the Little Albert study by Watson & Raynor (1920) and have a go at the questions that follow on the next page. M. Morgan Page 3 Classical conditioning experiment: Little Albert (Watson & Raynor, 1920). John Watson was interested in taking Pavlov's research further to show that emotional reactions could be classically conditioned in people. The participant in the experiment was a child that Watson and Raynor called "Albert B.", but is known popularly today as Little Albert. Around the age of nine months, Watson and Raynor exposed the child to a series of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks, and burning newspapers and observed the boy's reactions. The boy initially showed no fear of any of the objects he was shown. The next time Albert was exposed the rat; Watson made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer. Naturally, the child began to cry after hearing the loud noise. After repeatedly pairing the white rat with the loud noise, Albert began to cry simply after seeing the rat. Watson and Raynor wrote: "The instant the rat was shown, the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over on [his] left side, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table." Your task now is to find out what is the unconditioned stimulus (UCS), the unconditioned response (UCR), the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the conditioned response (CR)? You should write your answer in the space provided on page 4). M. Morgan Page 4 Key terms: Association learning, stimulus, response, unconditioned, conditioned, anticipatory anxiety, associated stimuli, and generalisation. Anticipatory anxiety – this is where a person experiences increased levels of anxiety by thinking about an event or situation in the future (e.g. thinking about a presentation you have to deliver) Associated stimuli – these are all the stimuli that you associate with something (e.g. things that relate to something that causes you anxiety – a letter for an interview) Generalisation - transfer of a response learned to one stimulus to a similar stimulus Extension task: If you finish the task early then consider what you think some of the issues are with Watson & Raynor’s experiment, and also consider what some of the good points are (.e.g. is it useful for explaining behaviour?). M. Morgan Page 5 Systematic desensitisation is one example of how behaviourism and specifically classical conditioning has been applied – this is useful for the assignment (and you could use your example that you devised in the lesson in your assignment) SYSTEMATIC DESENSITISATION - First developed by Wolpe (1950’s) - Basic idea: Individuals might learn that their feared stimulus was not so fearful if they could only re-experience it – but the anxiety it creates blocks such recovery - This is overcome by gradually introducing the feared stimulus, based on the principle of counterconditioining - Therapy involves: (a) teaching the patient how to relax their muscles. (B) Creating an anxiety hierarchy, a series of scenes or events that are rated from lowest to highest in terms of the amount of anxiety they elicit. (C) Then move through the hierarchy with the patient The case of Little Peter (Jones, 1924) Peter was a 2 year old living in a charitable institution. Jones was mainly interested in those children who cried and trembled when shown animals (such as frogs, rats and rabbits). Peter showed an extreme fear of rats, rabbits, feathers, cotton wool, fur coats, frogs and fish; although in other respects he was regarded as well adjusted. It wasn’t known how these phobias had arisen. Jones, supervised by Watson, put a rabbit in a wire cage in front of Peter while he ate his lunch. After 40 such sessions, Peter ate his lunch with one hand and stroked the rabbit (now on his lap) with the other hand. In a series of 17 steps, the rabbit (still in the cage) had been brought a little M. Morgan Page 6 closer each day, and then let free in the room, eventually sitting on Peter’s lunch tray. Example of a hierarchy generated by a person with arachnophobia (1 = no anxiety, 100 = extreme anxiety) Ratings Items 10 Hearing the word spider 20 Writing the word spider and drawing a spider 30 Seeing a picture of a spider 40 Seeing a spider in a clear tank 50 Briefly touching a spider 60 Having the spider placed on your arm 70 Holding the spider in the palm of your hand briefly 80 Letting the spider move from hand-to-hand 90 Allowing the spider to crawl over you 100 Holding and stroking a tarantula Task: Referring to the phobias hand-out, select one type of phobia and produce an 8 – 10 point hierarchy aimed at treating an individual with a phobia. You can use any values (e.g. 1 – 10 is perfectly ok to use). The key point is that it is hierarchical – it starts off with little steps and builds to much bigger steps/actions. M. Morgan Page 7