Difference Between Learning Approach And Behaviourist Approach

Learning approach / behaviourist approach
In the learning approach they believe that all behaviour is learnt from the environment after birth, that everyone born is born with a ‘Tabula Rasa’ and Latin phrase meaning ‘blank slate’. All the behaviour and knowledge all then comes from associations and interactions with people around us and environment we are bought up in which is learnt from observation and others around us modelling behaviour. New types of behaviours which are formed from association is between a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned response. Before conditioning the stimulus it is called an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the response being an unconditioned response (UCR). During the conditioning the stimulus is the unconditioned …show more content…
Watson (1878 – 1958) an American psychologist was done on a nine-month-old baby chosen from a local hospital. The experiment was designed to teach an infant to fear from an animal, in this case a white rat was presented at the same time as a loud frightening noise was done to see whether such fear would transfer to other animals or objects and how long it would persist. The unconditioned stimulus was the loud noise as Albert would cry and crying was the unconditioned response. The rat was a neutral stimulus but put together with the unconditioned stimulus; the loud noise and the white rat resulted in fear and crying from Albert, which was a conditioned response evidently the rat becoming the conditioned stimulus. Albert was conditioned to fear the rat until the end of his life. Watson’s method today is considered to be unethical and even cruel. Some main ethics he broke involved a deception, a protection from harm and a debrief but of course at the time they were seen as logical and natural progression from previous animal studies. In the experiment Little Albert was observed on a mattress studying his reactions when he was introduced to by a dog, white rat, a rabbit, a monkey and some inanimate objects including masks and burning paper. Albert showed no fear of any of these animals or objects, he even reached out and touched them. This is how Watson established a base from which he can measure any change in the child’s …show more content…
His early work was influenced by behaviourist perspective in the way that it focused on learning observable behaviour. Bandura was interested in studying children’s aggression. He created an experiment called “Bobo doll” (1961) where he sought to explain how aggressive behaviour develops, what provokes them to carry it out and to determine whether they will continue to behave aggressively. For the experiment 36 boys and 36 girls all between the ages from three to six took place, recruited from a nursery. They were divided up into three groups of 24, each compromising of 12 boys and 12 girls. The first group was the control group where they did not see any adult role model, the second group exposed to an adult modelling aggressive behaviour towards an inflatable Bobo doll and the third group was exposed to a passive adult model. The second group watching the adults performing physically and verbally aggressive acts towards the doll (sometimes using various actions or different objects such as mallets, or kicking it, flung it etc.) imitated similar actions when left alone in the room with the Bobo doll. Children in this group showed an increasing attraction to guns despite the fact guns were not modelled. The children who were either in control groups or who were exposed to a passive adult model only rarely demonstrated any kind of physical or verbal