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Approaches to Learning

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•The Behaviourist Approach

•Sometimes known as the Transmission model

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Behaviourism

• Behaviourists are interested in studying behaviour

• They are only interested in what can be observed

• Behaviourists look for scientific, demonstrable explanations for simple behaviours

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Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

• Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who was interested in the digestive system.

• He carried out experiments on the gastric function of dogs where he collected and examined saliva.

• During this experiment he noticed that the dogs salivated before the food reached their mouths; ‘psychic secretion’ he called it.

• He then set out to see if he could pair the response with something else.

• He began to ring a bell as he brought the dogs food until eventually the dogs associated the bell with food and the sound of the bell alone made them salivate.

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Behaviourist approach

• Pavlov and his experiment on making dogs salivate to the sound of a bell introduced the idea of ‘classical conditioning’

• This means that the pairing of the bell with the food conditioned the response to salivate

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Burrhus F.Skinner (1904 – 1990)

• Skinner, an American psychologist, took Pavlov’s concept further with the experiments he did on rats

• He placed the rats in a maze with a number of levers.

• Some levers when pressed produced food, others a small electric shock.

• With time and experience the rats returned to the levers with food and avoided the other levers.

• Skinner called this shaping of behaviour ‘operant conditioning’

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Operant Conditioning• Positive Reinforcement – This is when you

get something positive that encourages you to repeat the behaviour. E.g. the rats returned to the levers that produced food

• Negative reinforcement – this is an action you do that helps you to avoid something. Because you avoid it, you have escaped the situation and so are more likely to repeat the same action again. E.g. the rats avoided the levers with shocks

• Punishment – this is something that stops behaviour. E.g. the shock

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Behaviourist approach• Through his

experiments Skinner found that he could reinforce the animals behaviour known as ‘operant conditioning’

• ‘Positive reinforcement’ ‘Negative reinforcement’ and ‘punishment’

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Behaviourist approach

• This approach suggests that learning can occur in the same way:

• What fears do you have?• How did you learn these?• What reinforces them?• Phobias can develop and be strengthened through

negative reinforcement. E.g. by consistently avoiding your fear you reinforce that it is fearful and that your avoidance behaviour is a good escape from it.

• Treatment for phobias is often to counter-condition, where they are systematically desensitized to the object of their fear

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Basic principles of Behaviourism

o Repetition is important (e.g. Pavlov had to ring bell with food more than once to condition dogs response)

o Small, concrete, progressively sequenced tasks o Positive and negative reinforcement o Consistency in the use of reinforcers during the teaching-

learning process o Habits and other undesirable responses can be broken by

removing the positive reinforcers connected with them. o Immediate, consistent, and positive reinforcement

increases the speed of learning. o Once an item is learned, intermittent reinforcement will

promote retention. (If Pavlov carried on ringing the bell without food, eventually the dogs would stop salivating)

How are these used in your setting?

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Watson & Rayner (1920) Fear and conditioning

• In the 1920s, Watson and Rayner taught an infant to fear white rats.

• 11 month old Albert B. was not previously afraid of the laboratory's white rats

• Watson & Rayner taught him to be terrified of white rats. • They used classical conditioning, pairing a neutral stimulus (the

rat) with a negative effect. Whenever Albert reached for one of the rats, they created a terrifyingly loud noise right behind him.

• Not only did Albert learn very quickly to fear the white rats, crying and moving away whenever he saw one, but he also started to cry in the presence of other furry animals and a Santa Claus mask with a white beard.

• Like Little Albert's fear of white rats, a person's fear of dogs is most likely a conditioned response. Perhaps he was bitten by a dog when he was three years old. Twenty years later, the person's brain (the amygdala in particular) still associates the sight of a dog with the pain of a bite. (Green.C., 2008., Layton.J.2008)

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ActivityExamples of how the behaviourist approach has

influenced learning or behaviour in schools.Rewards and punishmentsSmall achievable targets that follow a

sequence and rewards for children’s learningRepetition of tasksUse of praise for learning and behaviourIgnoring unacceptable behaviour - by ignoring

we remove the reward (i.e. attention) and so the behaviour will stop

Consistent approaches to dealing with behaviour to reinforce conditioned behaviour

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Operant conditioning Game

Work in pairs and put the following examples of operant conditioning under the right headings;

• Positive reinforcement• Negative reinforcement • Punishment

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Shooting games where children get points for a kill

Completing coursework so tutor doesn’t nag

Arrested for stealing Employee incentives/ bonuses

Not paying a bill and being cut off

Going to work so you don’t get sacked

Flight simulators in RAF; responding to red ‘danger’ light

Medals for athletics

EMA Fire drills

Being grounded by your parents

Running away from a wasp

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Answers to gamePositive Reinforcement• Some argue that shooting games condition children to shoot to

kill. In games they get rewards or points• Employee incentives/bonuses• Medals for athletics• EMA

Negative reinforcement – • Completing coursework so tutor doesn’t nag• Flight simulators in RAF; responding to red ‘danger’ light• Fire drills• Going to work so you don’t get sacked• Running away from a wasp

Punishment• Not paying a bill and being cut off• Arrested for stealing• Being grounded by your parents

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Unit 7, Task 1

• P1 Describe the ways in which children learn with reference to the major learning theories of learning

• M1 with reference to the major theories of learning, explain how children learn

• D1 evaluate the major theories of learning, using examples from work placement

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Reference list• Green.C. (date unknown) Classics in the history of psychology,

available at: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm accessed 13/2/09

• Layton.J., 2008. How Fear Works available at: http://health.howstuffworks.com/fear4.htm accessed 13/2/09

• LinguaLinks Library, (1998), Behaviourist theories of learning, SIL International available at: http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/Literacy/ImplementALiteracyProgram/BehavioristTheoriesOfLearning.htm accessed 18/11/08

• Miell,D., Pheonix,A., Thomas.K., (2002) Mapping Psychology 1, Milton Keynes: The Open University