Psychology P1 and M1

The Behaviourist approach believe that human beings are able to learn all types of behaviours through the environment they grow up in, its believes that we learn these behaviours through using theories, such as, Ivan Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning and Burrhus Frederic Skinner’s Operant Conditioning.

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.

Freud created the Psychodynamic Approach to explain behaviour. Within it, he describes that there are 3 components of the human mind: The conscious, Pre-conscious and Unconscious. The conscious is the part of the mind which is in our awareness; it contains behaviours and desires which we are aware of. The pre-conscious is the part of the mind between the conscious and unconscious, it contains items such as memories and desires which we are not currently thinking about but can easily bring to conscious awareness. Lastly is the unconscious. This part of the mind is

Repressed memories often occur in children that have been abused. It is very common for repressed memories to come from children who were sexual abuse. A psychotherapist once claimed that about a million people may have blocked out these scary incidents, sections of their childhood, or

* Ivan Pavlov (behaviorist) – Started the idea of conditioning, where an inherited reflex comes to be triggered by a stimulus that has nothing to do with that reflex. He showed that even inherited reflexes could be influenced dramatically by learning experiences.

According to the scenario described P.M is under enormous stress, due to several compounding “family issues” that have recently developed. Although the physicians in charge of her care believe that she may be suffering from depression, her symptoms may be suffering from other conditions. Early menopause and hypothyroidism are two possible causes for P.M recent weight gain, malaise, and difficulty sleeping. Laboratory studies should be obtained in order to rule out other causes for her symptoms.

It is widely agreed that early childhood experiences influence adult life (Freud, 1899, 1901). Freud (1914) suggested that when someone is unable to have memories from childhood it could be used as a defence shutting off memories. Although I am not attempting to review the literature I do wish to mention the work of Freud (1893, 1910, 1933) about his written about the unconscious processes which establishes a link between the physical symptoms of hysteria and traumatic memories repressed. In fact, the memories were repressed they were not lost and it could be retrieved through psychoanalysis technics. Freud (1923) suggested that the repression theory is when certain forces oppose to some ideas to become conscious. In addition, Freud (1900) came to the conclusion the unconscious processes use dreams to express hidden wish-fulfilment.

Many people who are victims or others in general that have taken part in a traumatizing event have stated that they cannot recall what they have experienced or what they have committed. This is what we call today as repressed memory. Repressed memory is caused by how an individual experiences a stressful or traumatizing event. It happens because the victim of repressed memory faces a certain event like the one stated above, which then leads into the event being blocked out unconsciously. (Loftus, 1993) If we were to take a look at an article that talks about how victims have experienced repressed memory we can see that repressed memory can actually resurface. Lisa Nosal talks about how victims of repressed memory show up into her office and start questioning her on why the memories are coming back after a couple of years. (Nosal, 2015). One of her patients has said that “I’ve been fine for years. Now I have nightmares every night and can barely function at work. What’s going on?” (Nosal, 2015) This shows that when repressed memory resurfaces and hits the victim back, it could actually result in a major negative effect on their daily life. It gives each victim of repressed memory a sense of despair. It gives them a sense of despair because throughout their life that memory has been gone and all the sudden it came back at them. This will make the victim feel as if he or she is never going to be able to let go of this trauma. This could have a major impact on their life in many ways. Lisa has an explanation for the reason why repressed memory resurfaces and also has a solution for how victims of it can recover from it. Her answer to why repressed memory resurfaces is that “in my experience as a therapist, what’s happening is that some deep, inner part of you finally feels safe and stable enough to address the leftover emotional fallout that’s been patiently waiting for years.” (Nosal, 2015) This shows that the reason why the memory gets repressed is because the human mind represses it to avoid pain. It gets repressed so that when the victim is finally ready, the mind will slowly bring back the memory so that whatever is leftover can be taken in by the person. Lisa talks about how an individual can deal with the

“Behaviorism is predominantly concerned with evident and measurable aspects of human behavior. In defining behaviour, behaviourist-learning theories emphasise changes in behavior that result from stimulus-response links made by the learner. Behaviour is directed by stimuli. An individual selects one response instead

Freud believed that phobias are rooted in a traumatic childhood experience and the memory may be repressed. While the patient may not remember the trauma, a psychoanalyst would explore the client’s history to discover and expose these repressed events. During psychoanalysis the patient talks about the experience therefore gaining insight and allowing them to work towards separating the subject of the phobia from the traumatic memory.

The psychoanalytic perspective, is the outlook that behavior and personality are effected by the conflict between one’s inner dreams n and expectation of society. Most of this conflict occurs in unconscious, which is outside the knowledge of an individual. Renowned psychologist, Freud established the psychoanalytic theory as an explanation for perplexed phenomena such as the meaning behind dreams, slips of the tongue, and behavioral reflex reactions to stressful situations. The unconscious is a primary focus in psychoanalytic theory due to its typical development in childhood and the ways in which it influences nearly every detail of an individual’s life. The unconscious mind also holds unvented memories and unexpressed urges that make their process into the conscious mind through a variety of different means. However, topographical theory of the mind states that conscious, preconscious, and unconscious serve as motivating forces in human behavior. Corsin & Wedding (2011) define the conscious as mental activity which individuals are fully aware of, preconscious as thoughts and feelings that could be easily brought to mind and unconscious as thoughts, feelings, and desires of which one is unaware of.

Behaviourism is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviours are attained through conditioning. Behaviourists believe conditioning occurs when we interact with the environment and that the environment we are in determines the way we respond to a stimulus. The behaviourist approach believes we learn behaviours through association between response and consequence. For instance, by touching a hot iron you will feel pain. Therefore, we learn from this, and know not to touch a hot iron as we associate feeling pain as a consequence of this action. There are two forms of conditioning within the behaviourist approach; classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Behaviourists believe that individuals are born without built-in mental content, known as a ‘blank slate’ and that all behaviours arise from experience or perception.

The Behavioural approach (also called the learning theory) focuses on the belief that our environment, e.g. people, experiences and learning, influences the development and behaviour of an individual whilst thinking the internal functions, such as thoughts and cognition, are impossible to observe, so they are not apart of the scientific approach to psychology. This theory is also based on the concept of ‘explaining behaviour through observation. Behaviourists assume individuals are born as a blank state (tabula rasa), meaning they do not think biology and cognitive functions influence our behaviour, only our environment does. A large idea that the theory hold is that behaviour can be broken down into stimulus-response units. Stimuli are anything environmental that triggers an individuals’ senses, for example, a student being asked to complete an assignment (stimulus) would respond by completing the assignment. Stimulus-response theories form the basis of classical or operant conditioning, which suggests animals and humans can learn through the relation of a response to any certain stimuli.

The first theory of learning is called classical conditioning and was developed by Ivan Pavlov a Russian physiologist. He started working with dogs to investigate their digestive system, they were ties to a harness and Pavlov added monitors to their stomachs and mouths to measure the rate of saliva produced. He found out that when a lab assistant came in to give the dog food before the dog tasting the food it started to produce saliva, saliva is a reflex response and Pavlov found that unusual because saliva is produced when food touches the tongue but then Pavlov learned that the dog associated food to the lab assistant and like that the he developed his theory. He learnt that food led to an automatic release of

Behavioral Learning Theories Most theorists agree that learning occurs when experience causes a change in a person's knowledge or behavior . Behaviorists emphasize the role of environmental stimuli in learning and focus on the behavior, i.e., an observable response. Behavioral theories are based on contiguity, classical and operant conditioning, applied behavior analysis, social learning theory and self-regulation/cognitive behavior modification. Early views of learning were contiguity and classical conditioning.