Behaviourist Theory in a nutshell!

So, you will have already seen my videos of Pavlov's experiment and Skinner's experiment...

As far as i understand it this is behaviourist Theory...

John Locke (1632-1704) a philosopher and physician, said that "children were a blank slate at birth and it was the experiences and interactions with people and environment which affected their development" (got this from the book - "Early Childhood Studies, by Johnston and Nohmad-Williams")

So there are a few people that thought they'd test it out with different experiments,.,,

Firstly, Watson and Raynor (1920) taught an 11 month old child called Albert to be afraid of a soft white rabbit by showing it to him and making a loud noise at the same time which frightenend him. So when Albert saw a rabbit in the future he was scared as he associated it with the loud frightening noise. (I suppose this is where phobias come from, some people say that you are scared of certain things because of a traumatic experience that you associate with it)

Anyway, then Pavlov came along in 1920 with his experiment with the dog - see you tube video!

Finally, Skinner did an experiment with rats (see you tube video) here he extended Pavlov's findings to say that when actions are positively rewarded the child/animal is more likely to do it again but if you punish the action they won't continue to do it. Basically - the supernanny theory!

So that was meant to be in a nutshell, but went on a bit!!

Hope that all makes sense!

See you tomorrow...