Theories of Psychology

Ivan Pavlov

1.       Pavlov was studying the digestive system of mammals.

2.       The dog would get food and its saliva would get measured. Pavlov found the dog would salivate before getting the food. This was because he would associate the sound as the food was brought in.

3.       The conditioned stimulus was the tone in Pavlov’s experiment. The unconditioned stimulus was the meat powder. The conditioned response was salivation.

4.       This is the gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of the conditional response tendency. Extinction occurs from multiple presentations of conditioned stimulus with ought the unconditioned stimulus.

5.       Stimulus generalization is when a response to a specific stimulus becomes associated to other stimuli (similar) and how other similar stimuli occur to those other similar stimuli.

6.       Stimulus discrimination is learning to respond to one stimulus and not to another.

7.       Pavlov should have had to re-route the dog’s salivary glands surgically, and should have experimented with humans.

8.       Pavlov concluded that when you pair a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that has natural meaning (US) the neutral stimulus takes on the same meaning and becomes conditional.

http://web.mst.edu/~psyworld/classical_conditioning.htm

John B. Watson

1.    At 9 months of age, little Albert was exposed to a white rat, rabbit, dog, monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers and other similar items. After this, at 11 months he was exposed to a white rat which he played with. While little Albert was happily playing with the rat Watson and his assistant made a loud noise by hitting a steel bar with a hammer. Following this, little Albert became frightened to these objects.

2.      Conditioned stimulus: white rat; Unconditioned stimulus: loud noise; Conditioned response: crying.
3.    This experiment was unethical, therefore should not be tested again.  

4.      The more frequent a stimulus and response to occur in association with each other, the stronger that habit will become.

5.      The response that has most recently occurred after a particular stimulus is the response most likely to be associated with that stimulus.

6.      Watson stated psychology was the study of behavior, instead of the human mind. Therefore people could be studied objectively like lab rats.

http://nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/pavlov/readmore.html

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0497_DeMar_-_Behaviorism.html

http://teachnet.edb.utexas.edu/~Lynda_abbot/Behaviorism.html