Transcript Behaviorism

Theory & Research
Chapter 2
© 2009 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc
1
Window on the World: Purposes of
Cross Cultural Research
• In what ways is development universal?
• Language development
• Motor development
• Bias in western theories and research?
• Linguistic barriers
• Observational issues
• Cross-cultural comparison pitfalls?
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Basic Theoretical Terms
• Theory
• A set of logically related concepts that seek to
describe and explain behavior and to predict
what kinds of behavior might occur under specific
conditions
• Provides groundwork for hypotheses
• Hypotheses
• Tentative explanations that can be tested by
further research
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Theories of Development:
Is Development Active or Reactive?
● Mechanistic Model: Passive
 Locke: tabula rasa
 Children are ‘blank slates on
which society writes’
 People are machines reacting to
environment
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Theories of Development:
Is Development Active or Reactive?
● Organismic Model: Active
 Rousseau: ‘noble savages’
 Children set their own
development in motion
 People initiate events,
don’t just react
 Sees people as active,
growing organisms
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Theories of Development:
Continuous or Discontinuous?
• Mechanistic Theories: Continuous
• Focus on quantitative change
• Changes in number or amount such as height,
weight, size of vocabulary, etc
• Same processes are involved
• Think of a ramp
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Theories of Development:
Continuous or Discontinuous?
• Organismic Theories: Stage
• Focus on qualitative change
• Changes in kind, structure, or organization
• Different processes involved
● Think
of stairs
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Five Major Perspectives
•
•
•
•
•
Psychoanalytic
Learning
Cognitive
Contextual
Evolutionary/sociobiological
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Freud’s Psychosexual Theory
• Psychoanalytic
• Unconscious forces motivate
human behavior
• Psychoanalysis: Therapy that
gives insight into unconscious
emotional conflicts
• Originated by Freud
• Sought to give clients insight into unconscious
emotional conflicts by asking questions to
summon long-buried emotions
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Freudian Parts of Personality
• Id
• Pleasure Principle
• The drive to seek immediate satisfaction of needs
and desires (in newborns)
• Ego
• Reality Principle
• Occurs when gratification is delayed (during first year
of life). Infants begin to see themselves as separate
from outside world
• Superego
• Follows rules of society
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Freudian Psychosexual Stages
Stage
Age
Unconscious Conflict
Oral
Birth to about15
months
Sucking & feeding
Anal
12-18 months to
3 years
Potty training
Phallic
3 to 6 years
Attachment to parents
Latency
6 years to puberty
Socialization
Genital
Puberty to adult
Mature adult sexuality
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Freudian Psychosexual Stages
Freud
thought that too much or too little stimulation
during each stage would lead to problems in the
development of personality, because the child would
become ‘fixated’ at the stage.
He also emphasized the phallic stage as crucial for
the development of the Electra and Oedipus
Complex.
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Erickson’s Psychosocial Theory
• ‘Neo-Freudian’
• Emphasized influence of society
• Development is lifelong, not just during
childhood
• Each of eight stages of
development involves a ‘crisis’
• Crisis resolution gains a ‘virtue’
•  Example: Infancy: trust vs.
mistrust
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Learning Theory
• Learning
• Long-lasting change in
behavior, based on
experience
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Behaviorism
• Behaviorism: observed behavior is viewed
as a predictable response to experience
• John Watson claimed he could mold any
infant in any way he chose.
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Learning Theory:
Behaviorism
• We respond based on whether the
situation is:
• Painful or Threatening
• Pleasurable
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Behaviorism:
Classical Conditioning
• John Watson: Conditioning of Fear
• Orphan boy ‘Little Albert’
• 1. Albert liked the furry rat
• 2. Rat presented with loud CRASH!
• 3. Albert cried because of noise
• 4. Eventually, site of rat made
Albert cry
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Behaviorism:
Operant Conditioning
• Individual learns the consequences of
‘operating’ on the environment
• Learned relationship between behavior
and its consequences
• B.F. Skinner formulated original ideas by
working with animals, then applied them
to humans
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Operant Conditioning:
Reinforcement
• Increases likelihood of behavior
reoccurring
• Positive: Giving a reward
• Candy for finishing a task
• Negative: Removing something aversive
• No chores for getting an A+ on homework
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Operant Conditioning:
Punishment
• Decreases likelihood of behavior
reoccurring
• Positive: Adding something aversive
• Getting scolded
• Negative: Removing something pleasant
• Taking away car keys
• Getting a ‘time out’
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Social Learning Theory
• Albert Bandura: Development is
“bidirectional”
• Reciprocal determinism—person acts on
world as the world acts on the person
• Observational Learning or
Modeling
• Children choose models to imitate
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdh7Mn
gntnI&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_s9pG
5CWXM&feature=fvw
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Social Cognitive Theory:
An Update to Modeling
• Emphasizes cognitive processes as central
to development
• Beginning of ‘self-efficacy’
• People observe models and learn ‘chunks’ of
behavior
 Imitating dance steps of teacher
 ….AND other students
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Cognitive Theory
• Focuses on thought processes
• and behavior that reflects those
processes
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Piaget:
Cognitive Stage Theory
• Clinical Method
• Combining observation with questioning
• Development begins with an inborn
ability to adapt
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Piagetian Cognitive Growth:
Organization
A tendency to create complex cognitive
structures, or ‘schemes’
Schemes
Organized patterns of behavior used to think
and act in a situation
Infants suck bottles AND thumbs
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Piagetian Cognitive Growth:
Adaptation
• How children handle familiar information
• 2 processes:
• Assimilation: Incorporating new information into
existing schemes
• An infant who has been taught the word “bird” calls a
duck “bird”
• Accommodation: Changing structures to include
new information
• The infant realizes the differences between a bird and a
duck, incorporating these into their knowledge
• These steps are balanced through Equilibration
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Sociocultural Theory
• Lev Vygotsky
• Focused on the social and cultural processes that guide
children’s development
• Stresses children’s active interaction with social environments
• Zone of proximal development (ZPD):
• What children can do and what they are capable of doing with
the help of others
• Scaffolding
•
The temporary support parents, teachers, etc give children until they
can perform a task alone
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Information Processing
Approach
• Analyzes processes involved in
perceiving information
• Helps children be aware of their own
mental strategies
…..and strategies for
improvement!
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Information Processing Approach:
Neo-Piagetian Theories
• Focus on specific concepts,
strategies, and skills
• Number concepts
• Comparisons of ‘more’
and ‘less’
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Contextual approach
• Development can be understood only in its
social contexts
• Urie Bronfenbrenner: development occurs in
context
• Describes range of interacting influences that
affect development
• Identifies contexts that stifle or promote
growth
• Home, classroom, neighborhood
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Bronfenbrenner’s Five
Contextual Systems
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Evolutionary/Sociobiological
Theory
• Uses Darwin’s evolutionary theory
• Survival of the fittest
• Animals with traits suited to environment survive
• These adaptive traits are passed on to offspring
• Natural selection
• As environments change, traits change in
adaptiveness
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Evolutionary Theory:
Ethology
• Study of distinctive behaviors that have
adaptive value
• Innate behaviors evolved to increase
survival odds
• Squirrels’ burying of nuts
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Evolutionary Psychology
• How biology and environment interact to
produce behavior and development
● Humans unconsciously strive for personal
survival and genetic legacy
 Result: A development of mechanisms that
evolved to solve problems
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Research Methods
Quantitative
Qualitative
• Objectively
measurable data
Non-numerical
 Standardized tests
 Physiological
changes
data
 Feelings
 Beliefs
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Scientific Method:
Quantitative Research
1. Identify problem
2. Formulate hypotheses
3. Collect data
4. Analyze data
5. Form conclusions
6. Share findings
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Sampling
• Sample
• A smaller group within the population
• Studying the entire population is
inefficient
• Random Selection
• Each person in population has an equal
chance of being in sample
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Data Collection:
Self-Reports
• Diaries
• Recording daily activities
• Interviews
• Research ask questions about attitudes,
opinions, or behavior
• Can be open-ended or a questionnaire
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Data Collection:
Naturalistic Observation
• ‘People watching’
• Behavior is observed in natural
settings, without interfering
• Limitations
• Can not inform causes of behavior
• Researcher cannot know all possible
influences on behavior
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Data Collection:
Laboratory Observation
• Behavior observed and recorded in
controlled environment
• More likely to identify and control causal
influences
• Limitation:
• Observer Bias: A researcher’s tendency to
interpret data to fit expectations
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Behavioral and
Performance Measures
• Objective measures
• Mechanical and electronic devices
• Assessing skills, knowledge, and
abilities
• Heart rate
• Brain activity
• Intelligence tests
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Meaningful Measures
• Reliable
• Results are consistent from time to time
• Valid
• The test actually measures what it claims
to measure
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Measures:
Operational Definitions
• Defining abstract ideas in objective
terms
• What is intelligence?
• A score on a test
• Are there different kinds of intelligence?
• Emotional intelligence
• Academic intelligence
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Social Cognitive
Neuroscience
• Emerging field
• Bridges mind, brain and behavior
• Uses data from:
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Social psychology
• Info-processing approaches
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Research Designs
Type
Characteristics
Pros
Cons
Case Study
Study of
individuals
Flexibility
Reduced
generalizability
Ethnographi
c
Study of cultures
Universality of
phenomena
Observer bias
Correlational
Positive or
negative
relationships
Enables
prediction
Cannot
establish cause
& effect
Experiment
Controlled
procedures
Establishes
cause & effect
Reduced
generalizability
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Case Studies
• Study of an individual (such as Genie)
• Offer useful in depth information
• Shortcomings
• Not generalizable
• No way to test conclusions
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Ethnographic studies
• Describe patterns that make up a society’s
way of life
• Relationships, customs, beliefs, arts, traditions
• Participant observation
• Subject to observer bias
• Useful in cross-cultural research
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Correlational Studies
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Experiments: Groups
• Experimental
• People who are exposed to the
treatment
• Control
• Similar to the experimental group but
do NOT receive the treatment
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Experiments: Variables
• Independent
• Experimenter has direct control over
• Dependent
• Something that may or may not
change as result of changes in
independent variable
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Experiments:
Random Assignment
• Participants have an equal chance of
placement in experimental or control
group(s)
• Helps avoid unintentional differences
between groups
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Experiments: Location
• Control over cause and effect varies,
depending on location:
• Laboratory – most control
• Field – controlled
• Everyday settings
• Home or school
• Natural – least control
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Research Designs
Cross
sectional
People assessed at one point in
time
Longitudina Same people studied more than
once
l
Sequential
• Complex combination of cross
sectional and longitudinal
• Adds more data than either design
alone
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Ethics
• Balancing benefits or research against
mental and physical risks to participants
• Considerations
•
•
•
•
Right to informed consent
Avoidance of deception
Right to privacy
Confidentiality
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Ethics
• Researchers are guided by
• Beneficence
• Respect
• Justice
• Researchers should be sensitive to
participants’ developmental needs and
cultural issues and values
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