Category: Behaviourism

Edwin Guthrie’s contiguity theory proposes that learning results from a pairing close in time to a response with a stimulus or situation. Behaviourism

B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behaviour. Through operant conditioning, an individual makes an association between a particular behaviour and a consequence. Behaviourism

John B. Watson was the first to use the term ‘behaviourist’. A behaviourist approach is only concerned with observable stimulus-response behaviours and states that all behaviours are learned through interaction with the environment. Watson’s methodological behaviourism asserts the mind is tabula rasa (a blank slate) at birth. He is also..Read More

Edward Thorndike proposed the Law of Effect (that consequences, either rewards or punishments are a necessary condition for learning) and the Law of Exercise (that learned behaviour fades without practice and is strengthened with practice). He also showed that transfer depends on the similarity of the situations or domains. Behaviourism

Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning theory proposes that we learn behaviours through association where two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person or animal. Behaviourism