John Watson's Process Of Learning

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Introduction
What is learning? The process of learning begins as early as one is in the womb. Before birth, babies learn to recognize the mom’s voice (Paul, 2011). The learning process continues with learning to adapt oneself with the new environment, learning to crawl, eat, walk, talk, read and etc. The definition of learning can be interpreted in many ways. Ormrod (184: 2006) defines learning as a change of behaviour and mental representations due to experience. Robson (2006, as cited in Hayes, 2012: 178) described learning as consequences of thinking which includes the use of imagination playfulness and the ability to learn from and with others. To my understanding, the learning process enhances one’s knowledge on a topic or subject which …show more content…

This was mentioned as he believes that any child is able to do or learn anything as long as they are provided with the right environment to learn. Ormrod (295:2006) defined behaviourism as how environment stimulation brings changes in one’s behaviour. The definition provided by Ormrod supports Watson’s theory on Behaviourism as it shows how the environment a child grows up in shapes the mind and attitude as well as the ability to learn and adapt to new …show more content…

Classical conditioning founder, Ivan Pavlov defined this theory as how we learn new responses as a result of two stimuli (Ormrod, 298:2006). To my understanding, this conditioning refers to a situation whereby one stimuli is used to respond to another stimuli. For instance, a child is given a math test to complete within a short time frame. However, the child failed to complete the task given as he/ she was unable to do it. Therefore, the child starts to dislike maths just because of the one incomplete task. Students are not born with the fear of exam or a subject, however the anxiety can be developed from the relation with the previous negative experience (Chalmers and Hunt, 3: 2012). This condition is also referred to classical conditioning of emotional responses whereby the environment defines behaviour and takes on to the mental states such as emotions, thoughts and feelings into consideration.
Operant conditioning was found by B. F Skinner who believed in changing behaviour with the use of positive and negative reinforcement (McLeod, 2007). This conditioning was founded by Skinner after he wanted to discover the behaviour pattern of animals with the use of ‘Skinner boxes’ which would dish out food and electric shocks to which he believed it could be applied to human behaviour (NIU, 2014). This conditioning can be related to the rewarding

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