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Mental illness and its effect
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Watson’s life history
John Broadus Watson was a famous American psychologist who lived between the year 1878 and 1958. He was born in a place called Greenville in South Carolina. John’s father was called Pickens and Emma was his mother and he was their fourth born child. The family was not well of financially they just lived in poverty. In spite of the poverty that engulfed the family, John’s father turned to be a habitual drunkard who cared less for his family. However, Emma John’s mother was a devoted religious woman who struggled to take care of the children with less support from her husband (Watson, 1999). In 1891, Pickens John’s father left the family and disappeared since he was somebody who engaged in extra marital affairs with other women a situation which even strained their marriage with his wife Emma and the relationship with his children. When Pickens had disappeared from home, John became a naughty boy and he became so confused in life due to lack of the full parental care of both parents. He became defiant at school even he did not want to listen to the advice from his teachers. He bullied his fellow students and involved in other antisocial behaviors which were quite unacceptable at the school environment, further more he became violent and even rebelled his mother.
John’s life started to turn around by the help of his teacher called Gordon Moore at the time he was a student at Furman University. He later on developed a positive attitude towards academic work since he realized that at least he can now contribute to the community regardless of the poverty state of his family. His academic performance was quite brilliant and he was able to succeed and secure a chance in the University of Chicago to pursue his m...
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...eover, critics argue that animals and people can easily adapt behaviors when new information is introduced even if the previous pattern of behavior has been already established by reinforcement.
In conclusion, the theory of behaviorism is based on observable behaviors for easier quantification and data collection. Effective techniques such behavior intervention and discrete trial training originates from this school of thought. The approaches are very essential in altering the maladaptive behaviors in adults and even children (Cherry, 2011). Therefore, Professor John Watson is greatly saluted for his tremendous contribution to modern psychology since his work was a big transition from the work of earlier scholars to the modern scholars. His life history is quite inspiring and serves as a role model to the young scholars who are interested in studying psychology.
They write of a story about a successful PH.D. graduate struggling to find his way, and they introduce Philip Isard, as an accomplished history graduate, who has straight A 's and great references. They effect the readers by describing Philip 's disheartening search for an ' 'entry level job, ' ' and his return to Toronto ' 'with an empty bank account and no real prospects. ' ' This story illustrates the intense struggle that many university graduates encounter and it appeal 's to the audience because the story touches many who have experienced the same
Joey 's program will be based in Applied Behavior Analysis which was first introduced in 1913, when John Watson started a movement towards behaviorism with his article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” (Miltenberger, 2012). Based on Pavlov 's observations of classical conditioning, Watson suggested that human behavior could also be explained by the same means and that the process of classical conditioning was proper subject matter for psychology. He believed all human behavior were responses to external stimuli and environmental events (Miltenberger, 2012). B. F. Skinner took Watson 's theory of classical conditioning further to include operant conditioning. The highlight of Skinner 's theory is identifying what a behavior achieves through observing the behavior. It is only after the function of behavior is identified that we can alter the consequences to increase the probability of the desired behavior 's occurrence (Miltenberger, 2012). In operant conditioning behavior is changed through the manipulation of contingencies or the use of reinforcement or punishment after the desired or undesired response occurs (Miltenberger, 2012). Skinner was able to prove through his
The field of psychology is a discipline, originated from many branches of science. It has applications from within a complete scope of avenues, from psychotherapy to professional decision-making. The flexibility and versatility of this field reflects its importance and demands in-depth analysis. Psychology was a division of philosophy until it developed independent scientific disciplines. The history of psychology was a scholarly study of the mind and behavior that dates back to the beginning of civilization. There are important details from previous theory psychologist, research have contributed to behaviorism approaches and have contributed towards specific current behavioral practices. Contemporary behavior therapy began to emerge into distinct practical and core learning theories concerning the needs and knowledge engaging cultural and professional differences.
Watson’s primary critique of introspection was that it absolutely forms no part of the methods, and the scientific value of the data collected is solely dependent on interpretations that are often quick to express it in terms of consciousness (Watson, 1994). He also argued that consciousness was not something one could study and no real need for introspection; to Watson this really hindered any development of the field of psychology as a real science (Langdal, 2015). Watson noted that psychology had failed to develop as a natural science, due to the concentration of consciousness (Langdal, 2015). This indicated consciousness was not productive for any two psychologist to agree with the definition or what particular methods to utilized for a
In 1913 a new movement in psychology appeared, Behaviorism. “Introduced by John Broadus Watson when he published the classic article Psychology as the behaviorist views it.” Consequently, Behaviorism (also called the behaviorist approach) was the primary paradigm in psychology between 1920 to 1950 and is based on a number of underlying ‘rules’: Psychology should be seen as a science; Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events, like thinking and emotion; People have no free will – a person’s environment determines their behavior; Behavior is the result of stimulus resulting in a response; and All behavior is learned from the environment. How we process these stimuli and learn from our surrounds
Classical conditioning emphasises the importance of learning from the environment and supports nurture over nature. However, limiting the source of learning to only environment is a reductionist explanation of behaviour. When complex behavi...
Watson was an American psychologist that helped path the way for other researchers in psychology. He was born on January 9th, 1878, in South Carolina. His mother was devoted to religion and she pushed her ideals and morals onto him. She prohibited smoking, drinking, adultery, and other sinful acts. This led to Watson growing up hating religion and eventually, opposing it. Also, Watson was a delinquent when he was young, he was arrested twice and did poorly academically; but, with the help of his mother and her connections, it gave him an opportunity to attend Furman University of South Carolina. This gave him a second chance and he didn’t take it for granted. Watson graduated with a master’s when he was 21. After he finished his years in Furman University, he was presented with an offer from University of Chicago, for his graduates study in psychology. Once he finished his graduate degree, he stayed there as a research
The Behaviourist and Psychodynamic perspective are based on experiences during childhood. John B. Watson arose with the Behaviourist perspective affirming that the aggressive behaviour is learnt by environment as well as an external approach trough observation. Referent to the above, the children as well as the animals imitate behaviour from adults and people, we are saying this by an experiment performed
Behaviorism and conditioning has its share of success stories especially when used to curb undesirable habits such as smoking and drinking, however they have also had their moments of darkness as well as seen in 1920 with John Watson and his little experiments that starred a young boy dubbed Little Albert. During Watson’s experiments to help explain conditioning, During his experiments Watson exposed Albert to a number of animals and recorded Albert’s initial reactions which were next to none at all. Watson then began exposing the same animals to Albert, and providing loud bangs that startled Albert at the same time. Eventually Albert began to cry at the sight of the animals even when they were not seen simultaneously with the loud bang.
Behavior therapy begun in the late 1900’s, but it did not gain popularity as an established psychological approach until the 1950’s and 1960’s. This is due to the pioneering works of a number of brilliant men. Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), John B. Watson (1878-1958), B.F.Skinner (1904-1958) and Joseph Wolpe (1915-1977) are just a few of the brilliant minds who have made significant contributions to the development of behavior therapy.
The theory of behaviorism was later advanced by JB Watson who argued that any behavior can be instilled in a child. Watson argued that any child can be classically conditioned to become anything or to acquire any behavior. The study off classical conditioning involves presenting to an animal or organism to a conditioned stimulus. There is no connection between the conditioned stimulus and the organism. The organism is then exposed to an unconditional stimulus which is then followed repetitively with the exposition of the conditioned stimulus over a certain number of times until the organism learns to associate the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response even at the absence of an unconditioned response. In the process the organism was found to elicit an unconditional response at the exposure to the conditioned stimulus.
There are five main contributors to behaviorism. They are Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, B.F. Skinner, Albert Bandura, and Joseph Wolpe. The beh...
Therefore, according to the above a general process learning theory is sustainable even in the presence of biological constraints as behaviour can be reinforced and manipulated in most cases to acquire a desired behaviour.
The successful application of these theories have been very interdisciplinary in their use, being applicable in the development of disorders and even calculating spending patterns across social groups. Behaviorism and social learning have evolved beyond the original use of solely educational purposes. However, the effectiveness of the behaviorism theory has come into question as an educational approach., L’Ecuyer (2014) explains that the behaviorism approach, “emphasizes the accumulation of information (knowledge), on external behaviors (skills and mechanical habits) and their emotional and physical reactions in given situations, rather than on the person’s internal mental states, such as intentionality, which are much more complex (p.2). The article questions the modern effectiveness of the behaviorism approach on children. I have found that the theory of social learning when paired with the behaviorism theory is still very useful in education, even with the influx of modern technologies. At the very core, behaviorism, both classical and, seeks to explain why humans react to certain stimuli. Operant is more used in socially especially in child rearing, how to effectively discipline and child via reinforcement of positive behaviors or corporal punishment for negative behaviors is still a highly debated topic. Social learning can also heavily influence
Behaviorism is the point of view where learning and behavior are described and explained in terms of stimulus-response relationships. Behaviorists agree that an individual’s behaviors is a result of their interaction with the environment. Feedback, praise and rewards are all ways people can respond to becoming conditioned. The focus is on observable events instead of events that happen in one’s head. The belief that learning has not happened unless there is an observable change in behavior. “The earliest and most Ardent of behaviourists was Watson (1931; Medcof and Roth, 1991; Hill 1997). His fundamental conclusion from many experimental observations of animal and childhood learning was that stimulus-response (S-R) connections are more likely to be established the more frequently or recently an S-R bond occurs. A child solving a number problem might have to make many unsuccessful trials before arriving at the correct solution” (Childs, 2004).