| What are the 3 things in an example of human attachment with the learning theory? | Milk
Mother
Baby |
| What is the milk in this situation? | The unconditioned stimulus |
| What is the mother in this situation? | The neutral stimulus |
| What is the happy baby in this situation? | Unconditioned response |
| Overtime what happens with the mother and the happy baby? | The mother becomes the conditioned stimulus
The happy baby becomes a condtitoned response |
| How does learning theory explain attachment in the milk and baby and mother situation? | An attachment is created due to the baby relating the happiness of milk and feedings its satisfcation of milk with the mother's face. This causes an attachment to be formed as the mother allows for the baby to have milk. |
| What is food in the situation with operant conditioning? | Primary reinforcer |
| What is the mother in the situation with operant conditioning? | Secondary reinforcer |
| Why does the attachment occur with operant conditioning ? | The child seeks the person who can supply the reward (food etc) |
| What type of reinforcement does the mother and baby recieve? | The baby recieves positive reinforcemnet because it is being fed
The mother recieves negative reinforcemenrt because the crying of the baby stops |
| Why does operant conditioning motivate both the mother and the baby? | They are both getting something unpleasant removed.
The baby is the hunger and the mother is the crying. This is called neutral reinforcement |
| A strength of the learning theory of attachment? | -Have some explanatory power which allows it to be applied to real life
-Might not provide a complete explanation for attachments in humans, has some value as how infants learn by association and reinforcement
-Food might not be the main reinforcer and instead it might be attention and the reponsiveness from the caregiver that is the most rewarding interactions - which help with the formation of attachment between the 2.
-The principles of the learning theory can be useful, and can be applied with caution |
| A weakness of the learning theory as an explanation for attachment? | -Contact comfort is more important than food
-Harlow conducted an experiment with baby Rhesus monkeys where there were 2 mothers, a wire mother and a towelling mother. Both would dispense milk and he wanted to see which mother could the monkey's form an attachment to.
-Found that the baby monkey spent more time with the surrogate mother that provided contact comfort over the food mother. They also went to the comfort mother during times of stress
-Contradicts the learning theory as it shows that attachment is formed through the comfort of the parent not the need for food |
| A weakness of the learning theory as an explanation for attachment? | -The majority of the evidence is based on animals
-Behaviourists believe that humans are no different to animals in how they learn, the learning theory as an explanation for attachment is largely based on studies with non-humans animals, eg: Pavlov's study with dogs
-Though it may be legitimate to suggest that our behaviour patterns are constructed from the same basic building blocks of stimulus-response patterns, not all human behaviour can be explained by conditioning
-Means that the behavioursit explanation of attachment may lack validity because classical and operant conditioning present an oversimplified version of human behaviour |
| A weakness of the learning theory as an explanation for attachment? | -Lack of reserach support form studies of human babies.
-Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that babies tended to form their main attachment to their mother, regardless of whether she was the one who usually fed them
-In another study, Isabella et al found that high levels of interactional synchrony predicted the quality of attachmnet
-Suggests that the role of food/feeidng doesn't play a big part in attachment as the theory suggests, and other theories must be considered to provide a more complete explanation. |
