Behaviorism is the philosophical position that says that Psychology, to be a science, must focus its attention on what is observable – environment and behavior, rather than what is available to the individuals – thoughts, feelings and so on.
Behaviorism is based on learning – the change of behavior, which happens as a result of experience.
First Ivan Pavlov, a Russian psychologist, came up with theory of learning. Pavlov experiment was based on observable. His dogs were connected to machine which collected salivate. When he gave them food their salivated production increased. Moreover, he noticed that as soon as he opened the door, the dogs started salivate just because of the sound of open door. Dogs learned to response – open door – food coming --salivate in process. Pavlov called that Classical Conditioning.
Classical conditioning is built in reflexes: the food is an un-conditioning stimulus and salivation is un-conditioning response. The sound of the open door is called neutral stimulus. After a number of repetitions the neutral stimulus by itself would extract the response. At this point the neutral stimulus is renamed to conditioned stimulus and the response is called conditioned response.
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Peer Reviews
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Quality of writing
The Quality of Written Communication here is fair. The candidate makes a good use of English though sometimes their grammatical precision and accuracy slips up and the fluidity of the discourse is disrupted. I would strongly recommend re-reading every paragraph written so as to iron out these writing discrepancies because without them, the essay would be undoubtedly clearer.
Level of analysis
The Level of Analysis (AO2; critical evaluation) is not measured here. AO1 (knowledge and understanding) is, and so that will be marked instead. The candidates knowledge of behaviourism covers everything it needs to in order to satisfy the question, although it can be said that perhaps a bit more clarity would help give the examiner a better indication of how confidently the candidate can talk about it. It's one thing to write about certain things, and another to write about them confidently and with flair. This candidate often appears to be regurgitating knowledge remembered from regimented lessons and so whilst they cannot achieve the A* grade, a low A is more plausible for their efforts here. Examiners want to see personal touches and a confident candidate who can stray away from exam-board/text-book wording of certain things - understanding psychology in your own right is what pulls you up to the A*.
Response to question
This is a reasonable good essay on the founding and assumptions of the behaviourist perspective to psychology. The candidate goes to good levels of depth with regard to theories of learning such as operant and classical conditioning. However some information is slightly skewed and not entirely accurate. In classical conditioning it is a neutral stimulus paired with an unconditioned response that produces and conditioned stimulus and and conditioned response, as is correctly identified, but the neutral stimulus in Pavlov's experiment is the sound of the bell, not the opening of the dog pound door. The rest of the essay is similarly flawed, in that the majority is accurate but minor discrepancies creep through which will eventually accumulate to have a significant effect on the potential mark. I greatly recommend checking over facts and ensuring that your writing does not appear ambiguous (the description of the processes of operant and classical conditioning are not very clearly augmented and may confuse those not familiar with the processes) to ensure maximum clarity in written expression.