IB Revision Psych

The first 200 words of this essay...

IB HIGHER Level May 2003 Psychology Notes

Learning Perspective

A. Development and Cultural Contexts

Historical Context:

A. Very early influence

- Aristotle suggested that learning occurs by association between things

- French philosopher, Compte, founded positivism, the belief that only definite/positive things are valid (18th Cent.). This became part of the scientific zeitgeist

- Jaques Coeb (worked on plant tropisms), was interested in the responses of plants, focusing on stimulus-response relationships.

- Cognitive psychologists decided they needed to understand the black box but behaviourists ignored it.

B. Other historical conditions (zeitgeist)

- Behaviourism emerged in the 1st two decades of the 20th century.

- In the early 20th century there was a very positive zeitgeist in USA, shown by the social, educational and intellectual history of the 20th Cent. It came out of the optimistic and materialistic culture of the time.

- Development of Behaviourism was in response to psychoanalysis, i.e. Freudian psychology, which dealt with the unconscious repressions, and subconscious. Behaviourism rejected this, thinking it was unscientific.

- Psychology born in 1879 when Wundt set up the first psychology labs in Leipzig.

C. Watson's reaction