Developmental Psychology

Developmental Psychology

The way that people learn is one of the many things that are analyzed in developmental psychology. There are theories on how and why people learn to do the things the way they do them. Three theories about learning are classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social cognitive theory. All three of these theories try to explain behaviorism, some elements are similar and some are very different.

Classical conditioning is a type of learning through association (Mossler, 2011). This theory of developmental was first studied by Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov researched the way that an animal responses to an object because of a stimulus that has been presented to him over and over. In his research he studied the reaction of a dog, the dog would salivate every time food was presented to him. Pavlov introduced a bell with the food, when the dog was fed soon the dog with salivate whenever the bell was rung because it had been conditioned to associate the bell with food and therefore salivate. This salvation is known as a conditioned response to the conditioned stimulus of the bell (Mossler, 2011).

Classical conditioning occurs in humans as well. John Watson studied the effects of classical conditioning in humans with his study of Little Albert. He used the same concept that Pavlov used on his dogs to determine if Little Albert could be classically conditioned to have a fear of rats. Watson would make loud noises that would scare Little Albert whenever a rat or furry animal was near. Little Albert started to associate the rat with the fear of the noise and would become frightened whenever a rat was near, even without the loud noises (Mossler, 2011). Watson called his study of classical conditioning’s effect on human behavior behaviorism. Watson believed that behaviorism could be used to describe everything a human did from emotional responses to the language they use (Moore, 2011).

Classical conditioning could be used in the mental...