Please help with my homework I am struggling with, Thank you: Start reviewing an

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Please help with my homework I am struggling with, Thank you:

Start reviewing and responding to the postings of your classmates as early in the week as possible. Respond to at least two of your classmates. Participate in the discussion by asking a question, providing a statement of clarification, providing a point of view with a rationale, challenging an aspect of the discussion, or indicating a relationship between one or more lines of reasoning in the discussion. Complete your participation for this assignment by the end of the week.

Antecedents of cognitive psychology include structuralism, functionalism, and behaviorism. B. F. Skinner was a famous behaviorist and believed that all animal and human behavior could be explained in terms of operant conditioning (the use of reward and punishment). He thought that if something was not observable, it could not be studied. Therefore, he was not concerned with internal thought processes but with observable actions.

Compare and contrast the three antecedents to cognitive psychology and explain which one you think had the most influence on the development of cognitive psychology.

Explain Skinner's general views to learning and conditioning. Do you agree with Skinner's views? Why or why not? Provide some examples of rewards and punishment and how those are explained in terms Skinner's views on operant conditioning.

Explanation / Answer

Cognitive Psychology refers to that branch of psychology that deals with mental processes such as memory, learning, comprehending, problem solving, language comprehension and creativity.

The three antecedents of Cognitive Psychology:

1) Structuralism: It emphasized upon perception as the way we see the world. The proponents believed that psychology should be seen as how people experience the world. Structuralism also focused on introspection as a research method as they believed in observation of experiences. Though cognitive psychologists today, do not empahsize much on introspection, they however strongly understand perception as a cognitive process.

2) Functionalism: This theory arose as an alternative to structuralism. It considers mental life and behaviour in terms of active adaptation to the person's environment. The basic assumption of this theory is that consciousness helps people adapt to their environment.

3) Behaviourism: This school of psychology refers to observable and quantifiable aspects of behaviour. It discounts any independent activity of the mind such as emotions. It only concerns with the acquisition of new behaviour based on the environmental conditions.

Out of the these three antecedents of cognitive psychology, the school of behaviourism has the maximum influence on the development of cognitive psychology. This is because cognitive psychologists work towards bridging the gap that the behaviourists leave. That is, cognitive psychologists are studying what is happening in between a stimulus and a response. Behaviourism is therefore paving way to cognitive psychology.

B.F. Skinner was the founder of Operant Conditioning. He believed that learning is a function of change in overt behaviour. Individuals respond to stimuli that occur in the environment and thereby changes take place.According to him, learning takes place as a result of rewards and punishments. Behaviour that is rewarded, occurs again and behaviour that is punished, diminishes. Therefore, the best way to understand behaviour is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences.

Yes, Skinner's view has got a wide acceptance because it is practically applicable due to its observable nature. For example, if an adolescent is taking drugs, he/she is more likely to continue or even increase his behaviour if he/she receives positive reinforcement from his/her friends or social media, etc. However, if he/she faces negative reinforcements such as getting detained from school or having to go to a therapist, then the possibility of that particular behaviour of taking drugs would reduce.

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