Contrast the Behaviorist Approach with the Cognitive Approach - Essay Example

? Contrast the behaviorists approach with the cognitive approach Contrast the behaviorists approach with the cognitive approach Human behavior is acquired, therefore all behavior can be untrained, and different behaviors studied to replace the old ones. Behaviorism is primarily concerned with the noticeable and measurable features of human actions (Tennant, 1997). Therefore, when actions become undesirable, they can be destroyed or deterred. Behaviorism regards development as an endless process in which learners play a relatively passive role. It is a general approach used in a variety of settings including both scientific and educational. This paper presents a contrast of the behaviorist approach in psychology with the cognitive approach. According to Gross (2009), behaviorists concentrate on the change of the environment. They were not involved with the inner mechanisms, which occur inside the body. Behaviorists think that individual are shaped via continuous interactions with the surroundings. This simply means learning and understanding determine the type of person one becomes (Goodwin, 2009). The behaviorist’s philosophy is deep-rooted in the work of Pavlov and Thorndike, and the initial behaviorists, Clark Hull and John Watson who examined learning in the structure of conditioning. Thorndike's work determined the conditioning of controlled behavior, signified as operant conditioning, while Pavlov reviewed the training of reflex reactions, or classical conditioning (Glassman, 2008). The behaviorists approach centers only on behavior that can be seen and influenced. Thus, this method has been demonstrated as very practical in experiments in laboratory circumstances where behavior can be seen and influenced, specifically in relation to the independent variable and the dependent variable (Leahey, 2004). The behaviorists philosophies of learning have been verified in the research laboratory where learning can be accurately measured while the Cognitive approach believes that education is an interior process in which knowledge is cohesive or adopted into one’s intellectual or cognitive structure (Lundin, 1995). Learning takes place through inner processing of knowledge. From the cognitive approach point of view, how recent information is given is significant (Plotnik, 2005). At the initial phase of learning, the learner studies the general picture of what the assignment is and the series involved. In the fixation phase, the learner starts to expand skill in doing the assignment, whether a substantial task is studied as a whole or portion by part, hung on its difficulty. In the final stage of learning, the involuntary phase, the learner gains confidence and ability in performing the assignment (Staddon, 2001). Behavioral theorists consider that learning is successful when they see changes in performance. The behavioral model of learning is the outcome of training. The base of training is that a reward goes along with anticipated response performances as a motivator and builds up the possibility that the anticipated response will be replicated. Reinforcement is the center in this behaviorist approach. Reinforcement that is continuous in every step of anticipated behavior is helpful when a behavior is introduced. When a desired conduct is recognized, intermittent reinforcement upholds the behavior (Linder-Crow, 2000). On the other hand, Cognitive approach revolves around the concept that if people want to understand what makes individuals learn, then they need to recognize the interior processes of their brain. Cognition means understanding, therefore, cognitive approach studies reasoning as the intellectual act or method by which information is needed (LeClaire and Rushin, 2010). Behaviorist approaches are normally used in smoking, weight loss, assertiveness training, cessation, and reduction of nervousness (Baddeley, 1999). The significance of frequently and constantly rewarding preferred behavior instantly and not recompensing undesirable conduct is essential to the achievement of this approach. Learning is broken down into diminutive steps so that individual learning can be effective. The teacher provides support at each phase of the course of action (Mezirow, 2000). For instance, when a leaner is learning an assignment, the teacher looks for a constructive behavior and then provides the leaner with immediate support by saying positive statements (Kizlik, 2012). On the other hand, Cognitive approach focuses on the manner in which individuals handle information, observing how they give information that originates in to the individual (the behaviorists call this stimuli), and how this action leads to reactions. Therefore, they are concerned with the variables that arbitrate between motivation /input and reaction /output. Cognitive approach studies inner processes including opinion, attention, linguistic, memory, and reasoning (Rachlin, 1991). Behaviorist approach disregards emotion in the learning process from the surroundings. It also ignores the position of family and relations in the learning procedure (Fry, Ketteridge, and Marshall, 2002). It has been noted by psychoanalysts that a condition influences greatly the learning process and that behaviorists do not consider this. From a genetic point behaviorism fails to provide an explanation for development in that it justifies human actions in an automatic manner; seeing people as responding to their surroundings and that they have no control over the environment (Wilson and Schooler, 1991). Lastly, there is also the information that behaviorism is viewed as a determinist theory that does not permit free will in learning. The approach believes that the environment only modifies behavior and personal choices and free will does not shape behavior (Donovan, Bransford and Pellegrino, 1999). While the most important thing to the cognitive approach is the impression that they attempt to make sense of their surroundings by executing order and significance on the things they come across, Cognitive justifications of behavior are built around the manner in which people shape and process knowledge relevant to specific ways of behaving (Lundin, 2005). For instance, in describing obsessions, cognitive approach would begin from the supposition that the different outlooks (anxiety) and actions (avoidance) reflect different or incoherent processing of knowledge (Bruner, 1992). An individual with arachnophobia, in this scene, processes knowledge about spiders as frightening just as they impersonate no intimidation (Leahey, 2004). A cognitive approach might defend this in terms of representation driven by special consideration. Representations are ways of organizing information and experience of the world into general templates that are exploited to make sense of things, situations and groups we face (Gross, 2009). The behaviorists approach was criticized for proposing that most individual behavior is automatic, and that individual behavior is only the result of stimulus-response actions. This gives the impression of reductionist approach (Jarvis, Holford, and Griffin, 2002). In specific, the approach assumes the thinking processes or cognition (Baum, 2005). In the Social Learning Theory, cognitive influences cannot be assumed if learning is to be comprehended. The theory points out that it is meaningful to having the knowledge and that action will be reinforced or punished. For instance, Little Mary knows she will be punished for moving the table, and that is why she does not move it (Cooper, 2002). Though behaviorism fails to display how people respond to objects, relationship has several defects. Behaviorisms are systematically sound in method because of its importance for experimental examination of observable actions. Classical training explains why people react to the environment in stimulus and response while operant conditioning states that motivation is also significant in the learning process (Malott, 2008). In spite of this, the mechanistic, reductionist, and deterministic outlooks of behaviorism caused its reduction in approval and the change in psychology concerning the cognitive method an approach, which puts a lot of emphasis on higher thinking processes, what behaviorism enthusiastically avoided (Lattal and Chase, 2003). Similarly, the cognitive approach uses the research laboratory experiment-to-experiment behavior because the approach is a scientific process. For instance, a participant takes part in remembrance tests in a controlled circumstance. However, the commonly used test experiment can be disapproved of for lacking environmental validity (the main disapproval of cognitive approach) (Dochy, De Rijdt and Dyck, 2002). Cognitive approach supposes that behavior is the outcome of information dispensation. By illustrating reasoning as information dispensation, cognitive approach makes an evaluation between thinking and computers (Entwistle, 2000). This is practical because brains and computers have several attractive connections: both have memory, outputs, inputs and, a limited capacity for processing information (Candy, 1991). A computer’s actions are determined by what data is given and the way it has been set, so an individual’s behavior is controlled by (1) the communication available in their surroundings; (2) the methods they have acquired to work and process facts, and (3) the abilities for data processing integral in terms of intellectual abilities (Clarke, 2004). Cognitive approaches follow the model of the behaviorists in selecting objective, measured, scientific approaches for studying behavior. They make use the outcomes of their studies as the foundation for making interpretations about intellectual processes (Goodwin, 2005). One component of cognitive investigation involves controlling case studies of individuals with brain impairment (Glassman, 2008). Cognitive study may entail manipulating both the information accessible to people, the methods they understand it, and considering what consequence this has on some behavior (Biggs, 2003). Laboratory experimentations are frequently used for this as the research laboratory gives improved opportunities than settings for cautious exploitation and control of knowledge processing and exact measurement of intellectual performance (Goodwin, 2005). On the other hand, behaviorism is still common in the current literature even though they are not as prevalent as they were long time in 1980s. Critics of these approach methods maintain that they block the child the opportunity of taking an active part in selecting what should be studied and how it should be done (Hodgkins, 2000). Cognitive approaches on the other hand, including reasonable emotive approaches, take more explanation of the distinctive child’s interpretations and feelings than customary behavior change (Greene, Collins and Resnick, 1996). Behaviorism is still used, though, usually as part of intentional behavioral program, at times as one fragment of a more heterogeneous range of intercessions (Wiley, 2000). Conclusion Even though, behavioral theory entails the study of character in behaviorism which stresses explicit performance, theorists in this field also study cognitive procedures and specific methods of learning, like observing individuals in a social setting. 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