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No formal objectives were listed for this subtopic. The notes below cover all core content from the learning approach as found in the source material, including the three key studies and the psychological theories that underpin them.
The learning approach in psychology is based on one key idea: behaviour is learned from our environment and experiences. Psychologists who follow this approach believe that we are not born behaving in certain ways — instead, we pick up behaviours through our interactions with the world around us.
A famous idea linked to this is the concept of the "blank slate" — the idea that when we are born, our minds are empty, like a blank piece of paper, and everything we become is written on us by our experiences. This means the learning approach focuses heavily on nurture (what happens to us) rather than nature (what we are born with).
There are three main ways the learning approach says we learn behaviour:
Classical conditioning is a type of learning where we make an association (a mental link) between two things. Originally, only one of those things causes a reaction in us — but after we experience them together enough times, both of them start triggering the same reaction.
This was famously discovered by a Russian scientist named Pavlov, who noticed that dogs began to drool not just when they saw food, but also when they heard a bell that had been rung at the same time as food was presented.
| Term | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) | Something that naturally causes a reaction without any learning — e.g. food causes salivation automatically |
| Unconditioned Response (UCR) | The natural, automatic reaction to the UCS — e.g. drooling at the sight of food |
| Neutral Stimulus (NS) | Something that, on its own, causes no reaction — e.g. a bell |
| Conditioned Stimulus (CS) | The previously neutral stimulus, after it has been repeatedly paired with the UCS — e.g. the bell after training |
| Conditioned Response (CR) | The learned reaction to the conditioned stimulus — e.g. drooling when the bell rings, even without food |
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