Behavioural Model of Abnormality

- Learning a new behaviour via the process of association 

1) Before Conditioning 

    - The unconditioned stimulus produces an unconditioned response - the natural response hasnt been learnt 

2) During Conditioning 

    - Conditioned stimulus 

3) After Conditioing 

     - The conditioned stimulus has been associated with the unconditioned stimulus to create a new conditioned response 

REINFORCEMENT 

Positive Reinforcement 

- E.g. if your teacher gave you £5 everytime you did your homework you would continue this behaviour to get as much money as you could 

Negative Reinforcement 

- E.g. if you didnt complete your homeowrk you would have to give the teacher £5, this would make you complete your homework as to avoid paying £5 

Strengths 

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  • Emphaises the importance of learning from the environment and supports nurture over nature 
  • based on empirical evidence carried out by controlled experimenters in a controlled laboratory 

Weaknesses 

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  • Limiting to describe behaviour soely in terms of either nature of nurture - underestimating the complexity of the human nature 
  • lacks validity - incomplete explanations 
  • doesnt allow any free will in the individual - they have no control over how they will respond to the experiment 

Strengths 

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  • Can be used to explain a wide variety of behavoiur 

Weaknesses 

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  • Fails to take into account the role of inherited cognitve factors 
  • Incomplete explanation of the learning process in humans and animals 
  • Be careful when generalising as it would be hard to generalise from animals to humans