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Behaviourist Approach

Contemporary debate: using conditioning to control children — the evidence and conclusion

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Recall questions on using conditioning to control children — the evidence and conclusion.

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Key term

Why may punishing a child fail to teach them anything useful?

Key term

How does research on moral development challenge the use of external control?

Key term

What is the main ethical objection concerning consent?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How do cognitive psychologists criticise the behaviourist view of the child?

    Model answer

    They argue that it treats the child as a passive organism responding to contingencies and ignores the child's own understanding, intentions and reasoning.

  2. 2

    Why may punishing a child fail to teach them anything useful?

    Model answer

    Punishment suppresses a behaviour without specifying what to do instead, and it may simply teach the child to avoid being caught.

  3. 3

    What did Skinner himself argue about the use of punishment?

    Model answer

    That it is an unreliable way of changing behaviour because its effects are often temporary and it produces unwanted emotional side effects.

  4. 4

    How does research on moral development challenge the use of external control?

    Model answer

    Behaviour driven by reward and punishment reflects the earliest, pre-conventional level of moral reasoning, so children may comply without internalising any moral principle.

  5. 5

    Give one argument that behaviour management can miss the real problem.

    Model answer

    Difficult behaviour may be communicating an unmet need, a learning difficulty or distress at home, and targeting the behaviour alone leaves the cause untouched.

  6. 6

    What is the main ethical objection concerning consent?

    Model answer

    Children cannot give informed consent to being conditioned, and the same adult who imposes the programme also decides what counts as good behaviour.

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