Conditioning

Competencies Addressed in This Assignment

Competency 1: Apply research findings to topics in human learning and cognition.

Competency 2: Apply psychology theories and concepts to human learning and cognition.

Competency 3: Analyze theory and research to solve problems and inform professional behavior in human learning and cognition.

Competency 4: Apply psychological principles and research in industrial and organizational psychology to inform personal and professional behavior.

Introduction
Think of how your behavior can change due to conditioning effects-how rewards and punishment have shaped your own behavior over the years. What role have rewards and punishment played in your life? For example, how did your parents encourage you to learn multiplication tables or drive a car? Even job incentives can be framed in terms of rewards and punishment to improve employee performance.

In preparation for this assignment, research behaviorism and some of the classic John Watson and B. F. Skinner studies. It is important to understand the basic principles of behaviorism and how behaviorism fits into psychology research today. Find a peer-reviewed research study that addresses the theory or treatment of phobias that was published within the last eight years.

Directions

Complete the following:

1. Conditioning treatment of phobias. Find a peer-reviewed research study published within the last eight years that addresses the theory or treatment of phobias. Summarize the methods used in the research and the conclusions made by the researchers. Describe the key aspects of the research that reflect behaviorist principles.

2. Conditioning related to personal behavior. Describe how conditioning explains changes in your own behavior that you have observed at work or at home. Provide three examples. (If your examples are from personal experience, your descriptions may be in first person.) Be sure to relate theory and research to your examples. For example, you might describe how behavioral theory would explain your learning process in that situation. Cite scholarly articles to support your conclusions.

3. Relevance of conditioning today. Analyze how behaviorism is still relevant today. What are the limits of behaviorism? Are there processes that it does not explain well? For example, behaviorists believed that babies and children learned language through rewards and punishments, but today we know that language learning is a much more complex process. The behaviorist approach was not sufficient to explain the totality of language learning.

Strive to be as concise as possible and limit the length of your completed assignment to 5-6 pages of content.

Additional Requirements

Include a title page and a references page.

Use at least three resources.