The main approaches in psychology

Each approach is based on certain assumptions about human nature and focuses on explaining a particular part of human experience. The cognitive approach was developed as a reaction against behaviourism and psychoanalytic theory. The behavioural approach is the study of observable behaviour with psychologists being interested in what people do rather than what they think or feel and finally, The biological approach was developed to try to explain human behaviour in terms of our internal physiological processes e.g. thoughts, feelings etc. All of the following approaches will be explained in more detail as well as the perspectives and explanations.

A critical evaluation of the theory on which the approaches are based will include practical applications and strengths and weaknesses.The two-process model: (Cognitive approach).Classical conditioning: (Behavioural approach).The social readjustment rating scale: (Biological approach).Main bodyStage one: The Cognitive approachThe two-process model (Atkinson and Shiffin) distinguishes between short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM).

Attended to information is held in STM which as the memory store is short lived information is forgotten quickly. Rehearsal prolongs the life of STM and enough revision means information transfers to LTM, which can store information for a long period. The two-process model has been very influential and many psychologists have tried to understand the different characteristics of these two memory stores. Information in LTM may sometimes be lost quite quickly but information can last for a long time. The duration of LTM can therefore be anything from a few minutes to a lifetime. STM however is thought to be much shorter.

(Peterson and Peterson) (1959) Found that if people are prevented from rehearsing information they can forget it in just a few seconds.They gave people a serious of consonants called a trigram, each one had to recall but remember only one at a time. The participants were prevented from rehearsing instead they were made to count backwards in threes from a number immediately after the trigram was shown there for (Peterson and Peterson) found 90% of participants forgot the information in just eighteen seconds with this method. With this method cognitive approaches highlight the importance of internal mental processes e.g.

perceiving and thinking; it rejects the notion that the environment has a direct influence on behaviour. A cognitive process mediates between stimulus and response and was developed as a reaction against behaviourism and psychoanalytic theory.Stage 2: The Behavioural approachOne theory of classical conditioning was carried out by a Russian psychologist called Ivan Pavlov who did quite a number of studies on the digestive system of dogs. Pavlov knew that when food was presented to a hungry dog it would trigger salivation, which is classed as a reflex behaviour.

Reflex responses happen automatically (doesn't need to be learned). Pavlov soon discovered that after time food didn't have to appear before the dogs began to salivate when the trainer appeared or when they saw the food bowl. (Pavlov) believed that the animals had made a mental association or a link between:* Food and presence of trainer.* Food and presence of food bowl.Pavlov decided to carry out more research on what he already knew. He decided that food was acting as an unconditional stimulus (UCS).

UCS's are any stimulus that automatically elicits a response. An unconditioned response (UCR) is a response that doesn't have to depend on learning but something that happens automatically. Pavlov found that if he repeatedly paired a neutral stimulus (any stimulus which would not normally effect the animal) with a UCS the animal would respond. E.g. if a bell was rang continuously while food was present, then eventually the bell presented alone would cause the animal to salivate.

Pavlov believed the bell was a conditional stimulus (CS). A CS is defined as any neutral stimulus, which if paired with an unconditional stimulus (US), will elicit a response. (Watson and Raynor) (1920) demonstrated that fears can be acquired through classical conditioning. However it was left up to other researches to discover how classical conditioning could be used to treat phobias or fears. The behavioural approach has helped to identify principles of learning, which apply to both humans and animals, but ignores emotion, motivation and drives in humans because they are not directly observable.

Stage 3: The biological approachStress is a familiar word in everyday life but has been hard to define. Part of the problem defining stress is that there are different aspects to it. (Holmes and Rahe) (1967) set out to investigate how major life events affect health. They developed what is known as the social readjustment rating scale (SRRS) to measure the amount of stress associated with particular life events. Adults were presented with a list of 43 events such as divorce, moving home etc.

they were asked to compare each life event to marriage as a standard comparison (assigned 50 points), they were asked to rate the amount of readjustment needed to cope with each life change on a scale of 1-100. The grater the number of points assigned to each change, the more stressful it was for the person experiencing it.The points assigned to each life event are called life change unite (LCU). (Holmes and Rahe) gave the scale to a number of people whom had experienced major life changes before they came ill. The patients were asked to tick the changes, which had occurred during say between 6-12 months. Each patients life change units were added up to give a total life change score.

Research has indicated that people with a score of 300 or more were more common to experience physical and psychological illness than people with 200 points or less (Holmes, Masuda 1974). The scale therefore provides a way of measuring the amount of adjustment needed for specific life events but lacks in the way that it does not measure the degree of stress experienced by the individual, some life changes will be stressful, others not so. A person's reaction to, and perception of these events will vary a huge amount depending on a huge number of other factors.ConclusionsMemory is reconstructive but not 100% reliable and people have different memories.

We tend to forget a lot of information quickly. We can forget for a number of reasons such as time, repression, and amnesia caused by illness or injury. The two process model suggest we have different kinds of memory-STM and LTM which are thought to be different in terms of how they code information. The behavioural approach focuses on how external factors in the environment affect behaviour.

It is in the interest of what people do father what they think or feel. The biological approach concentrates more on trying to explain human behaviour in terms of our internal physiological processes. This assumes that our thoughts, feelings and behaviour are intricately linked to our physiological make-up.