However, by the early twentieth century introspection was being questioned by an American psychologist, John B. Watson who studied behaviourism. The school of behaviourism itself was influenced by the functionalist school of psychology, founded by John Dewey in 1886 (Handout). Darwin's theory of evolution and the idea of the 'survival of the fittest' influenced the functionalist's. To try and understand human behaviour they stu

So in effect behaviourism favours the notion that the child is born with a 'blank slate' whilst Freud believes the child already posses a certain number of innate drives. According to behaviourism a child is born without any personality, innate intelligence and psychic drives and only possess individual biological characteristics. Children are very similar to one another, and tend to develop in the same way. 'Give me a dozen healthy infants.. and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer... and yes even beggarman and thief.' (Watson, J.). Ethologist have criticised behaviourism for not taking into account species-specific behaviour which is influenced by both genetics and learning. Freud on the other hand believed that the child's character is already being formed prior to birth, and that the behaviour of the mother during pregnancy was extremely important. For instance in the 1950's psychiatrists who was influenced by the psychoanalytical approach blamed autism, a medical condition, on poor parenting. According to Freud the child is born with two basic instincts which are Eros (life) and Thanatos (death). Eros is made up of two instincts namely self-preservation and sexuality. The energy of sexual instinct is called Libido. Carl Jung a student of Freud, who developed analytical development, believed that Freud emphasised sex too much, however, he did retain the concept of libido but as a life energy rather than sexual energy.

For the behaviourist, learning is obtained through the operation of conditioning and the linking of a stimulus with a response. Conditioning can happen in two ways either as classical conditioning by linking a new stimulus to a given response or by operant conditioning by reinforcing the behaviour of the person towards a particular pattern of behaviour. Ivan Pavlov (1902) performed one of the

B. F. Skinner, a radical behaviourist, saw the learner as much more active than Watson and he was therefore interested in seeing how animals operate in their environment. Skinner's study of operant conditioning grew out of earlier work of E. Thorndike who built puzzle boxes for cats in 1898. 40 years later Skinner used a puzzle box known as a Skinner box. An animal would be placed in the box and would have to operate a lever in order to eat. In this kind of conditioning, a behaviour is reward

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