Exam Tip

If you are asked to evaluate something, this means that you should say what its strengths and weaknesses are.

Research evidence is a good way of evaluating a theory (which studies support it and which studies do not support it - and why they support/do not support it!)

A good way of evaluating studies is to use the GRAVE technique

Generalisability

Reliability

Application

Validity

Ethics

Resource of the Week: Edward Thorndike's Puzzle Box Video

This week's resource is a video clip showing one of Edward Thorndike's experiments with his puzzle box. Thorndike put hungry cats in these boxes and put pieces of tasty fish outside them to motivate them to escape. To escape, the cats had to push a lever and pull on a string. When first put in the box, the cats would behave in a fairly random way, pacing up and down, scratching at the sides etc., but eventually, by chance, they would push the lever and pull on the string in the correct sequence. They would then be rewarded by being able to eat the fish.

Thorndike found that the cats would become faster and faster at escaping, while never showing any insight into how the puzzle box was solved. There was no sudden drop in escape time, which would be expected if the cat had solved the puzzle mentally or realised how its actions led to escape; this provides support for the behaviourist view that only behaviours that are important and not cognitions: the escape behaviour was simply strengthened by the reward of a piece of fish. From this Thorndike developed his 'law of effect', that behaviours that have a pleasant outcome are stamped in and those that have unpleasant consequences are stamped out.