Section Five

What is the "law of effect"?

A principle formulated by Edward Thorndike that described how voluntary behaviors can be modified by their consequences

Skinner coined the term operant to describe:

Active behaviors that operate on the environment to generate consequences

The technical definition of a reinforcer is:

Any consequence of a behavior that strengthens the behavior or increases the likelihood that it will be performed again

The researchers most closely associated with operant conditioning are:

BF Skinner Edward Thorndike

Mr. Sampson's mouth always waters when he sees a donut. He nearly always orders a coffee when he has a donut. One day, he orders a coffee & a chocolate donut. He is served the coffee right away. He takes a seat while he is waiting and takes a deep sniff of his coffee. He begins to salivate. Why did this happen?

Because the coffee is acting as a conditioned stimulus

There are two basic types of conditioning: _____ and _____ conditioning.

Classical Operant

The process of learning associations between environmental events and behavioral releases is called:

Conditioning

A rat in a Skinner box is reinforced with a food pellet every time it presses the bar. This is an example of:

Continuous reinforcement

Who formulated the "law of effect"?

Edward Thorndike

If a classically conditioned dog salivates not just to the original tone, but also to a higher pitched/ lower pitched tone, the process of stimulus discrimination has occurred.

False

While positive reinforcement increases/decreases a response, negative reinforcement decreases or weakens a response.

False

Who discovered the basic process of classical conditioning?

Ivan Pavlov

A child who learns to play kickball by sitting back and watching is engaged is:

Observational learning

The experimental group is the group of:

Participants exposed to the independent variable

Skinner believed that psychology should restrict itself to the study of:

Phenomena that could be objectively measured and verified

Dreaming usually takes place during _____ sleep and is typically accompanied by _____.

REM psychological arousal & rapid movement of the eyes

"What are the most basic units or structures of consciousness?" This is a question that would most likely be of interest to a follower of:

Structuralism

The Precentral Gyrus is associated with waving, throwing, and grasping. Because of this it is known as:

The "Primary Motor Cortex"

In classical conditioning the unconditional response is:

The biological response triggered by the unconditioned stimulus

When psychologists refer to the visible spectrum, they mean:

The narrow range of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum that are visible to the human eye

What was Pavlov investigating when he began his studies on the phenomena that eventually became known as classical conditioning?

The role of saliva in digestion

A good method to reduce a problem behavior is to reinforce an alternative behavior that is constructive & incompatible with the problem behavior.

True

Sexual arousal can be classically conditioned.

True

To produce a learned response in classical conditioning, a _____ are repeatedly paired.

neutral stimulus and a stimulus elicits a response