Chapter 7
Ms. Vendetti wants to praise the students in her class more often, because she believes it will motivate them to focus more on their work and will lead to better behavior. Of the following, which statement is most likely to achieve her goal?
"Martine, I am so glad that you spent a little extra time making sure that all of your sentences are punctuated properly."
Three of the following are examples of learned behavior. Given the textbook's definition of learning, which behavior probably does not reflect learning?
Abigail cries when she feels sad.
Applying Operant Conditioning: Using Praise Appropriately
Be clear and systemic in giving praise. Make praise "appreciative" and not "evaluative" Set standards for praise based on individual abilities and limitations. Attribute the student's success to effort and ability so the student will gain confidence that success is possible again. Make praise really reinforcing. Recognize genuine accomplishments.
Whitney is on the school tennis team, is in choir, and maintains a B average in school. However, she wants to improve her grades to get As and Bs, so she decides to use a program of self-management to improve her use of time and her study habits. Which of these steps will Whitney NOT take in the process of developing a self-management program?
Behavioral Assessment
You are riding your bike to school. A red minivan suddenly pulls out in front of you and causes you to wipe out on the road. You sprain your wrist and are quite upset. Now, whenever you see a red minivan, you immediately brake. What is the conditioned response in this situation?
Braking the bike
Stimulus Control
Capacity for the presence or absence of antecedents to cause behaviors.
Marcus has always had difficulty with test taking. As he entered the classroom for his biology final, he began to shake. This is an example of the principles of:
Classical Conditioning
Which one of the following is the best illustration of classical conditioning?
Gracie exits the building when she hears the fire alarm.
Which one of the following statements best describes the process of extinction?
Gradual decrease of a learned response that is not followed by reinforcement.
Mr. Paulson is teaching his biology class about reproduction in mammals. He has a reading-based worksheet for them to fill out, and he also has a movie about baby animals for them to watch. He knows they will enjoy the movie, because every class has loved it in the past. Which of these strategies would be the best use of the Premack principle?
Have the students complete the worksheet first, and show the movie as a reward after they finish.
Priya has several problem behaviors that her teacher, Mr. Hofstedter, wishes to correct. For example, she talks to her friends constantly during lessons, and even whispers and giggles to them during quizzes. What should be Mr. Hofstedter's approach if he wants to use positive behavioral supports to correct Priya's behavior?
Identify which friends Priya is most distracted by, move her away from those friends, and reward her when her behavior improves.
Effective Instruction Delivery (EID)
Instructions that are concise, clear, and specific, and that communicate an expected result. Statements work better than questions.
Applying Operant Conditioning: Encouraging Positive Behaviors
Make sure you recognize positive behavior in ways that students value. When students are tackling new material or trying new skills, give plenty of reinforcement. After new behaviors are established, give reinforcement on an unpredictable schedule to encourage persistence. Use the Premack principle to identify effective reinforcers. Use cueing to help establish new behaviors. Make sure all students, even those who often cause problems, receive some praise, privileges, or other rewards when they do something well. Establish a variety of reinforcers.
Self-Management
Management of your own behavior and acceptance of responsibility for your own actions. Also the use of behavioral learning principles to change your own behavior.
Response Cost
Punishment by loss of reinforcers.
Ratio Schedule
Reinforcement based on the number of responses between reinforcers.
Shaping
Reinforcing each small step of progress toward a desire goal or behavior.
Successive Approximations
Reinforcing small steps to reach a goal; the small components steps that make up a complex behavior.
Social Isolation
Removal of a disruptive student for 5 to 10 minutes.
Applied behavior analysis requires several steps for a behavior to be changed. Which of the following steps is NOT one of the required?
Concrete reinforcement for good behavior.
At the end of recess, Mrs. Wilson alerts her students to come back inside by blowing a train whistle. As soon as the students hear the train whistle, they form a line to come back inside. What is the train whistle in this situation?
Conditioned Stimulus
Five Reinforcement Schedules
Continuous: Reinforcement after every response Fixed-interval: Reinforcement after a set period of time. Variable-Interval: Reinforcement after varying lengths of time Fixed-Ratio: Reinforcement after a set number of responses Variable-Ratio: Reinforcement after a varying number of responses.
Self-Reinforcement
Controlling (selecting and administering) your own reinforcers.
Which of the following is an example of negative reinforcement?
Corinne visits the school nurse complaining of cramps every day that gym activities are scheduled so she will not have to run laps. (Negative reinforcement increases a particular behavior by removing a particular stimulus.)
Reprimands
Criticisms for misbehavior; rebukes.
Presentation Punishment
Decreasing the chances that a behavior will occur again by presenting and aversive stimulus following the behavior; also called Type I punishment.
Removal Punishment
Decreasing the chances that a behavior will occur again by removing a pleasant stimulus following the behavior; also called Type II punishment.
Dwayne sees that a good friend in his class is caught cheating on a homework assignment, but the friend suffers no consequences for doing so, even though cheating is in clear violation of school policy. From a social cognitive perspective, which one of the following predictions can we make about Dwayne's future behavior?
Dwayne will be more likely to cheat on homework in the future.
Stimulus
Event that activates behavior.
Consequences
Events that follow an action.
Antecedents
Events that precede an action.
Behavioral Learning Theories
Explanations of learning that focus on external events as the cause of changes in observable behaviors.
Martin works the lights for his high school theater group. One day, when climbing a ladder to change a bulb, he slips and falls. He is not hurt, but the girl he has been trying to impress sees him fall and laughs at him. He feels humiliated. For a week afterward, whenever he sees that girl, he blushes and leaves the room. A month later, he still feels nervous, but does not blush. Eventually he overcomes the humiliation and is able to spend time in the same room with her again. What is this called?
Extinction
Maria Escalano and Jack Evans both assign homework every day. Maria collects the homework from students on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Jack collects homework every day. Both teachers score and return the homework the day after collecting it. For the students who are successful in Jack's class, this practice best illustrates a:
Fixed-interval reinforcement schedule
ABAB Design
Researchers take a baseline measurement of the behavior (A), then apply the intervention (B), then stop the intervention to see if the behavior goes back to the baseline (A), and then reintroduce the intervention (B).
Respondents
Responses (generally automatic or involuntary) elicited by specific stimuli.
Group Consequences
Rewards or punishments given to a class as a whole for adhering to or violating rules of conduct.
Felix is a third-grader who moves to a new school district after the first month of school. When he arrives at his new third-grade classroom in October, they are working on multiplication tables. This is something that he has never done before, and he fails the first several quizzes. He is very frustrated because math used to be his favorite subject. Now, whenever he sees multiplication tables on a test, he becomes anxious. What is the unconditioned response in this situation?
Frustration at failure in math
Time Out
Technically, the removal of all reinforcement. In practice, isolation of a student from the rest of the class for a brief time.
Applied Behavior Analysis
The application of behavioral learning principles to understand and change behavior.
Ms. Tierney, a kindergarten teacher, has a group of 5-year-old students who love to draw. In order to encourage all her students to develop their art skills, Ms. Tierney tells the class that for every picture they draw, they can pick a sticker or an animal eraser from the class prize box. What is likely to be the outcome of this idea?
The students who love to draw already will enjoy drawing less.
Reinforcement
Use of consequences to strengthen behavior.
If you saw your students engaging in a risky behavior, you would want to use the reinforcement schedule with a fast response rate and the greatest persistence, so you would use a:
Variable-ratio Schedule
Operants
Voluntary (and generally goal-directed) behaviors emitted by a person or an animal.
Bryant, a boy in Mr. Kobayashi's fourth-grade class, often acts out by throwing things or pestering his classmates. Mr. Kobayashi wants to use functional behavioral assessment to address Bryant's behavior. What is the first question Mr. Kobayashi should answer?
What benefits is Bryan gaining from his actions?
Contingency Contracts
A contract between the teacher and a student specifying what the student must do to earn a particular reward or privilege.
Ms. Talbot takes away a fun activity from her class because of their inability to follow the classroom rules. Punishment of this sort is known as:
A response cost
Elise is misbehaving in class on an almost daily basis, so her teacher conducts a functional behavioral assessment. She notes that Elise tends to get out of her seat or speak out of turn most often when another student had the attention of the teacher's aide. She also notes that Elise settles down when she receives attention from one of the adults in the classroom, but not from one of her peers. Based on her assessment, the teacher decides that the best strategy to address Elise's behavior is to:
provide adult attention when Elise is not misbehaving instead of when she is.
Rewarding students for their performance is most effective in encouraging academic mastery when the rewards:
show appreciation for a job well done.
Positive behavior supports help students with disabilities succeed in inclusion classrooms because they:
teach students new, more appropriate behaviors.
Ms. Vasquez divides her class into two teams. If any member of a team acts out or breaks rules, the team receives a point. At the end of the day, the team with the lowest number of points can leave for recess 5 minutes early. Ms. Vasquez is using:
the good behavior game.
Eddie is sent to time-out for throwing an eraser at his friend Lupita. She thought it was funny at the time, and she was about to throw an eraser back at Eddie when she saw Eddie being sent to time-out. A person using social learning theory to predict Lupita's future behavior would say that, having seen Eddie being punished, Lupita will:
not throw erasers, because she has learned vicariously from Eddie's punishment.
Albert Bandura criticized behavioral views of learning in his early work, which focused on:
observational learning.
Bandura's main challenge to the idea that we learn primarily via operant conditioning was that:
people often learn without themselves acting on the environment or being reinforced.
Response
Observable reaction to a stimulus.
Cueing
Providing a stimulus that "sets up" a desired behavior.
Steps in Applied Behavior Analysis
1. Clearly specify the behavior to be changed and your goal. 2. Observe the current level of the behavior and possible causes. 3. Plan a specific intervention using antecedents, consequences, or both. 4. Keep track of the results, and modify the plan if necessary.
Steps in Self-Management
Allow students to participate in setting goals, keep track of progress, evaluate accomplishment, and select and give their own reinforcers.
Reinforcer
Any event that follows a behavior and increases the chances that the behavior will occur again.
Good Behavior Game
Arrangement where a class is divided into teams and each team receives demerit points for breaking agreed-upon rules of good behavior.
Classical Conditioning
Association of automatic responses with new stimuli.
Contiguity
Association of two events because of repeated pairing.
Bandura's Challenge to Behavioral Learning
Bandura believed that traditional behavioral view of learning had many limitations. He argued in favor of observational learning, in which people neither emit responses nor receive reinforcements during the process of learning.
Positive Behavior Supports (PBS)
Interventions designed to replace problem behaviors with new actions that serve the same purpose for the student.
Applying Operant Conditioning: Student Self-Managment
Introduce the system to parents and students in a positive way. Help families and students establish reachable goals. Give families ways to record and evaluate their child's progress (or their own). Encourage families to check the accuracy of students records from time to time, and help their children develop forms of self-reinforcement.
Conditioned Response (CR)
Learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.
Enactive Learning
Learning by doing and experiencing the consequences of your actions.
Observational Learning
Learning by observation and imitation of others - vicarious learning.
Operant Conditioning
Learning in which voluntary behavior is strengthened or weakened by consequences or antecedents.
Interval Schedule
Length of time between reinforcers.
Which of the following teachers is using group consequences most effectively?
Mr. Amato gives out plastic coins each time the children in his kindergarten share toys with each other. He promises a special reward once every student has earned 3 tokens.
Mr. Andrulis has two students in his seventh-period social studies class who have trouble completing their work on time. Johan is a student with ADHD, and he is frequently out of his seat or off task when he should be working independently. Lalaine is a bright student who seems bored with class work. How might Mr. Andrulis best meet both students' needs to ensure that they finish their schoolwork?
Mr. Andrulis should work with Johan and Lalaine independently to develop contingency contracts.
Which of the following teachers is best applying principles of classical conditioning in the classroom?
Mr. Rossi, who recognizes that his students love social media and develops a statistics lesson that allows them to collect data from a social media site.
Ms. Carlson teaches kindergarten. On the first day, she tells her students, "When I blink the lights three times, like this, you should sit down on your carpet square in the circle area, put your hands in your lap, and remain quiet. Okay, ready? Let's try. Here go the lights. Go sit down, put your hands in your lap, and shhhh." What behavioral technique is Ms. Carlson using?
Ms. Carlson is pairing a cue with a prompt.
Which of the following best provides an example of classical conditioning?
Ms. Hayes is a short-tempered language arts teacher. She frequently loses control of the classroom and yells to try to restore order. Jeremiah, who previously enjoyed language arts, now dreads anything having to do with language arts because he dislikes Ms. Hayes.
Which of the following teachers is using operant conditioning to manage classroom behavior?
Ms. Rogers keeps a running total of plusses (for good behavior) and minuses (for bad behavior) with her class throughout the day. When they have more plusses than minuses, they earn extra recess. When they have more minuses than plusses, they lose extra recess. (Operant conditioning requires reinforcers that are contingent upon particular behavior.)
Unconditioned Response (UR)
Naturally occurring emotional or physiological response.
Which one of the following instances of learning can be explained more easily by social learning theory than by behavioral theories?
Playing the role of a German butler in the school play, Andy says his lines using a German accent similar to one he's heard in the movies a few times.
Positive Practice
Practicing correct responses immediately after errors.
Every time LaRita blurts out answers, she is required to sit at the back of the classroom for the remainder of the discussion. This is an example of:
Presentation Punishment
Intermittent Reinforcement Schedule
Presenting a reinforcer after some but not all responses.
Continuous Reinforcement Schedule
Presenting a reinforcer after very appropriate response.
Premack Principle
Principle stating that a more-preferred activity can serve as a reinforcer for a less-preferred activity.
Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA)
Procedures used to obtain information about antecedents, behaviors, and consequences to determine the reason or function of the behavior.
Punishment
Process that weakens or suppresses behavior.
Learning
Process through which experience causes permanent change in knowledge or behavior.
By the end of the first week of school, Ms. Carlson's kindergarten class has learned to put away their toys and go sit in their circle when she blinks the lights at the end of the school day. The most effective way for Ms. Carlson to ensure that the children continue to follow this routine is for her to:
Provide some type of reward occasionally.
Dr. Jenkins wants to set up a token reinforcement system to encourage her students to keep the classroom tidy and treat one another with respect. When she is just beginning the program, how should she provide tokens to her students to encourage maximum effectiveness of the system?
She should give tokens fairly continuously for good behavior.
Neutral Stimulus
Stimulus not connected to a response.
Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
Stimulus that automatically produces an emotional or physiological response.
Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
Stimulus that evokes an emotional or physiological response after conditioning.
Positive Reinforcement
Strengthening behavior by presenting a desired stimulus after the behavior.
Negative Reinforcement
Strengthening behavior by removing an aversive stimulus when the behavior occurs.
Task Analysis
System for breaking down a task hierarchically into basic skills and subskills.
Token Reinforcement System
Systems in which tokens earned for academic work and positive classroom behavior can be exchanged for some desired reward.
Applying Operant Conditioning: Using Punishment
Try to strengthen the situation so you can use negative reinforcement rather than punishment. If you do use punishment, keep it mild and brief- then pair it with doing the right thing. Be consistent in your application of punishment. Focus on the students' actions, not on the students' personal qualities. Adapt the punishment to the infraction.
In a functional behavioral assessment, the A in the A-B-C framework refers to:
behaviors and contexts that occur before the targeted behavior.
Research suggests that one of the critical elements of a self-management program—perhaps the most important—is:
making public a specific goal or goals.
The ABC framework of functional behavioral assessment:
involves identifying the antecedents and consequences of misbehaviors.
Ms. Moreno uses observational learning effectively in her fifth-grade classroom. She most likely does all of the following EXCEPT:
use continuous reinforcement of positive behaviors.