Psychology of Learning Final Exam

True/False: One way to promote good behavior in students is to have teachers reprimand students more often than they praise them.

False

true/ False: Longer delays between a punisher and behavior are more effective at producing punishment

False

A child repeatedly scratched himself long after his poison oak was gone. The scratching behavior continued because scratching was reinforced mainly by _______.

parental attention

How can contingency and contiguity affect operant conditioning?

1. Degrees of correlation between behavior and consequence 2. Behavior strengthened if reinforcer reliably follows 3. One reinforcer con be contingent on many behaviors

What is an example of how contingency and contiguity can affect operant conditioning?

A coach rewards only if you make it in the hoop, this caused them to improve faster than those who were rewarded for littler things

What is the negative reinforcement of escape?

A stimulus appears and subject responds to get rid of the stimulus Ex: You put on a seatbelt to get rid of the beeping

The example of the teacher that monitored several of her students' ability to stay on task. She then introduced a period of praise for anyone that was on task. She then went back to the original monitoring of staying on task. This type of procedures design is called ________.

ABA design experiment

The first teaching machines were designed by ___________.

B.F. Skinner

A construction company increased safe practices in roofers by providing those who followed safe practices at least 80% of the time with ________.

Bonuses

Which of the following is a major difference between how classical and operant conditioning occur?

Classical conditioning is a reflexive response while operant conditioning is a voluntary response

Which concept occurs when the occurrence of a reinforcer is dependent on a response?

Contingency

_______ reinforcers are those that have been arranged by someone for the purposes of modifying behavior.

Contrived

One alternative to punishment is called ______________ because it combines nonreinforcement of unwanted behavior and reinforcement of some other behavior.

Differential reinforcement

Which type of instrumental procedures allow only 1 response per trial?

Discrete-trial

What are the two types of instrumental conditioning

Discrete: Respond once per trial Free operant: respond many times

Who is B.F. Skinner and what did he discover?

He studied learning and behavior. Discovered operant learning (behavior depends on consequences, free to respond Created operant chamber "skinner box"

Who is Edward Thorndike?

He wrote animal intelligence and used puzzle boxes to study cats. Discovered instrumental conditioning (behavior strength depends on consequences)

What is strength of a stimulus and what is behavior momentum?

It is the frequency, probability, and persistence -Behavior momentum is starting to occur more frequent and persist, then will be hard to stop the behavior

If the One Process Theory of punishment is correct then the opposite of the Premack Principle should be true and indicates

Low probability behavior should punish high probability behavior

All of the following are useful tips for shaping behavior except ________.

Never back up

2 types of reinforcement

Positive (strengthens response when present) Negative (strengthens response when removed)

An employee is continually late for meetings. To stop this unwanted behavior, the boss assigns the employee extra work every time he is late. The employee does not like having extra work to complete and so the employee eventually stops being late to meetings. This is an example of

Positive punishment

One benefit of punishment is that punishment is

Powerful

The _______ states that high probability behavior reinforces low probability behavior.

Premack Principle

In her work with porpoises, Karen Pryor gradually realized that what she had to do to get novel behavior from the animals was to _______

Reinforce novel behavior

natural reinforcers

Reinforcers that are naturally provided for a certain behavior; spontaneously follow a behavior

Name a type of training that could promote learned industriousness

Resiliency training

The level of deprivation is less important when the reinforcer used is a(n) _________ reinforcer.

Secondary

Our lecture describes the use of _______ to get a bull elephant to cooperate with having his toenails trimmed.

Shaping

According to E.L. Thorndike's Law of Effect, which of the following would best explain stimulus-response (S-R) relationships.

Something satisfying strengthens the S-R relationships

Primary reinforcer

Stimulus that is naturally rewarding, such as food or water. Not depending on learning, is innate - Disadvantages: Satiation (loss of effectiveness and occurs quickly)

What is the negative reinforcement of avoidance?

The subject responds to prevent the stimulus from ever turning on. Ex: keep using heroin so effect of withdraw never occur

What is the defining feature of primary reinforcers?

They are not dependent on learning

____________ discovered instrumental conditioning while _________________ discovered free-operant conditioning

Thorndike; Skinner

True/ False: Following use of an internet based reading program, student achievement test scores in reading were substantially improved

True

True/ False: Negative reinforcement increases the strength of a behavior

True

True/ False: Our lecture discussed the case of a psychiatric patient who feared that her head was falling off. This delusion appeared to be due to the fact that it got her attention from the staff.

True

True/ false: In shaping, it is sometimes a good idea to back up and reinforce earlier approximations of the desired behavior. This is only a good idea if the subject is having a hard time meeting current demands

True

True/False: Kohler thought that insight was achieved suddenly, but other work suggests that it is achieved gradually.

True

true/ False: intense shock of 2 mA should be more effective at suppressing a subjects behavior than when a less intense shock is used (0.3 mA)

True

secondary reinforcer (conditioned reinforcer)

a stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer Ex: pairing sound with lever pressing Advantages: Satiate slowly, reinforce immediately, less disruptive, versatile Disadvantages: weaker than primary, effectiveness depends on association with PR

Shaping is the reinforcement of successive ___________ of a desired behavior.

approximations

Which of the following is an example of positive reinforcement

child gets a cookie for putting toys away

One factor that impacts the effectiveness of punishment is called _____________ and is defined as the more consistently a behavior is followed by a punishing event, the less likely the behavior will occur in the future.

contingency

Safest way to earn promised reward is to perform behavior in a(n)

conventional way

An attempt to reduce head banging in an 8-year-old boy by providing food when the boy steadily played with a ball resulted in

decreased head banging

Problem behavior in children can be dealt with most effectively through ________ .

differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior

Contrived reinforcer

events provided by someone for the purpose of modifying behavior ex: parents giving cookie to child

The first step in the learned helplessness procedure is to expose subjects to

inescapable shock

When people text and drive, a type of punishment may occur. For texting and driving the punisher would be ________ and the reinforcer would be _____________

injury: sending the message

A child is supposed to complete her chores every friday night. To prevent her mother from nagging, the child successfully completes her chores. For the next 3 weeks, the child completes her chores more often that she has in the past. Her mother no longer nags her. This is an example of

negative reinforcement

2 types of punishment

positive (stimulus added, behavior occurs less) negative (stimulus removed and occur less)

This type of operant learning occurs when the appearance of a stimulus leads to a weakened behavior.

positive punishment

What is Thorndike's Law of Effect?

responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation

Coincidental reinforcement plays an important role in _________________ behavior.

superstitious

The first step in building a behavior chain is to do a ______.

task analysis