Exam 13: The Behavioralsocial Learning Approach: Theory, Application, and Assessment

Define operant conditioning and contrast it with classical conditioning. State the law of effect and describe the nature of the observations made by Thorndike to formulate the law. Give two examples of your own that illustrate the reinforcement strategies used in operant conditioning to increase desired behaviors.

John's mother wants her son to stop crying every time something goes wrong. Following a psychologist's advice, she stops running to comfort John whenever the boy starts crying over some minor incident. After a few weeks, she notices that John cries much less frequently than he used to. This is an example of

Positive and negative reinforcement are similar in that both procedures

Which procedure might you use if you wanted to decrease the frequency of a response?

A woman complains to her therapist that lately she hasn't "felt like herself." The therapist plans to use a behavior therapy treatment by altering the rewards and punishments in the woman's environment. What is likely to be the first step the therapist takes in setting up this treatment?

Operant conditioning would be rather limited if every new situation required learning a new response. However, this is not the case because of

Systematic desensitization is used by behavior therapists to help clients suffering from which problem?

Children in one study observed a model acting aggressively against a Bobo doll. The children were then given an opportunity to imitate the model on their own, followed by an opportunity to demonstrate the aggressive acts for rewards. The study was designed to demonstrate

From Bandura's research on observational learning in children we can conclude that whether a child performs an aggressive act depends on

According to B. F. Skinner, we are mistaken when we look to inner causes for our actions because

A behavioral therapist wants to teach a client to relax. The therapist wants to teach the client to pay attention to when his muscles are tense. However, the client complains that he cannot tell when his muscles are tense. What type of treatment will the therapist probably try?

From his observations of cats escaping from a "puzzle box" to obtain a piece of fish, Thorndike developed a theory that is known as

As a child, Mary always had an unpleasant time whenever she visited her cousins. In addition, most of the times she visited, her aunt would serve meatloaf for dinner. As an adult, Mary hates meatloaf. If her dislike of meatloaf were classically conditioned, the meatloaf would be the

Define observational learning and distinguish between learning and performance. Name the basic assumptions of Bandura's social-cognitive theory and give your own comparison to the strict behaviorist approach. Describe Bandura's experiment with nursery school children that investigated television and aggression. What are the implications from this research for observational learning?

According to Rotter, all of the following are psychological variables that must be considered to account for behavior except one. Which one?

Marlene's desk becomes so messy that on occasion she cannot find an important paper she is looking for. After several incidents in which she suffered the consequences of not finding a paper she needed (such as a homework assignment), she learned to organize and straighten her desk. Marlene learned this new behavior through which operant conditioning procedure?

With respect to the locus of control continuum, Sally has an external orientation. Which of the following statements would she least likely make?

Watson paired a loud noise with the appearance of a white rat to create a fear of the animal in a boy known as Little Albert. Watson performed this experiment to demonstrate that

Which of the following is not part of Bandura's reciprocal determinism model?

A psychologist teaches a snake-phobic client to relax. She then has the client imagine increasingly vivid scenes about snakes while relaxing. The psychologist is using which type of therapy?