Exam 5: Learning

The phenomenon of learned helplessness, discovered by Martin Seligman and Steven Maier, demonstrated that expectations can play a significant role in classical and operant conditioning.

Trophies, ribbons, certificates of achievement, and money are often used to reinforce behavior. Using operant conditioning terms, these would all be examples of primary reinforcers.

Most television violence is performed by unattractive villains who are punished for their misdeeds, clearly sending the message that "it does not pay to use violence."

A young child has learned to associate the sight of a nurse's white uniform with the fear and pain of getting an injection. Ifthe young child begins reacting with fear to the sight of any white jacket, what has occurred?

Only humans have the mental ability to develop the cognitive expectation that their behavior will have no effect on the environment. Thus, only humans can develop learned helplessness.

A psychological and/or physiological response to what isactually a fake treatment or drug is called:

Though sometimes it's a little early or a little late, your mail almost always arrives around 10:30 every morning. As it getscloser to 10:30, you tend to check the mailbox more often. This is an everyday example of a variable-interval schedule of reinforcement.

Cognitive learning the orists today agree that mental processes,such as expectations and cognitive representations, play a rolein operant conditioning.

-The different schedules of reinforcement produce different patterns of responding. In the graph shown, which pattern represents the highest rate of responding?

Which of the following has the greatest impact on the strength of the conditioned response?

In classical conditioning, if the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus,what will occur?

Explain what mirror neurons are and discuss research on therole of mirror neurons in imitation and observational learning in humans and other animals.

If you touch something hot, you will reflexively withdraw your hand. Using Pavlov's terminology, reflexively withdrawing your hand would be termed a(n):

In one study, orangutans imitated the behavior of both humans and other orangutans, but they were more likely toimitate high-status or dominant models than low-statusmodels. The orangutans were also more likely to imitatemodels with whom they had close relationships, such asbiological parents, siblings, or their human caregivers. Human strangers were virtually never imitated. This study illustratesthat positive punishment factors seem to play a role in observational learning in primates, just as with humans.

Identify three species of animals that have shown evidence of observational learning. Describe one study that had provided evidence of observational learning in animals.

In psychology, the formal definition of "learning" is:

Describe how John Watson applied classical conditioning principles to advertising.

If you own a dog that tends to salivate and get excited when you shake a box of dog biscuits, you may have noticed that your dog also drools when you shake a bag of cat food. If so,this would be an example of:

Martin Seligman and Steven Maier found that learned helplessness could be overcome in dogs by forcibly dragging them over the shuttlebox barrier to escape the electric shocks.

The respect of your peers, the approval of your instructors or managers, a smile, a touch, or a nod of recognition can all be possible examples of conditioned reinforcers.