Exam 7: Learning and Adaptation: the Role of Experience

Tracie acquired a fear of pigeons after one almost pecked her in the eye on day. She was able to deal with this for a while by avoiding pigeons. But now she finds that her fear has spread to sparrows, doves, robins, and hawks. What happened?

The reinforcement of successive approximations of a desired behaviour is called ______________.

In a classical conditioning experiment that is utilizing backward pairing, the conditioned stimulus is presented after the __________________.

Explain the process of higher-order conditioning.

Which of the following is most difficult to explain using the behavioural perspective of learning?

When people experience a traumatic event, they can sometimes develop classically conditioned associations with otherwise unrelated stimuli that were present in the environment at the time of the trauma. Imagine this happens to Fredrick with a song playing on the radio during a car accident. What term is used to refer to the period of time in which that association is learned?

After Albert Bandura showed children videos of grownups beating up a Bobo doll, the children beat up Bobo in exactly the same way. This is an example of

In operant conditioning, a discriminative stimulus is one that signals when a particular response will generate specific consequences.

The use of shaping and chaining _____________.

Explain the adaptive significance of stimulus generalization and discrimination.

Animals appear to be biologically prewired to easily learn behaviours that are related to their survival as a species because of evolutionary forces. This is referred to as ____________.

Mark just broke up with Deborah. He used to see Deborah every day at 11:30 between classes but he decides to take an alternative route so that he won't have to feel bad when he sees her. Having successfully avoided the negative feelings from seeing Deborah, he now takes the alternate route every day. This is an example of _____________.

After becoming familiar with her local environment, a coyote learns to go to a specific stream for water when she is thirsty. She also tends to go to a particular shady area when the temperature is hot. These behaviours are best considered as examples of _____________.

Cable TV installers are typically paid $25 for every 10 installs they do. Consequently, they tend to work very quickly. This type of payment schedule could be described as a

Todd yells at his brother and takes his toy away. Todd's mom sees his behaviour and gives Todd a scolding. This is an example of _____________.

Irinia's dog loves to go for walks, and she always puts a leash on him when they go out. The dog used to wag his tail as soon as they got outside, but now he wags his tail when Irinia picks up the leash. In this case, what is the conditioned stimulus?

How do you create a conditioned salivation response in a dog?

A researcher conducts an experiment in which rats in one group (Group 1) receive 10 learning trials in which they receive a shock after a light is lit. Another group of rats (Group 2) receives the same 10 trials in which the shock is paired with the light, but they also receive 10 additional random trials in which the light is not followed by a shock. According to the expectancy model of classical conditioning, we would expect the tone to become a conditioned stimulus for fear for the rats

Edward Tolman's research demonstrating that rats in a maze appeared to develop cognitive maps of the maze without receiving any reinforcement provided evidence most supportive of the concept of

Explain how Watson and Rayner were able to teach Little Albert to fear of furry white objects using the principles of classical conditioning. Be sure to use the following labels: CS, CR, UCS, and UCR.