Exam 6: Conditioning and Learning

Skinner demonstrated that organisms tend to repeat responses that are followed by favourable consequences. Skinner termed these favourable consequences

Any event that follows a behaviour and results in the behaviour having a lower probability of happening in the future is known as a

Negative reinforcement ____ the rate of a response; punishment ____ the rate of a response.

Clearly differentiate between reinforcement and punishment.

You are watching a rat pressing a lever in a Skinner box to obtain food pellets. The rat is pressing the lever at a very high rate, and does not stop, even when a food pellet is delivered. In this example, the reinforcement schedule that is in place is MOST likely

____________________ refers to a relatively durable change in behaviour or knowledge due to experience.

A pigeon learns to peck at a disc lighted green to receive reinforcement, but not at a disc lighted red. This means that, for the pigeon, the colour of the disc is a

Your spouse withdraws attention from you each time you begin criticising her cooking. Eventually, you stop criticising your spouse's cooking. The withdrawal of attention can be categorised as

Negative reinforcement and punishment are similar in that they both weaken the tendency of the organism to make a response.

Imagine a husband and wife asking Bandura for advice on how they should teach their young child to say "please" and "thank you". Which of the following would Bandura be MOST likely to suggest?

Khanyi used to drool at the smell of peanut butter cookies as they baked, and he couldn't wait to sink his teeth into that first cookie. However, Khanyi's new roommate makes terrible peanut butter cookies, and the smell of them baking is no longer associated with a wonderful taste experience. Consequently, Khanyi finds that the smell of the cookies no longer makes him drool in anticipation. This illustrates the classical conditioning process known as

The process of selectively reinforcing responses that are closer and closer approximations of some desired response is called

Lerato is afraid of all spiders because her brother once dropped a spider down her shirt when she was younger. Today, even the sight of a rubber spider is enough to send shivers down her spine. The learning process that could best account for Lerato's fear of spiders is

When an organism responds to a specific stimulus or conditioned stimulus and doesn't respond to another stimulus that is similar to the conditioned stimulus, it is referred to as

A student who studies in order to earn high grades is working for ____; a student who studies in order to avoid low grades is working for ____.

Continuing to pair a specific CS and US, but periodically presenting stimuli similar to the CS and not pairing them with the US, should result in