Exam 8: How Stimuli Guide Instrumental Action

A pigeon is trained with two separate S^D stimuli, a tone and a yellow light. Assume that a green light serves as an S^Δ and acquires an extraordinary amount of inhibition, such that it will generalize very widely across the spectrum. What should happen to peak shift around the S^D?

Refer to the scenario below to answer the questions that follow. Clayton and Dickinson demonstrated episodic memory in scrub jays. The birds were allowed to hide worms (their preferred food) and peanuts. They then were allowed to retrieve the cached items 4 hours later and 124 hours later. For the experimental group, the cached worms were "spoiled" by the researcher just before the 124-hour retrieval. On subsequent trials, after a 4-hour period, the jays search for worms (the preferred food) more than for peanuts, but after a 124-hour period, they search for peanuts (the less preferred food) more than worms. -If the scrub jays had both procedural and semantic memory, but not episodic memory, what would they have done on the two tests? Justify your answer.

In the metacognition experiment described in the text, a monkey was shown a sample and then given a choice: It may proceed with the trial, or skip the trial and get a piece of not-so-yummy monkey chow. If it proceeds, it is presented with several stimuli and must choose the one it was just shown. If the monkey chooses correctly, it gets a yummy peanut. If the monkey chooses incorrectly, it gets nothing and experiences a longer wait before the next trial. The monkey became more likely to skip the trial as the time between the sample presentation and the choice to proceed increased. How does this experiment assess metacognition?

Which term does not belong with the others?

Stimulus control is beneficial to an organism because it

If subjects have learned a concept and then are exposed to new stimuli during the transfer test, they will likely

You have been captured by aliens for research and are the subject of a category learning experiment with stimuli (@, #, $, %) matched to categories such as @# = Farnut, $# = wahool, $% = karrd, and @% = taroom. You successfully learn all the categories. To avoid further experimentation, you decide to speak out and educate your abductors on theories of categorization. Evaluate which theories can, and cannot, explain your performance.

The term "cryptic," when used to refer to a stimulus, means that it is a signal

Spence's theory suggests that transposition effects occur due to

Research on time cognition has found that

"Group think" is a social-psychology phenomenon whereby people, for example, enter a discussion sharing a common opinion on a topic and come out of that discussion with an even more extreme view. Consider opinions as stimuli that people respond to and that have consequences, how could "group think" be explained in terms of generalization gradients?

Subjects' responses are likely to demonstrate a sharper or steeper generalization gradient if the researchers use

Geometric cues are thought to be

Subjects in a study are asked to press a left-hand key if the image on a computer screen is a bird or a right-hand key if it is not a bird, and to respond as quickly as possible. On any given trial, they may see a bird or some other image (e.g., window, car, pencil, cow, flower, paintbrush, etc.). On one trial, an image of a penguin is flashed on the screen and a subject responds by pressing the "not a bird" key. This error could be explained by _______ theory, specifically by using the argument that a penguin does not resemble a typical bird.

Environmental events that regulate biological clocks are called

Radiologists must accurately discriminate malignant cancer from nonmalignant cancer cells in X-rays. You are asked to design a training program that will give the radiologists feedback on their categorization of hundreds of X-rays. How would you incorporate what you know about perceptual learning into your program so that the radiologists quickly learn to accurately discriminate the cancers? Discuss the mechanisms that will make your program successful.

An adult introducing zoo animals to a child names and points out the features of each animal as they tour the zoo. In the section for hoofed mammals (e.g., deer, gazelles, antelopes, etc.), the child-despite the adult's explanations-calls everything a "deer." As they enter the next area, the child also calls a rhinoceros a "deer." The child's use of horns/no horns as a categorization system for "deer" illustrates the _______ theory approach to concept learning.

Studies of spatial learning using blocking designs in the Morris water maze

One model explaining animals' sensitivity to time argues that animals engage in a fixed sequence of actions during any time interval, and that they use their memory of whichever action was taking place at the time of reinforcement to pattern their responding. This perspective is referred to as the

Which statement about transfer tests is true?