Exam 6: A: Learning

What is the term for an event that follows a behaviour and results in a lower probability of the behaviour in the future?

Which of the following would make a reinforcer most effective?

Which of your text's unifying themes is illustrated by the biological preparedness explanation for conditioned taste aversions?

Marie works in a dress factory where she earns $10 for each three dresses she hems. Which type of reinforcement schedule is this?

You are watching a cumulative recorder that is connected to a small disk in a chamber. The pigeon has been trained to peck the disk when a red light is turned on, and not to peck the disk when a green light is turned on. What should you observe when the green light is turned on, based on this information?

Kylee used to bring drawings home from her kindergarten class every day, and her parents would put the pictures on the refrigerator and tell Kylee how nice the pictures were. Lately, her parents haven't been putting her artwork on the refrigerator, and now Kylee has stopped bringing drawings home with her. Which process does this example illustrate?

What is the initial stage of learning a response called?

After watching his father wash the car, five-year-old Yacov washes his bike. What does this example illustrate?

When Lindsay was nine years old, the neighbour's Chihuahua bit her on the ankle. Today Lindsay is still terrified of Chihuahuas, but she likes almost all other types of dogs. What does Lindsay's specific fear illustrate?

What is the major distinction between classical conditioning and operant conditioning?

Katrina is trying to put a coin into a vending machine in her office. Sometimes the machine will take a coin on the first try, other times it can take up to five or six tries before the coin is finally accepted. On which type of schedule is inserting a coin into the vending machine reinforced, in this example?

As described in your text, Domjan and his colleagues studied the adaptive significance of sexual conditioning. On which of the following topics might research like this shed light?

Jane was ridiculed at school for wearing a particular style of shirt. Now she no longer wears that style of shirt to school. What does this example illustrate?

What do you call Ziggy's behaviour of ringing the bell, from a conditioning perspective?

Carly used to be afraid of visits to her family doctor because she associated the sight of his waiting room with the pain of having a blood sample drawn. Recently, Carly's doctor retired and a new doctor took over his office. Carly's new doctor uses a technique that is virtually painless and the sight of the waiting room is no longer associated with pain. Consequently, Carly finds her fear of visits to her family doctor has disappeared. Which classical conditioning process does this illustrate?

Imagine that a conditioned response is extinguished in a different setting than the one in which it was originally acquired. What should you expect to see when the animal is returned to the environment where the acquisition originally took place?

Ming 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. Which learning process can best account for Ming's fear of spiders?

Which of the following responses by dogs in Pavlov's laboratory triggered Pavlov's interest in conditioning?

Tia wants to be the mayor of her city. In all her television ads she plays patriotic music and has the Canadian flag displayed in the background. If voters develop positive feelings toward Tia as a result of these ads, what would those positive feelings represent?

Marvin creates a television ad that alternates between images of coffins and people buying cigarettes. He is hoping that people who watch the ad will develop negative feelings toward buying cigarettes after seeing these ads. What is the conditioned stimulus in Marvin's ad?