Exam 7: Learning and Conditioning

The acquisition of a conditioned fear response appears to involve a receptor for the neurotransmitter:

Robert Rescorla said that a conditioned stimulus must reliably ________ an unconditioned stimulus.

Social-cognitive learning theorists believe that omitting mental processes from explanations of human learning is essential in maintaining a rigorous scientific approach.

If a dog begins to salivate at the sight of its dog food dish, then the dish is called a conditioned stimulus.

In what ways might higher-order conditioning explain why some words trigger emotional responses in us? Give an example of a positive response that could be formed through higher-order conditioning. Give an example of a negative response that could be formed through higher-order conditioning. In what ways might higher-order conditioning contribute to prejudice?

Having a gold star placed on one's spelling quiz would be a primary reinforcer.

Which of the following is a primary reinforcer?

Intrinsic rewards are inherently related to the activity that is being reinforced.

Which of the following statements would be rejected by a strict behaviourist?

Immediate punishment of self-destructive behaviour, such as tearing out one's hair, is effective.

Extrinsic rewards can sometimes reduce the intrinsic pleasure of an activity.

Sometimes a person learns to respond to a stimulus only when a discriminative stimulus is present. What does the discriminative stimulus signal? Illustrate the ways in which human behaviour is controlled by verbal discriminative stimuli. Illustrate the ways in which human behaviour is controlled by nonverbal discriminative stimuli. What role does this type of learning play in socialization?

John Watson and Rosalie Rayner were able to extinguish Little Albert's fear in four sessions by using classical conditioning techniques.

Match the definitions with the appropriate concept. -The classical-conditioning term for an initially neutral stimulus that comes to elicit a conditioned response after being associated with an unconditioned stimulus.

A basic principle governing operant conditioning is that:

When speaking of reinforcers, the words "positive" and "negative" refer to procedures.

If you want a response to persist after it has been learned, you should reinforce it continuously, not intermittently.

Which school of thought heavily influenced the study of learning in the twentieth century?

In negative punishment, the probability of a response ________ over time when a stimulus is ________.

Tolman's research suggested that learning involves cognitive changes that can occur in the absence of reinforcement and that these cognitive changes may not be acted upon until a reinforcer becomes available.