Exam 5: Section 3: Learning

The television program "Makutano Junction" was developed to educate viewers about physical and mental health. These entertainment-education programs use the principles of observational learning.

Tolman demonstrated that learning may take place in the absence of reinforcement or other consequences-a phenomenon he called latent learning.

Acquiring a sense of control over environmental challenges is one way to begin to overcome learned helplessness.

Precommitment is the strategy of rewarding yourself before you perform a behavior that is likely to lead to a long-term goal.

Most television violence is performed by unattractive villains who are punished for their misdeeds, clearly sending the message that "it does not pay to use violence."

Psychologist John Watson strongly advocated the study of mental processes in order to understand how learning occurs in humans and other animals.

While at the airport, seven-year-old Connor discovers a quarter in the coin return of a pay telephone. Ever since, Connor checks the coin return of any pay telephone he sees. Using operant conditioning terms, positive reinforcement has occurred in this situation.

Using Skinner's words, an operant is any "active behavior that operates on the environment to generate consequences."

Exposure to uncontrollable aversive events from which you cannot escape can produce passive behavior, called learned helplessness.

After an individual chimp learned a new food-gathering technique, the rest of its group acquired the new skill within a few days. In turn, the newly acquired skill spread to other chimpanzee groups who could see the new behavior. According to the textbook, this is evidence for latent learning.

After reviewing decades of research investigating the effects of exposure to media violence, the American Psychological Association and other organizations issued a statement indicating that media violence is unlikely to contribute to aggressive behavior.

Research has shown that media violence can contribute to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behavior.

B. F. Skinner advocated that totalitarian governments should shape all human behavior through the use of punishment, believing that this approach would solve human problems in a humane and rational way.

You take two aspirin to remove a headache. Thirty minutes later, the headache is gone. You are now more likely to take aspirin to deal with bodily aches and pain in the future. In other words, negative reinforcement by escape has occurred.

Pavlov found that to produce a strong classically conditioned response the interval between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) should be no more than a few seconds.

Cognitive learning theorists today agree that mental processes, such as expectations and cognitive representations, play a role in operant conditioning.

After Fernanda buys stock in a "hot" new start-up company, the company fails and she loses all of her money. Fernanda no longer invests in start-up companies. This is an example of negative punishment.

B. F. Skinner was able to produce learned helplessness in birds, monkeys, dogs, and rats by alternating fixed-interval and variable-ratio schedules of reinforcement.

Because the relative value of a reinforcer can shift over time, people sometimes choose short-term reinforcers even when their choice might sabotage attaining a reinforcer that will be more rewarding in the long run.

B. F. Skinner stressed the fact that behavior ultimately arises from causes that are within the individual.