Exam 5: Learning

Changes controlled by a genetic blueprint, such as an increase in height or the size of the brain, are examples of ________.

An experiment finds that a certain male subject always has an increased heartbeat when he hears a certain piece of music. The experimenter sounds a buzzer and then plays the piece of music. The experimenter repeats this procedure until the man responds with an increased heartbeat to the sound of the buzzer alone. In this situation the UNCONDITIONED response is the:

College students faced with unsolvable problems eventually give up and make only half-hearted attempts to solve new problems, even when the new problems can be solved easily. This behavior is probably due to ______.

A reinforcer that adds something rewarding to a situation is called a ________ reinforcer.

When Luke kisses Laura, her heart rate increases. Luke always wore Old Spice After Shave. Whenever Laura smelled Old Spice, her heart raced. Laura's increased heart rate when Luke kissed her was the:

Cheryl is trying to teach her son to do the laundry by watching her. According to observational learning theory, to be effective what must occur?

When Casey opens the closet door to get some dog food, her dog salivates. What is the conditioned stimulus in this example?

The person MOST closely associated with the law of effect is ________.

Which of the following is a secondary reinforcer?

The schedule of reinforcement that yields the slowest increase in a behavior and the fastest extinction of the behavior when the schedule is stopped is ________.

A farmer is being troubled by coyotes eating his sheep. In an attempt to solve the problem, he kills a sheep and laces its body with a nausea-inducing drug. He leaves the sheep out where he knows the coyotes roam. He hopes they will learn not to eat the sheep after they become sick from the bait he leaves. The farmer is attempting to apply the research of ________ to accomplish this.

The opposite of stimulus generalization is:

Anything that increases the likelihood that a behavior will occur more frequently is called a(n) ________.

The mental image of an area, such as a maze or the floor plan of a building, is called ________.

A reinforcer that removes something unpleasant from a situation is a ________.

Any event whose presence decreases the likelihood that ongoing behavior will recur is ________.

Abigail is trying to figure out how she can BEST use employee pay to shape her employees' behavior. She is interested in short-term productivity (speed), not consistency, long-term productivity, or employee turnover. According to reinforcement theory, she should probably use a ________ schedule.

In classical conditioning, the interstimulus interval refers to the amount of time between ________.

Human beings generally have an aversion to bitter and sour foods. Some researchers suggest that this is because foods that are inedible or even poisonous are often bitter or sour. The tendency of human beings to find these potentially harmful foods repulsive is an example of ________.

Billy throws rocks. Each time he throws a rock, he is immediately spanked. Spanking is a ________.