Exam 5: Learning

While positive reinforcement increases or strengthens a response, negative reinforcement decreases or weakens a response.

Delores could see a sock on the floor behind the clothes dryer. She straightened out a wire clothes hanger, fashioned a hook on the end, and used it to fish the sock out from behind the dryer. Using operant conditioning terminology, straightening out the wire hanger and poking it behind the dryer would be the _____ and the retrieved sock would be the _____, assuming this increased Delores' use of the clothes wire to retrieve socks in the future.

Christina is making some extra money as a phone solicitor for her university's fundraising drive. She is paid $5 for every 20 calls she makes, regardless of whether the people she calls donate. Christina is on a _____ schedule of reinforcement.

College students who experience feelings of learned helplessness may respond to academic setbacks, such as failing a test, by:

After dogs have experienced inescapable shocks, they are placed in a shuttlebox in which they can easily jump over a barrier from one side of the shuttlebox to the other. If the dogs have developed learned helplessness, they will most likely respond to another shock by:

Martin Seligman and Steven Maier found that learned helplessness in dogs could be overcome by forcibly dragging them over the shuttlebox barrier to escape the electric shocks.

Researchers discovered that the neuronal activity in the brain of a monkey who simply watched another monkey pick up and eat a peanut was the same as the brain activity of the monkey actually performing these actions. These researchers were investigating:

After a dog has gone through the process of extinction and no longer salivates to the sound of a bell, the conditioned response will spontaneously reappear if the dog is given a period of rest and the sound of the bell is again presented.

Martin Seligman once said, "it became my mission in life to help create a positive psychology whose mission would be the understanding and building of positive emotion, of strength and virtue, and of positive institutions."

Sexual arousal can be classically conditioned.

Describe how John B. Watson applied classical conditioning principles to advertising.

Clint used to use the vending machine near his dorm quite frequently, but the last few times he tried to get a drink the vending machine malfunctioned and he lost his money. Now he no longer uses this vending machine. Which of the following has occurred in this situation?

Describe John Garcia's research, and explain why psychologists initially rejected his findings.

If exposure to inescapable and uncontrollable aversive events produces passive behavior, the response of passivity is termed:

Which learning researcher believed that operant conditioning involved an organism learning "what leads to what," or the cognitive expectation that a particular consequence would follow a particular behavior?

Olivia decided to try a new recipe. For dinner that night, she served up the new "Chef's Surprise," which she spent most of the day preparing. After one taste, the rest of the family voted to go out for pizza. Because she has experienced negative reinforcement, Olivia no longer tries new recipes.

Both Albert Bandura and Edward Tolman demonstrated that reinforcement was not necessary for learning to take place.

It is the passage of time rather than the number of responses that helps to determine when a reinforcer will be delivered. This describes which of the following?

_____ was the author of a landmark article entitled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." The opening sentences of that article read, "Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior."

_____ conducted the famous Bobo doll research, which showed the power of _____.