Exam 5: Learning

Your dog tends to salivate and get excited when you shake a box of dog biscuits. However, your dog does not drool when you shake a bag of cat food. This is an example of:

The phenomenon of spontaneous recovery provides support for the idea that:

Dylan loves to play tennis, but because he is serious about doing well in college, he only goes to the tennis courts after he accomplishes his studying goals for the day. What strategy is Dylan using to improve his self-control?

Two young graduate students, Steven Maier and Martin Seligman, discovered the phenomenon called learned helplessness.

Bandura found observers were most likely to imitate actions when the model was punished for those actions and when the model was an unattractive, low-status member of the viewer's social group.

The early "school" or approach to psychology called behaviorism emphasized the scientific study of:

In response to a cold temperature, your body will shiver reflexively. Using Pavlov's terminology, the cold temperature would be termed a(n):

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.

Albert Bandura proposed that instinctive drift occurs because of principles related to observational learning.

In John Watson and Rosalie Rayner's "Little Albert" study, the unconditioned stimulus was a loud clang, and the conditioned stimulus was a tame white rat.

Marian Breland was one of the first psychologists to use positive reinforcement to teach basic self-help skills to people with developmental disabilities. She also helped train marine mammals for the U.S. Navy.

Anthony is studying for his final exam the next day, but a friend calls and invites him to a party. Anthony really wants to go to the party, but he also needs a good grade on his final in order to maintain his standing on the dean's honor roll and to increase his chances of getting into medical school. Instead of thinking about how much fun the party will be, Anthony visualizes himself as a doctor, treating patients and performing surgery. What self-control strategy is Anthony using?

After a dog had been conditioned to salivate at the sight of meat powder, the meat powder was presented to the dog every three minutes and held just out of the dog's reach. Over the course of several trials, the amount of saliva the dog secretes decreases to zero, indicating that _____ had occurred.

Describe the famous "Little Albert" study, including the implications of the study's results.

A rat in a Skinner box is reinforced with a food pellet every time it presses the bar. This is an example of:

A conditioned stimulus from one learning trial is used in place of an unconditioned stimulus in a new conditioning trial, where it is paired with a second conditioned stimulus. The second conditioned stimulus then comes to elicit the conditioned response, even though it has never been directly paired with the unconditioned stimulus. This is a description of a procedure called:

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

It was Robert Rescorla who famously stated, "The animal behaves like a scientist, detecting causal relations among events and using a range of information about those events to make the relevant inferences."

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

During a severe thunderstorm, Christopher was talking on the phone with his girlfriend when lightning struck the house and the electrical shock traveled through the telephone wire. Christopher received a strong shock and the fright of his life. Although he wasn't severely injured, he developed an intense fear of lightning and thunderstorms. However, Christopher did NOT develop a fear of telephones or his girlfriend. Which concept helps explain this fact?