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Psychology GRE > Learning > Flashcards

Learning Flashcards

1
Q

What did E.L. Thorndike suggest?

A

The Law of Effect

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2
Q

What is the law of effect?

A

Precursor of operant conditioning. A cause-and-effect chain of behavior revolving around reinforcement.

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3
Q

What did Kurt Lewin develop?

A

The theory of association

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4
Q

What is the theory of association?

A

A forerunner to behaviorism, grouping things together based on they occur together in time and space. Associating certain behaviors with rewards and cues with situations. Precursor to Pavlov.

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5
Q

Who is Pavlov and what is classical conditioning?

A

Pavlov found that dogs salivate at the sound of a bell when the bell was paired with food.

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6
Q

Who is John B. Watson?

A

He founded the school of behaviorism.

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7
Q

What is the school of behaviorism?

A

Everything could be explained by stimulus-response chains and conditioning was the key factor in developing these chains.

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8
Q

Who is B.F. Skinner?

A

Conducted the first scientific experiments and suggested operant conditioning.

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9
Q

What did Skinner do?

A

Skinner proved that animals are influenced by reinforcement.

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10
Q

What is a Neutral Stimulus (NS)?

A

It does not produce a response on its own. For example, the bell before a response was conditioned.

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11
Q

What is an Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)?

A

The not-so-neutral stimulus. For example, the UCS is the food; it elicits the response of salivating.

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12
Q

What is a Conditioned Stimulus (CS)?

A

The neutral stimulus once it has been paired with the UCS. The bell (CS) is paired with the food (UCS) so that the CS alone with produce a response.

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13
Q

What is an unconditioned response (UCR)?

A

The naturally occurring response to the UCS. The UCR and the CR are the same (salivating to food or a bell)

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14
Q

What is simultaneous conditioning?

A

The UCS and the CS are presented at the same time.

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15
Q

What is higher-order or second-order conditioning?

A

A previous CS now acts as a UCS. Chaining CSs.

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16
Q

What is forward conditioning?

A

Paring of the CS and the UCS in which the CS is presented before the UCS.

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17
Q

What are the two types of forward conditioning?

A

Delayed and trace conditioning.

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18
Q

What is delayed conditioning?

A

The presentation of the CS begins before that of the UCS and lasts until the UCS is presented.

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19
Q

What is trace conditioning?

A

The CS is presented and terminated before the UCS is presented.

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20
Q

What is backward conditioning?

A

The CS is presented after the UCS is presented. The food first and then the bell. It is ineffective and produces inhibitory conditioning. The dogs will have a hard time pairing the food with the bell later.

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21
Q

What is operant conditioning also called?

A

Instrumental conditioning.

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22
Q

What is shaping?

A

Behavior was modified. In the Skinner box, the experimenter rewarded the rats with food for being near the lever and rewarded them again for touching the lever.

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23
Q

What is another name for shaping?

A

Differential reinforcement of successive approximations.

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24
Q

What is primary reinforcement?

A

A natural reinforcement; food or water.

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25
Q

What is a secondard reinforcement?

A

A learned reinforcer. Often learned through society. Money.

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26
Q

What is positive reinforcement?

A

Reward of positive event acting as a stimulus that increases the likelihood of a particular response. Example: rewarding a dog with a treat.

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27
Q

What is negative reinforcement?

A

It is reinforcement through the removal of a negative event. Example: Monkey is in a cage with a horn blaring. If a monkey rides a tricycle the noise stops. The monkey will ride the tricycle more often. The noise is a negative event.

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28
Q

What is the difference between negative reinforcment and punishment?

A

Negative reinforcement encourages the subject to behave in a certain way and punishment encourages them to stop behaving. Negative reinforcement removes a negative event and punishment introduces a negative event.

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29
Q

What is a continuous reinforcement schedule?

A

Every correct response is met with some form of reinforcement. It is the quickest but most fragile learning; when the rewards stop coming, the animal stops performing.

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30
Q

What are the four types of parital reinformcement schedules?

A

Fixed-ratio, variable-ratio, fixed-interval, and variable-interval.

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31
Q

What is a fixed-ratio schedule?

A

A reinforcement is delivered after a consistent number of responses. Drug addiction. Vulnerable to extinction.

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32
Q

What is a variable-ratio schedule?

A

Reinforcements are delivered after a correct number of responses. The ratio cannot be predicted. Slot machines. Takes the most time to occur, but least likely to become extinguished.

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33
Q

What is a fixed-interval schedule?

A

Rewards come after the passage of a certain time period; every five minutes for example. It does little to motivate since it can be predicted.

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34
Q

What is a variable-interval schedule?

A

Rewards are delivered after differing time periods. It is second most effective. Waiting for a bus as an example.

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35
Q

What is a token economy?

A

An artificial mini-economy found in prisons, rehab centers, or mental hospitals. Individuals are motivated by secondary reinforcers, such as tokens and can be exchanged for primary reinforcers such candy, books, or cigarettes.

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36
Q

What are primary or instinctual drives?

A

Hunger or thirst.

37
Q

What are secondary or aquired drives?

A

Money or other learned reinforcers.

38
Q

What is an exploratory drive?

A

Individuals are motivated simply to try something new or to explore their environment.

39
Q

Name the three theories that agree that what drives people is a desire to be balanced with respect to their feelings, ideas, or behaviors.

A

Fritz Heider’s balance theory
Charles Osgood and Percy Tannenbaum’s congruity theory
Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory
Drive-reduction theory

40
Q

Who proposed Performance = Drive x Habit?

A

Clark Hull

41
Q

What is Performance = Drive x Habit?

A

Individuals are first motivated by drive, and then according to old successful habits.

42
Q

Who proposed Performance = Expectation x Value?

A

Edward Tolman

43
Q

What is the expectancy-value theory?

A

People are motivated by goals they think they may actually meet and how important the goal is.

44
Q

Who was Victor Vroom?

A

He applied the expectancy-value theory to industrial behavior in large organizations. Lowly workers do not expect to get incentives so they are not motivated.

45
Q

Who studied need for achievement (nAch)?

A

Henry Murray and David McClelland.

46
Q

What is need for achievement (nAch)?

A

The goal is to feel succesful.

47
Q

What did John Atkinson suggest?

A

A theory of motivation in which people who set realistic goals with intermediate risk sets feel pride with accomplishment and want to succeed more than they fear failure. But they are unlikely to set unrealistic or risky goals or to persist when success is unlikely.

48
Q

Who proposed the approach-avoidance conflict?

A

Neil Miller

49
Q

What is the approach-avoidance conflict?

A

The state one feels when a certain goal has pros and cons. The further one is from the goal, the more they think of the pros. The closer one is to the goal, the more one focuses on the cons.

50
Q

What is hedonism?

A

The theory that individuals are motivated solely by what brings the most pleasure and least pain.

51
Q

What is the Premack principle?

A

People are motivated to do what they do not want to do by rewarding themselves afterward with something they like. For example, giving a kid spinach to make them do homework.

52
Q

What is the Yerkes-Dodson effect?

A

A medium amount of arousal is best for performance. Too little or too high can hamper performance of tasks. For simple tasks, the best level is high. For complex tasks, the best arousal is low. These should never be at the extremes. Optimal arousal looks like an inverted U-curve.

53
Q

What is stimulus discrimination?

A

The ability to discriminate between different but similar stimuli. For example, a doorbell versus a phone ringing.

54
Q

What is stimulus generalization?

A

The opposite of stimulus discrimination. To make the same response to a group of similar stimuli. Not all fire alarms sound the same but we have the same response to them.

55
Q

What is undergeneralization?

A

The failure to generalize a stimuli.

56
Q

What is response learning?

A

The form of learning in which one links together chains of stimuli and responses. One learns what to do in response to particular triggers. An example is leaving a building in response to a fire alarm.

57
Q

What is perceptual or concept learning?

A

Learning about something in general rather than learning specific stimulus-response chains. Learning history for example.

58
Q

What are cognivie maps?

A

When rats can find cheese in a maze faster a second time. Tolman’s idea.

59
Q

What is aversive conditioning?

A

It uses punishment to decrease the likelihood of behavior. The drug antabuse causes severe nausea and vomiting when taken with alcohol.

60
Q

What is avoidance conditioning?

A

It teaches an animal how to avoid something it does not want.

61
Q

What is escape conditioning?

A

It teachers an animals how to avoid something the animal does not want.

62
Q

What is punishement?

A

It promotes extinction of an undesirable behavior. This acts as a negative stimulus. It has mixed reviews.

63
Q

What is autonomic conditioning?

A

It refers to evoking responses of the autonomic nervous system through training.

64
Q

What is state dependant learning?

A

The concept that what a person learns in one state is best recalled in that state.

65
Q

What is exinction?

A

The reverse of conditioning. The goal is to encourage an organism to stop doing a particular behavior. Accomplished by repeatedly withholding reinforcement for a behavior or by disassociating the behavior from a particular cue.

66
Q

What is spontaneous recovery?

A

The reappearance of an extinguished response even in the absence of further conditioning or training.

67
Q

What is latent learning?

A

Takes place without reinforcement. Learning is revealed at some other time. For example, you watch chess being played and then you realize you learn new tricks.

68
Q

What is incidental learning?

A

It is like accidental learning. Unrelated items are grouped together. A dog is afraid of the car even when not going to the vet. It is the opposite of intentional learning.

69
Q

What is superstitious behavior?

A

Someone “learns” a specific action causes an event, when in reality the two are unrelated.

70
Q

What is chaining?

A

The act of linking together a series of behaviors that ultimately results in reinforcement. One behavior triggers the next and so on.

71
Q

What is habituation?

A

The decreasing responsiveness to a stimulus as a result of increasing familiarity with the stimulus.

72
Q

What is sensitization?

A

Increased sensitivity to the environment following the presentation of a strong stimulus.

73
Q

What is overshadowing?

A

A classical conditioning concept referring to an animal’s inability to infer a relationship between a particular stimulus and response due to the presence of a more prominent stimulus.

74
Q

What is autoshaping?

A

An apparatus allows an animal to control its reinforcements through behavior such as bar pressing. The animal is shaping its own behavior.

75
Q

What is social learning theory?

A

It states individuals learn through their culture. People learn what is acceptable and not acceptable through society.

76
Q

What is observational learning?

A

The act of learning something by watching.

77
Q

What is modeling?

A

A specific concept within social learning. Learning by imitating others.

78
Q

Who is Albert Bandura?

A

Created the Bobo doll experiment which showed modeling.

79
Q

Who is John Garcia?

A

Animals are programmed through evolution to make certain connections. The concept that certain associations are learned more easily than others is called preparedness.

80
Q

What is the Garcia effect?

A

When one gets sick eating a food, they tend to avoid the food for a long time.

81
Q

What did M.E. Olds do?

A

He found that pleasure centers of the brain were used as positive reinforcement. Animals would perform behaviors to receive the stimulation. It was evidence against the drive-reduction theory.

82
Q

What is the difference between continuous motor tasks and discrete motor tasks?

A

Continuous motor tasks are ones that are once started, they occur naturally, such as riding a bicycle. Discrete motor tasks are divided into parts that do not facilitate the recall of each other, such as setting up a chessboard.

83
Q

What is positive transfer and negative transfer?

A

Positive transfer is previous leaning that makes it easier to learn another task later. Negative transfer is learning that makes it harder to learn another task.

84
Q

What does age do to learning?

A

Humans are primed to learn during the school years, ages 3 - 20. From 20 - 50, the ability to learn remains constant. After the age of 50, the ability drops.

85
Q

What did Hermann Ebbinghaus describe?

A

The learning curve which refers to the fact when learning something new, the rate of learning changes over time.

86
Q

Who is Thorndike?

A

He created the first educational psychology textbook in 1903. He also developed various methods to assess students’ skills and teaching effectiveness.

87
Q

What is aptitude?

A

It refers to a set of characteristics that are indicative of a person’s ability to learn.

88
Q

What is cooperative learning?

A

It involves students working on a project together in small groups.

89
Q

What is scaffolding learning?

A

When a teacher encourages the student to learn independently and only provides help with topics or concepts that are beyond the student’s capability. As the student continues to learn, the teacher aids with less to encourage independence.

Psychology GRE (5 decks)

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