Week 9

Question 1

What is involved in information transfer?

Answer 1

Perceive (perception); process (learning); store (learning/memory); use (decision making)

Question 2

What is the difference between an unconditioned and conditioned response?

Answer 2

Something not learned but innate ability, e.g. salivation

Something learned, e.g. learning to salivate at the sound of a bell

Question 3

What are the two kinds of conditioning?

Answer 3

Appetitive (pleasant food, water, sexual mate)

Aversive (unpleasant shock, loud noise, bad odour) conditioning

Question 4

How can we explain why people have a fear of something when they have had no bad experience with that thing?

Answer 4

Social conditioning - watching another be afraid of something can make you afraid yourself.

Question 5

Learning to ignore the sound of dripping water is an example of what?

Answer 5

Habituation

Question 6

When you opened the fridge one evening, the putrid smell of rotten eggs made you feel nauseous. In classical conditioning, the smell is a __ stimulus that now elicits a __ of nausea.

Answer 6

Unconditioned stimulus; unconditioned response

Question 7

What is acquisition?

Answer 7

The process of developing and strengthening a conditioned response through repeated pairings of a NS and a US.

Question 8

What is extinction?

Answer 8

Process in which a conditioned response gradually weakens when a CS is repeatedly presented in the absence of the US; e.g. presenting the bell without food after conditioning.

Question 9

What is spontaneous recovery?

Answer 9

A recovered conditioned response, back to the norm.

Question 10

What is extinction in respect to extinction-spontaneous recovery?

Answer 10

Learning another conditioned response; e.g. learning to not be afraid of the light again.

Question 11

What is generalisation?

Answer 11

Tendency to give a conditioned response to a stimulus that is similar to the CS - generalisation; e.g. being afraid of only hairy dogs.

Question 12

What are the features of the Rescorla-Wagner model?

Answer 12

Predictive learning

Question 13

The fact that you learnt to fear wasps and hornets, as well as bees, after being stung by a bee is an example of what?

Answer 13

Generalisation.

Question 14

You are hired for a job in which you have to catch bees. During the first day, you never get stung by a bee. You find your fear of bees what? This is an example of what?

Answer 14

Decreasing; extinction (Why is it not e.g. of habituation? Classical conditioned response decreasing)

Question 15

On the morning of the second day of work, you find that your fears bees has slightly returned. This is an example of what?

Answer 15

Spontaneous recovery.

Question 16

What is the difference between classical and operant conditioning?

Answer 16

Classical; association between stimuli and responses (relaxes). Operant; reinforcement (free will).

Question 17

What is Thorndike’s law of effect?

Answer 17

Behaviours that lead to a satisfactory state of affairs are stamped in, while behaviours leading to an unsatisfactory or annoying state of affairs are stamped out.

Question 18

Which other experimenter completed work similar to Thorndike?

Answer 18

Skinner in the skinner box with a pigeon.

Question 19

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 19

Process in which the future probability of a behaviour is affected by its consequences. E.g. teaching a dog a trick with treats, endorphins from running, gambling.

Question 20

Can punishment be positive in terms of operant conditioning?

Answer 20

Yes, something added, decreases a behaviour.

Question 21

Give an example of negative punishment.

Answer 21

Putting a nose harness on a dog to stop it from pulling on its lead.

Question 22

What is shaping and what it is used for? Give an example.

Answer 22

Process in which successive approximations of a behavior are reinforced; operant conditioning. E.g. changing the way children hold a knife and fork and praising this behaviour