Unit 4 - Learning

Which of the following most accurately describes an impact of punishment?

• Punishment is a good way to increase a behavior, as long as it is not used too frequently.

• Punishment may create problems in the short term but rarely produces long-term side effects.

• Punishment can be effective at stopping specific behaviors quickly.

• Punishment typically results in an increase of a behavior caused by the removal of an aversive stimulus.

• Punishment should never be used (in the opinion of most psychologists), because the damage it causes can never be repaired.

Which of the following is an application of shaping?

• A mother playing catch with her daughter gradually backs up to increase the distance between the two of them.

• A pigeon pecks a disk 25 times for an opportunity to receive a food reinforcement.

• A rat presses a bar when a green light is on but not when a red light is on.

• A rat gradually stops pressing a bar when it no longer receives a food reinforcement.

• A gambler continues to play a slot machine even though he has won nothing on his last 20 plays.

Mirror neurons may

• allow an organism to replace an unconditioned response with a conditioned response.

• help produce intrinsic motivation in some children.

• be the mechanism by which the brain accomplishes observational learning.

• produce the neural associations that are the basis of both classical and operant conditioning.

• explain why modeling prosocial behavior is more effective than modeling negative behavior.

Which of the following illustrates generalization?

• A rabbit that has been conditioned to blink to a tone also blinks when a similar tone is sounded.

• A dog salivates to a tone but not to a buzzer.

• A light is turned on repeatedly until a rat stops flexing its paw when it's turned on.

• A pigeon whose disk pecking response has been extinguished is placed in a Skinner box 3 hours later and begins pecking the disk again.

• A child is startled when the doorbell rings.

Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiments demonstrated that

• children are likely to imitate the behavior of adults.

• there may be a correlation between televised violence and aggressive behavior, but it is probably not a cause-effect relationship.

• children are more likely to copy what adults say than what adults do.

• allowing children to watch too much television is detrimental to their development.

• observational learning can explain the development of fears in children.

Edward Thorndike's law of effect

• establishes the difference between positive and negative reinforcement.

• shows that behavior maintained by partial reinforcement is more resistant to extinction than behavior maintained by continuous reinforcement.

• demonstrates how shaping can be used to establish operant conditioning.

• states that rewarded behavior is more likely to happen again.

• relates to the limited effectiveness of punishment.

To produce the acquisition of a conditioned response, one should

• repeatedly present an unconditioned response.

• administer the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus.

• make sure that the conditioned stimulus comes at least one minute before the unconditioned stimulus.

• pair a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus several times.

• present the conditioned stimulus until it starts to produce an unconditioned response.

To determine just what an organism can learn to distinguish, you would use

• generalization.

• a variable-ratio schedule of reinforcement.

• a fixed-ratio schedule of reinforcement.

• extinction.

• a discriminative stimulus.

A student studies long and hard to avoid the bad feelings associated with a low grade on a test. In this case, the studying behavior is being strengthened because of

• positive reinforcement.

• negative reinforcement.

• delayed reinforcement.

• primary reinforcement.

• conditioned reinforcement.

Taste aversion research has demonstrated that

• taste is the most fundamental of the senses.

• there are biological predispositions involved in learning.

• animals must evaluate a situation cognitively before taste aversion develops.

• taste aversion is a universal survival mechanism.

• a US must occur within seconds of a CS for conditioning to occur.