PSYC 387 Learning Final exam tips questions and answers Athabasca University, Exams of Psychology

Download PSYC 387 Learning Final exam tips questions and answers Athabasca University and more Exams Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! PSYC 387 Learning Final exam tips questions and answers Athabasca University PSYC 387 Learning Final exam tips questions and answers Athabasca University Who originally said that change is the only constant? Explain why the author endorses this view? (p. 3) - -- Describe why Darwin rejected Malthus' view of the effects of human population growth. (p. 5) - -- Describe Darwin's theory of adaptation based on natural selection. Was Darwin aware of the genetic basis for evolution? Who discovered the genetic basis for natural selection and when? (p. 6) - -- Darwin stated that if all members of a species were genetically identical, natural selection would be impossible. Why did he state this, and what is one of the criticisms of Darwin's theory? (pp. 6-7, 19, 21) - -- Provide examples where change has been very gradual and another example where change has been rapid. (pp. 7-9) - -- Is natural selection likely if there are no significant changes in the species' surroundings? Explain your answer. (pp. 7, 25) - -- Why do predators play an important role in natural selection? (p. 9) - -- What is a reflex? Describe reflexes that exist in the amoeba. Describe the rooting reflex in babies. Describe the salivary reflex. Provide examples where reflexes may not be useful. (pp. 11-13) - -- What term is now used for what was once called instinctive behaviour? (p. 13) - -- Describe the following ways of measuring learning: reduction in errors, changes in topography, changes in intensity, changes in speed, changes in latency, and changes in rate or frequency. Provide original examples of each. (pp. 37-41) - -- What is fluency? Provide an original example. (p. 41) - -- What are the problems with using case studies as a source of evidence? What advantages do case studies have over anecdotal evidence? (pp. 42-43) - --Comment: One problem with psychology textbook criticisms of anecdotal evidence is that they portray those using anecdotal evidence as foolish, assuming that better evidence is available. They fail, however, to acknowledge that there are no sources of pristine scientific data available for making many day-to-day decisions. For example, selecting a marriage partner is undoubtedly a significant decision, but it isn't feasible or practical to do experimental research on prospective partners to select the most suitable one. The issues surrounding the use of anecdotal evidence in day- to-day life have not been properly understood within psychology. What are the advantages and disadvantages of descriptive studies? (p. 44) - -- Define independent and dependent variables. Provide original examples of each. (pp. 44-45) - -- Describe a between-subjects experiment using an example. Why is it appropriate to use a random assignment in such experiments? (pp. 44-46) - -- What is a within-subject experimental design? Define a baseline period and an ABA reversal design. Provide an original example of a within-subject experimental design in the form of an ABA reversal design. (pp. 46-48) - -- Compare and contrast within subjects and between-subjects experimental designs. (p. 48) - -- What is the chief limitation of experimental research? Define laboratory and field experiments and compare and contrast them. How does the use of field experiments help to overcome the main limitation of experimental research? (pp. 48-49) - -- Identify and explain the three major reasons for using animals in research on learning. (pp. 49-50) - -- What is the most common objection to using animals in research on learning? Are there valid grounds for this objection? Explain. Identify two additional objections to using animals in research and the counter-arguments to these objections. (pp. 50-52) - -- Discuss the guidelines set out by the American Psychological Association for research on animals. (p. 52) - -- What is the major criticism regarding the use of computer simulations to replace animals in research? (p. 52) - -- Describe Pavlov's early life, career path, and other factors that led him to study the digestive processes and the salivary reflex in the dog. When did Pavlov become interested in psychic reflexes? (pp. 57-60) - -- What were the psychic secretions that became a focus of Pavlov's work? Why did Pavlov shift the focus of his work from digestive processes to psychic secretions? (p. 59) - -- Describe Pavlov's work with dogs that illustrates Pavlovian conditioning. Define unconditional reflexes, conditional reflexes, unconditional stimulus, unconditional response, conditional stimulus, and conditional response. What terms are used in place of these? (pp. 60-62) - -- Comment: In describing Pavlovian conditioning, it is customary to also speak of another type of stimulus, a neutral stimulus. Chance de-emphasizes the neutral stimulus in his treatment of the topic. (He does mention it on page 61 but does not include it in his diagrams of classical conditioning and does not include it as a critical term.) The neutral stimulus is simply a way of describing the conditional stimulus before it is able to elicit the conditional response. For example, the author describes the use of a hand clap as a conditional stimulus (p. 61). We would refer to the hand clap as a neutral stimulus before it could elicit the conditional response, salivation. In this unit's conceptual exercise, you will be asked to identify the neutral stimulus in examples of Pavlovian conditioning. For our purposes, we will consider a stimulus to be neutral if it does not elicit a particular conditioned or unconditioned response. For example, a bright light does not elicit eye blinks, so it is a neutral stimulus with respect to the eye-blink response. However, bright light does elicit pupil contraction, so bright light would be an unconditioned stimulus (not a neutral stimulus) for the pupil-contraction response. Describe Wallace and Rosen's demonstration (2000) that rats show a strong response to an odorous chemical derived from fox feces. How does this assist in survival? (pp. 60-61) - -- Is the presentation of the two stimuli (i.e., the neutral stimulus and the unconditional stimulus) independent of the behaviour of the animal? Explain. Provide an original example illustrating that an organism whose behaviour is subject to Pavlovian conditioning is more likely to survive than an organism whose behaviour is not subject to such conditioning. (p. 63) - -- Define higher-order Pavlovian conditioning. Describe Frolov's demonstration of higher-order conditioning. Why does higher-order conditioning increase the importance of Pavlovian conditioning? (pp. 63-64) Describe Graham and Desjardins' (1980) study in which the experimenters used Pavlovian conditioning to influence the mating behaviour of male rats. (pp. 63-64) - --Comment: Chance uses higher-order conditioning to refer to the use of a previously established conditional stimulus to function as an unconditional stimulus in Pavlovian conditioning. In this unit's conceptual exercise, we refer to one form of higher- order conditioning as second-order conditioning. In second-order conditioning, the CS (CS-0) predicts another previously established CS (CS-1). The CS-1 obtained its ability to elicit a CR because it was paired with a US for a UR. What is a compound stimulus? Describe the experiment that one of Pavlov's assistants conducted with a compound stimulus on a dog, including the results of the experiment. (p. 72) - -- Define overshadowing. What features of a stimulus (when presented as part of a compound stimulus) are responsible for overshadowing? (p. 72) - -- How does prior experience with a CS influence the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning? What is latent inhibition? (p. 74) - -- Define blocking. Compare and contrast blocking and overshadowing. (pp. 74-75) - -- Describe how blocking might work for us and against us. (p. 75) - --Comment: As we have emphasized, the basic procedure for establishing a neutral stimulus as a CS is to present that stimulus and quickly follow it with an unconditional stimulus (US). Overshadowing and blocking employ the basic Pavlovian conditioning procedure, but fail to establish the neutral stimulus as a CS. In overshadowing, two neutral stimuli are presented simultaneously and are followed by the US. If one of these stimuli comes to function as a CS and the other stimulus doesn't, we would say that the first stimulus overshadowed the second. In blocking, a CS is initially established in the standard fashion (by pairing it with a US). Then, in subsequent trials, this CS is simultaneously presented with a neutral stimulus, and both stimuli are then followed by the US. If the neutral stimulus fails to come to function as a CS, we say that the previously established CS blocked the neutral stimulus from becoming a CS. In both overshadowing and blocking, the failure of the neutral stimulus to become a CS often occurs because the organism is attending to the other stimulus, perhaps because the other stimulus is more prominent or salient. Overshadowing and blocking probably occur to a significant degree in everyday life (though they have only been studied in laboratory settings). For example, suppose your cafeteria lunch is served on a tray. The sight of food has probably been established as a CS for salivation because it has regularly preceded food in your mouth (an US for salivation). Every day, the sight of both the food and the tray precede food in your mouth, a pairing arrangement that might establish the sight of both (either) food and the tray as conditional stimuli for salivation. However, seeing the tray alone may never act as a CS for salivation, because it is blocked by the pre-existing CS (sight of the food). C What is sensory preconditioning? (p. 75) - -- Describe the relationship between the number of pairings of the CS and US on Pavlovian conditioning. Is the relationship linear? Explain. What are the implications of this for survival of a species? (pp. 75-76) - -- What is the relationship between length of the intertrial interval and the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning? (p. 76) - -- How do age, temperament, and stress affect Pavlovian conditioning? (p. 77) - -- Define a Pavlovian conditioning extinction procedure. Under what conditions do we say that a CS-CR relationship has been extinguished? (p. 78) - --Comment: One form of therapy based on Pavlovian extinction is called flooding. In flooding, the CS for fear is presented in intensive maximal form. For example, to treat fear of snakes using flooding (also called implosive therapy), a therapist might ask a client to imagine being in a cave, surrounded by hundreds of snakes. This method teaches the fearful individual that imagining (and eventually, actual exposure to) the feared stimulus need not produce an unpleasant US. As you can imagine, flooding therapy elicits a lot of fear all at once, so fearful people are not generally eager to try it. In this unit's conceptual exercise, you will be asked to identify examples of flooding. How does Pavlovian extinction differ from forgetting? Be able to distinguish between examples of forgetting and Pavlovian extinction. (pp. 78-79) - -- Describe spontaneous recovery. What strategy may eliminate spontaneous recovery? (p. 80) - -- Does extinction completely reverse the effects of Pavlovian conditioning? Why or why not? (p. 80) - -- Describe some of the variables that impact the extinction of conditioning. (p. 80) - -- Describe Pavlov's stimulus substitution theory. What problems exist with this theory? (pp. 81- 82) - -- Discuss Zener's (1937) finding that there are often qualitative differences between conditioned and unconditioned responses. (p. 84) - -- Describe the preparatory response theory. Provide an example that illustrates its usefulness. (pp. 84-86) - -- Describe compensatory response theory. What prediction does this make regarding the conditional stimuli involved in the development of tolerance to drugs? Explain this relationship using Lightfoot's (1980) study of beer drinking and Siegel's (1984) anecdotal evidence of sudden death following drug abuse. (p. 85) - -- Describe the evidence related to Pavlovian conditioning and awareness. (pp. 86-87) - -- Describe the Rescorla-Wagner model. How does this account for the familiar decelerating learning curve? (pp. 87-88) - -- In simple terms, how does the Rescorla-Wagner model account for blocking? What can the model not account for? (pp. 89-90) - -- response of vomiting. Administering the drug prior to viewing the films served to pair an unconditioned stimulus (the drug) with a neutral stimulus (the violence). This pairing, in turn, served to establish violence as a conditioned stimulus that came to elicit nausea. Thus, when the young man was finished with the treatment, he would become ill any time he saw violence in progress. This reaction prevented him from engaging in violence himself. The use of aversion therapy in this film was unethical and should not be considered an example of what behaviour modifiers or behaviour therapists do. In particular, a behaviour therapist would not wish to establish all instances of violence as a conditioned stimulus for nausea, because this generalization would prevent self-defence or even running away from a violent situation. Further, this film uses no procedures to encourage alternatives to violent behaviour. Despite its limitations, the film is interesting because it suggests ways in which our society might be tempted to employ behaviour modification in a world of increasing violent crime. Behaviour principles could be used for such a purpose. We should be grappling with the questions of whether or not they should be used this way, and why or why not. Clinically, such strategies have largely diminished in importance over the last thirty years as conc Describe Garcia's (1955) taste aversion study with rats. In what two ways did Garcia's study differ from standard demonstrations of Pavlovian conditioning? (pp. 108-109) - -- Discuss the practical uses of taste aversion conditioning. Review the work of Pfister et al. (2002). (pp. 110-111) - -- Explain how advertising uses Pavlovian conditioning methods. Describe Gorn's (1982) study of the effects of musical advertising stimuli on product choice. Identify the US, the UR, the CS, and the CR in this study. (pp. 111-113) - --Comment: The material in this section steadily underscores the importance of pairings of stimuli on such things as emotional behaviour and choice. Many people consider themselves logical, critical thinkers, not influenced by advertising or other influences that arbitrarily couple neutral stimuli (e.g., products) with pleasant stimuli (e.g., music and attractive photos that function as conditional stimuli for pleasant emotional responses). However, as the data in this chapter indicate, the stimulus pairings characteristic of Pavlovian conditioning profoundly impact our choices. It would be desirable for researchers to explore means of inoculating people, especially children, against the irrational influences of Pavlovian conditioning in advertising and induce people to think logically, basing their choices on rational deliberation. Pavlovian conditioning may be able to accomplish even this. Imagine, for example, a television ad in which the main character engages in logical thinking followed immediately by pleasant music and attractive people celebrating. Would such conditioning get people to think more logically? It is also important to consider the overall influence of conditioning—either Pavlovian or Operant Conditioning (see next unit)—on the development of behaviour therapy. The following article, which is available through the Athabasca University Library, provides some critical insights. Describe the method and results of Stuart's study of toothpaste advertising. Identify the US, the UR, the CS, and the CR in this study. (pp. 113-114) - -- Can conditioning change people's preferences when they are already strongly attached to a product? Discuss with reference to Gibson's (2008) studies. (pp. 114-115) - -- Why might blocking and overshadowing phenomena be counterproductive in advertising? (p. 115) - -- Describe the experiments of Siegel et al. (1982, 2005) that demonstrate the role of conditioning in drug tolerance. (p. 116) - -- How are drug cravings/withdrawal accounted for in terms of conditioning? Describe with reference to the work of MacRae and Siegel (1997). How can relapse be explained? (pp. 117- 118) - -- Describe how weakening the influence of conditional stimuli via extinction can facilitate the treatment of drug addiction. (pp. 118-119) - -- Describe how conditioning can be used in the diagnosis of various disorders. (p. 120) - -- What is a conditioned allergic reaction? Provide an example of such a reaction in which you identify the US, the UR, the CS, and the CR. (p. 121) - -- Describe Bovbjerg et al.'s (1990) study that examined changes in the functioning of the immune system associated with conditional stimuli in the hospital environment. (p. 122) - -- How might it be possible to boost immune system function through Pavlovian conditioning procedures? (p. 122) - -- Describe Thorndike's puzzle box apparatus and his use of it to study the behaviour of cats (and other animals). Why did he study animal behaviour? What were his findings? What conclusions did he draw from those findings? (pp. 127-130) - -- Define Thorndike's law of effect. What did Thorndike speculate about reinforcement's neural effect? What is this view called? (p. 130) - -- Describe how the capacity to benefit from the consequences of one's own actions contributes to survival. Illustrate by referring to Metzgar's (1967) experiment. (p. 131) - -- Describe the essential components of a Skinner box. How did the Skinner box get its name? (p. 132) - -- What is operant learning or operant conditioning? What other name refers to operant conditioning? (pp. 131-133) - -- Describe the concept of contiguity in reinforcement. How and why does it influence reinforcement? (pp. 144-146) - --Comment: The author often discusses contiguity in terms of delay of reinforcement. The general principle of contiguity is that immediate reinforcement is more effective than delayed reinforcement. How do the following conditions affect the effectiveness of a reinforcer? (a) size of the reinforcer, (b) task characteristics, (c) competing contingencies (pp. 146-149) - -- What is meant by motivating operations? Describe the two types and identify examples of each. (pp. 148-149). - -- Describe the work of Olds et al. (1954) and Talwar et al. (2002) on the electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB). What are the reward centres of the brain? (pp. 150-151) - -- Describe the role of dopamine in reinforcement. How does the research of Hollerman et al. (1998) seem to support the Rescorla-Wagner model (see Unit 2)? (pp. 151-153) - -- Describe Thorndike's work in which he tried to separate the effects of reinforcement from those of practice. (pp. 153-154) - -- Describe Hull's drive-reduction theory. (pp. 154-155) - --Comment: A basic problem with Hull's drive-reduction theory is the notion of a drive. A drive is a conceptual entity that seems to explain behaviour as drive reduction, but does it really explain anything? When we say, for example, that eating reduces a food drive, or that social reinforcement reduces a social drive, we are really saying that food and social reinforcement act as reinforcers, making the concept of a drive an unnecessary explanatory variable. Throughout history, empty explanatory concepts, like drives, have plagued psychology. They seem to provide causes of behaviour, but, upon closer examination, explain nothing. Describe Premack's relative value theory. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach? (pp. 155-157) - -- "How could something that didn't happen be a reinforcer?" Explain this statement on the basis of Sidman's (1989) comments. (p. 159) - -- Describe the two-process theory of avoidance and the evidence for and against this theory. What is a Sidman avoidance procedure? (pp. 159-163) - -- Describe the one-process theory of avoidance and the evidence that supports this approach. (p. 163) - -- What is shaping? Provide and recognize original examples of shaping. (pp. 168-172) - -- What five factors are responsible for the effective use of shaping? (pp. 172-173) - -- Explain how adults often unwittingly shape undesirable behaviour in children. (pp. 171-172) - -- What is a behaviour chain? Provide and recognize original examples of behaviour chains. (p. 173) - -- What is a chaining procedure? What is the first step? (pp. 173-174) - -- Name two types of chaining procedures. Be able to provide and recognize original examples of forward and backward chaining. What reinforces each link of a behaviour chain? (pp. 174- 176) - -- Define a problem using behavioural terms. Under what conditions do people say that a problem has been solved by insight? (p. 176) - -- Describe Kohler's (1927/1973) studies of problem solving. What did Peckstein and Brown (1939) find when they performed experiments similar to those of Kohler? What do these results indicate about problem solving? (pp. 176-179) - -- How did Epstein and his colleagues study problem solving in pigeons? What do these data indicate about problem solving and about insight as an explanation of problem solving? (pp. 179-180) - -- In behavioural terms, what is creativity? What is the traditional explanation of creativity? What is an operant explanation of creativity? (pp. 180-181) - -- Describe Pryor's (1991) work in training animals to respond creatively. Describe Glover and Gary's (1976) study in encouraging student creativity. (pp. 181-182) - -- What criticism is sometimes made of using reinforcement regarding creativity? Cite the evidence that supports and refutes this criticism. Why do some studies show that reinforcement produces creativity, whereas other studies show that it discourages creativity? (pp. 182-183) - -- Describe Skinner's superstition experiment. Describe Wagner and Morris' (1987) study of superstition in children as well as Ono's study of college students. According to these studies (and others), what is the basic formula for producing superstitious behaviour? (p. 185) - -- Describe the criticisms of the reinforcement explanation of superstitions. Can superstitions be harmful? (p. 186) - --