Question 1

Which progression represents Bandura's four-step process in his social learning theory?

Accepted Answer

Bandura's four-step process in his social learning theory consists of attention (paying attention to the behavior), retention (remembering the behavior), reproduction (emulating the behavior), and motivation (having a reason to engage in the behavior). These four steps are represented in choice B.

Question 2

Your new roommate is an incredibly good cook. It becomes apparent, however, that your roommate particularly enjoys preparing fish. You eventually get used to the odor and barely notice it but, when you return home after a two-week vacation, you very much notice the odor again. This illustrates ____.

Accepted Answer

Dishabituation occurs when a stimulus that has become familiar after repeated exposure suddenly becomes noticeable again, often due to a break or change in the exposure pattern, as described in the scenario with the fish odor.

Question 3

Lloyd's roommate, Don, classically conditioned Lloyd to cringe whenever Don opened a squeaky drawer by pairing a squeak with a table tennis ball to Lloyd's head. Lloyd wants to return the favor, so when Don is out, Lloyd discreetly wires an electrode to the drawer handle so that Don will be shocked when he touches it. Lloyd is using ____.

Accepted Answer

Lloyd is using positive punishment, as he is adding a stimulus (the electric shock) to decrease the behavior of Don touching the drawer handle.

Question 4

Tina has a heavy class load and is spending a lot of time studying, to the dismay of her beloved dog, Bobo. When Bobo walks over and puts his chin on Tina's leg, she pets him and gives him a treat from the bag she keeps in her desk drawer. As a consequence, he continues walking over and putting his chin on Tina's leg. Tina has used ____.

Accepted Answer

Tina is using positive reinforcement by petting Bobo and giving him a treat for putting his chin on her leg, which increases the likelihood of him repeating the behavior in the future. Negative reinforcement would involve removing an unpleasant stimulus to increase a behavior, which is not present in this scenario. Positive punishment would involve adding an unpleasant stimulus to decrease a behavior, which is also not present. Negative punishment would involve removing a pleasant stimulus to decrease a behavior, which is also not present.

Question 5

According to the ____, behaviors that lead to positive consequences will be strengthened and behaviors that lead to negative consequences will be weakened.

Accepted Answer

The law of effect states that behaviors that are followed by positive consequences (reinforcements) are more likely to be repeated in the future, while behaviors followed by negative consequences (punishments) are less likely to be repeated. It was first described by psychologist Edward Thorndike in his research on animal learning in the early 1900s.

Question 6

Carolyn is training her new puppy Ollie using a method called clicker training. The first step is to click a clicker and give Ollie a treat. In this case, the originally neutral stimulus is ____.

Accepted Answer

In clicker training, the clicker is the neutral stimulus that is paired with a treat (a positive reinforcer) to reinforce a behavior. Therefore, the originally neutral stimulus is the clicker.

Question 7

Don is delighted when he successfully conditions his roommate, Lloyd, to cringe at the sound of the squeaky drawer by pairing the squeak with a table tennis ball to his roommate's head. He decides to continue his classical conditioning experiment and creates another squeaky noise by dragging his chair across the floor. At first, Lloyd cringes at the new squeak, illustrating ____.

Accepted Answer

Lloyd's cringing at the new squeaky noise from Don dragging his chair across the floor illustrates generalization, as he has generalized the response of cringing to the sound of any squeaky noise, not just the specific one associated with the table tennis ball.

Question 8

After becoming bored with classically conditioning his roommate, Lloyd, to cringe at the sound of a squeaky drawer, Don decides to give Lloyd a break and he repeatedly squeaks the drawer without hitting Lloyd with a table tennis ball. What outcome is Don seeking?

Accepted Answer

Don is seeking extinction, which occurs when a previously conditioned response decreases in frequency and eventually disappears when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus. In this case, the conditioned response of cringing at the sound of the squeaky drawer would be expected to eventually disappear if Don repeatedly squeaks the drawer without hitting Lloyd with a table tennis ball.

Question 9

What is a step in Bandura's theory of the process involved in social learning?

Accepted Answer

Bandura's theory of social learning involves four main steps: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Motivation refers to the drive or incentive to imitate the behavior that has been observed and retained. Reinforcement and punishment are also important factors in shaping behavior, but they do not directly correspond to one of the four steps in the social learning process. Validation is not a step in Bandura's theory.

Question 10

Don wants to classically condition his roommate, Lloyd, to cringe whenever Don opens the squeaky drawer on his desk. To do this, Don decides to wait until his Lloyd is studying. Don will open the drawer and then toss a table tennis ball toward his roommate's head. Don knows it is important to coordinate the squeaking from the drawer and tossing the ball so they are close together in time. Don is concerned about ____.

Accepted Answer

Don is concerned about contiguity, which refers to the close temporal pairing of the conditioned stimulus (opening the squeaky drawer) and the unconditioned stimulus (tossing the ball) in order to establish a strong conditioned response (Lloyd cringing whenever the drawer is opened).

Question 11

Shane's mother tells him that if he is not quiet when she is working, he will not be allowed to play computer games later in the evening. Shane's mother is using ____.

Accepted Answer

Shane's mother is using negative punishment by taking away Shane's access to playing computer games as a consequence of his behavior (not being quiet). Negative punishment involves removing a desirable stimulus as a consequence of behavior in order to decrease the likelihood of that behavior in the future.

Question 12

Felicia has learned that if she washes the dishes her roommate, Millie, will stop nagging her about them. Millie is using ____.

Accepted Answer

Millie is using negative reinforcement by removing the nagging when Felicia washes the dishes. Negative reinforcement involves removing an unpleasant or aversive stimulus to increase the likelihood of a desired behavior.

Question 13

Whenever you walk into your grandparent's house, you notice the wintergreen smell of the cream they rub into their knees to relieve the pain of arthritis. However, after you have been there for a while, you no longer notice it. This is because of ____.

Accepted Answer

This is an example of habituation, which is the decreasing responsiveness to a repeated stimulus over time. In this case, the wintergreen smell is a repeated stimulus that the person's brain eventually stops responding to, resulting in them no longer noticing it.

Question 14

Polly sees her mother baking cookies one day. Two weeks later at kindergarten, Polly and her friends are playing house and Polly begins to mimic the steps she saw her mother going through when making the cookies. Polly's play acting in kindergarten shows that social learning ____.

Accepted Answer

Polly's ability to mimic the steps of making cookies shows that she remembered what she saw her mother do, indicating that social learning involves the use of memory. Choice B is incorrect because social learning does not necessarily have a set speed and may vary depending on the individual and situation. Choice C is also incorrect because social learning can occur much faster than two weeks, depending on the complexity of the behavior being learned. Choice D is incorrect because Polly's play acting in kindergarten is an example of real-life learning.

Question 15

Don is delighted when he successfully conditions his roommate, Lloyd, to cringe at the sound of the squeaky drawer by pairing the squeak with a table tennis ball to his roommate's head. He decides to continue his experiment with classical conditioning and creates another squeaky noise by dragging his chair across the floor. At first Lloyd cringes at the new squeak, but with continued "trials" in which the drawer squeak is paired with a table tennis ball to the head but the chair squeak is not, Lloyd stops cringing to the chair squeak, illustrating ____.

Accepted Answer

Lloyd's ability to distinguish between the two different squeaky noises and respond differently to them shows discrimination, which is the ability to differentiate between two stimuli and respond differently to each one.

Question 16

A company that markets air fresheners has a series of commercials about being "nose-blind," that is, people getting used to odors such as those from pets or cooking pungent foods to the extent that they no longer notice them. "Nose-blindness" is actually ____.

Accepted Answer

"Nose-blindness" is a form of habituation, where the brain stops responding to a repeated stimulus (such as an odor) and no longer perceives it as noteworthy or novel.

Question 17

Carolyn is training her new puppy Ollie using a method called clicker training. The first step is to click a clicker and give Ollie a treat. In this case, the unconditioned stimulus is ____.

Accepted Answer

The unconditioned stimulus is the treat because it naturally (without prior training) elicits a response from Ollie, which is likely pleasure or satisfaction from eating. The clicker, on the other hand, is a neutral stimulus that becomes conditioned through association with the treat.

Question 18

Tina has inadvertently trained her dog Bobo to lay his chin on her leg when she is studying by giving him a treat when he does. Unfortunately, she has been so busy that she has run out of treats. Bobo not only continues to walk over and lay his chin on her leg, but he begins pawing at her leg and arm. Bobo is showing ____.

Accepted Answer

Bobo's behavior of pawing at Tina's leg and arm after not receiving the treat is an example of an extinction burst. This occurs when a behavior that has been previously reinforced suddenly stops receiving reinforcement, causing an increase in the behavior before it eventually decreases.

Question 19

Which term refers to the degree to which the NS/CS and US occur close together in time?

Accepted Answer

Contiguity refers to the degree to which the NS/CS and US occur close together in time. Consequence refers to the result of a particular behavior. Conflation refers to the merging of two or more ideas or concepts. Contingency refers to the relationship between a behavior and its consequences.

Question 20

Nash is fed up with hearing his friends brag about the tricks their dogs can do, so he decides to train Indigo, his hyacinth macaw, how to shoot a basketball, using a bird-size ball and hoop. He starts out by giving Indigo a treat for touching the ball with its beak. When Indigo reliably touches the ball, Nash begins reinforcing Indigo for picking the ball up in its beak, and, behavior by behavior, eventually trains Indigo to shoot hoops. Nash is using ____.

Accepted Answer

Nash is using shaping, a type of operant conditioning where a behavior is gradually shaped through reinforcement of successive approximations. He is reinforcing each step towards the final behavior of shooting a basketball hoop. He is not using reflex arcs, classical conditioning, or observational learning in this scenario.

Quiz 6: Learning