Basic terms & definitions Flashcards
What is a stimulus?
A stimulus is any event that can potentially influence behavior.
What is a response?
A response is a particular instance of a behavior.
What is an overt behavior?
An overt behavior is a behavior that has the potential for being directly observed by an individual other than the one performing the behavior.
What is a covert behavior?
A covert behavior is a behavior that can be perceived only by the person performing the behavior (internal events such as thoughts, feelings & sensory experiences).
What is an appetitive stimulus?
An appetitive stimulus is an event that an organism will seek out.
What is an aversive stimulus?
An aversive stimulus is an event that an organism will avoid.
What is an establishing operation?
A procedure that affects the appetitiveness or aversiveness of a stimulus.
What is deprivation?
Deprivation is the prolonged absence of an event, which often increases the appetitiveness of that event.
What is satiation?
Satiation refers to the prolonged exposure to an event, which often decreases the appetitiveness of that event.
What does contiguity means?
Closeness, nearness.
What is temporal contiguity?
Temporal contiguity is the extent to which events occur close together in time (ex: thunder & lightning).
What is spatial contiguity?
Spatial contiguity is the extent to which events are situated close to each other in space.
What is contingency?
Contingency is a predictive (or functional) relationship between two events, such as that the occurence of one event predicts the probable occurence of another.
