Chapter 3

Question 0

What is Instrumental conditioning

Answer 0

A form of conditioning where the outcome depends on the animal’s behaviour.

Question 1

What is an operant

Answer 1

Behaviour that is freely emitted by an animal that can be reinforced through conditioning.

Question 2

What is positive Reinforcement

Answer 2

Something that follows a behaviour that is likely to increase the probability that it will occur again.

Question 3

what is shaping?

Answer 3

Reinforcement of successive approximations to a desired behaviour.

Question 4

What is the Law of effect?

Answer 4

States that responses (behaviour) having favourable consequences will be learned.

Question 5

What is discrimination

Answer 5

The ability to discriminate between conditions (stimuli) so that a response will be made in the presence of one stimulus but not in the other - Pigeons learnt to discriminate between red and green lights.

Question 6

Can humans learn in a context dependent manner

Answer 6

Yes - this is related to discrimination and the ability to learn when and how the right response is required.

Question 7

What is Negative Reinforcement

Answer 7

The conditioning of behaviour by terminating something so that the frequency of behaviour increases (i.e. reducing a soundetc)

Question 8

What is punishment?

Answer 8

Something which results in lowering the probability that the behaviour will occur again.

Question 9

What applications did Skinner provide

Answer 9

Behaviour Modification.
Skinner adovocated that +ve reinforcement be used to change behaviour, such that if a child is misbehaving in class they should be rewarded for good behaviour but bad should be ignored.

Question 10

What were Skinner’s views of punishment

Answer 10

Against as being both unethical and also relatively ineffectual.
Felt that punishment could and often does result in unexpected behaviours. A good example might be punishment in school which rather than getting the child to conform could lead to a general fear of teachers and truancy.

punishment is too grad scale whereas positive can be more finely tuned.

Question 11

In learning what is the difference between ‘What’ and ‘How’

Answer 11

How is how to do something
What is a higher principle and indicates a greater level of learning. Thus with Tolmans’ rats they didn’t just learn how i.e the skill necessary to go forward and find food they also learnt the what - the knowledge that the food was somewhere over to the right. Thus learning involves something that changes in the head as well as a change in behaviour.

Question 12

What is the model of expectancy?

Answer 12

Gained from Skinner’s use of boxes other psychologists have built the model of expectancy i.e. event 1 -> event 2 or behaviour -> outcome, whereby they are then able to infer what is happening within an animals head. Understanding of how Pigeons categorize their worlds has been done through the use of this model.

Question 13

What is an hypothesis?

Answer 13

It is a proposed explanation for a set of observations that may or may not prove to be supported.

Question 14

What is Successive Scanning

Answer 14

BRUNNER Where participants focus on ruling out one hypothesis at a time. A new hypothesis is only tested when the old one has been ruled out.
Problem is that each choice carries relatively little information. A positive choice does not mean that the hypothesis is true and a negative does not tell you what is wrong.

Question 15

What is conservative focusing

Answer 15

One of Brunner’s techniques for category learning.
Conservative focusing is where the participant chooses to rule out whole classes of hypotheses. The participant would look for where instantsance differ from the first in only one way and can rule out whole classes of hypothesieses.

Question 16

Why do modern category learning researchers focus on prior knowledge when Brunner attempted to exclude this.

Answer 16

Brunner was concerned that prior knowledge would hide the basic functioning on category learning that he was trying to understand. Murphy and Medin however focused instead on natural categories and stated that they cohere - ie their attributes appear to belong together for certain reasons. They don’t believe that listing all the attributes of any one category would be pointleses. Rather understanding how the attributes cohere together is vital as it provides information on HOW the attributes are connected! Thus Brunner’s omission is actually key to category learning.

Question 17

What is disputational talk

Answer 17

Mercer described this as effectively unproductive talk. They are typically characterized as an initiation, followed by a challenge. Initiaions were typically either accepted without aiscussion or with only superficial amendments

Question 18

What is Cumulative talk

Answer 18

Talk that adds uncritically to the subject such that it is accumlation of ideas.

Question 19

What is exploratory talk

Answer 19

Active joint engagement of the children with one another’s ideas. The initiation of ideas can be challenged and counter challenged but with appropriate justification for the challenge being articulated and alternatives being offered. Progress is therefore jointly mediated.

Question 20

Which of Mercer’s types of talks does he feel is best for learning?

Answer 20

Explorartory

Question 21

What is enculturation.

Answer 21

A process through which people adopt specific cultural practices and act in accordance with cultural norms.

Question 22

How is learning defined?

Answer 22

Learning is defined as a process of change. Learning is a change in response to an experience in the environment.
All instances of learning involve acquisition of new knowledge or skills.

Question 23

What is the comparative approach

Answer 23

Looking at, and comparing different species.

Question 24

What is behaviourism

Answer 24

Advocates that Psychology should be a science of behaviour without reference to mental states that cannot be observed.