Chapter 3

Question 1

Habituation is

Answer 1

Habituation refers to the decreasing strength of a reflex response after repeated presentations of the stimulus.

Question 2

Learning is defined as:

Answer 2

Learning refers to any enduring change in the way an organism responds based on its experience.

Question 3

In classical conditioning, unconditioned refers to _____ while conditioned refers to _____.

Answer 3

An unconditioned stimulus or response is something that occurs naturally, without any prior learning, whereas a conditioned stimulus or response is something that has been learned.

Question 4

Conditioned taste aversions are:

Answer 4

From an evolutionary perspective, connecting tastes with nausea or other unpleasant visceral (“gut”) experiences is crucial to survival for an animal that forages for its meals.

Question 5

One of the factors crucial to conditioning is:

Answer 5

Maximal conditioning occurs when the CS precedes the UCS. This also makes evolutionary sense: a CS that consistently occurs after a UCS offers little additional information, whereas a CS that precedes a UCS allows the organism to ‘predict’ and hence to prepare.

Question 6

In conditioning, latent inhibition refers to the fact that:

Answer 6

In latent inhibition, the initial exposure to a neutral stimulus without a UCS, slows the process of later learning the CS-UCS association and developing a CR

Question 7

Rescorla and Wagner’s law of prediction suggests that classical conditioning involves:

Answer 7

This law moved the field substantially in a cognitive direction, suggesting that animals are not blindly making connections between any two stimuli that come along. Rather rats, humans and other animals are making connections between stimuli in ways that are likely to guide adaptive responding.

Question 8

Long-term potentiation (LTP) refers to the tendency of a group of neurons to:

Answer 8

Long-term potentiation refers to the tendency of a group of neurons to fire more readily after consistent stimulation from other neurons, as presumably occurs in classical conditioning.

Question 9

Extinction in classical conditioning:

Answer 9

For example, if a dog has come to associate the sounding of a bell with food, it will eventually stop salivating at the bell tone if the bell rings enough times without the presentation of food.

Question 10

Which of the following most accurately summarises the three main assumptions shared by most theories of learning?

Answer 10

Theories of learning generally share three assumptions: 1) Experience shapes behaviour. 2) Learning is adaptive. 3) Careful experimentation can uncover laws of learning.

Question 11

Which of the following descriptions best describes classical conditioning?

Answer 11

Classical conditioning occurs when we learn to identify a relationship between two different stimuli. For example, if you are involved in a serious car accident, you would probably feel very tense the next time you get behind the wheel, especially if the car in front of you brakes suddenly.

Question 12

.When a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy shows signs of nausea at the sight of the clinic or the sound of a nurse’s voice, s/he may resist continuing therapy. You could prevent the development of these kinds of aversion by:

Answer 12

This would help break the aversion cycle that developed because chemotherapy is a UCS that leads to nausea, a UCR; the result is an inadvertent association of the clinic and the nurse’s voice (CS) with nausea (the CR).

Question 13

Regarding conditioning, prepared learning refers to:

Answer 13

Prepared learning refers to the biologically wired readiness to learn some associations more easily than others. From an evolutionary perspective, natural selection has favoured organisms that more readily associate stimuli that tend to be associated in nature, and whose association is related to survival or reproduction.

Question 14

Something more than simple contiguity must account for the occurrence of the associations learned in classical conditioning, because the:

Answer 14

If contiguity were the whole story, order of presentation of the UCS and CS would not matter, but as described in the text, a CS that precedes a UCS produces more potent learning than a CS that follows or occurs simultaneously with the UCS.

Question 15

Paradoxical conditioning occurs when:

Answer 15

Paradoxical conditioning is when the CR is actually the body’s attempt to counteract the effects of a stimulus that is about to occur. For example, the sight of drug paraphernalia in heroin addicts can activate physiological reactions that reduce the effect of the heroin they about to inject. This produces conditioned tolerance, or decreased sensitivity to the drug with repeated use, as the body counteracts dosages that were previously effective.

Question 16

What kind of learning can be achieved through classical conditioning?

Answer 16

Classical conditioning occurs when we learn to identify a relationship between two different stimuli.

Question 17

Conditioned taste aversions generally result from __________ and are considered
__________ from an evolutionary perspective

Answer 17

Conditioned taste aversions are a learned avoidance of a taste that has been associated with an unpleasant feeling, usually nausea. These have an important survival advantage especially for an animal that forages for its meals.

Question 18

The purpose of Watson’s experiment involving little Albert was to determine if:

Answer 18

One of the most famous cases of classical conditioning was the case of Little Albert who showed that emotional responses can be learned just like any other behaviour

Question 19

In a well-known example of classical conditioning, researchers taught a baby named Little Albert to fear a furry white rat by frightening him with a loud noise each time he reached out to touch the rat. After this experience, Little Albert became afraid of white sheep and other white furry objects. Little Albert’s fear of furry sheep is an example of:

Answer 19

Stimulus generalisation occurs when an animal shows the same CR to stimuli that resemble a CS. In this example, Little Albert developed a fear (CR) of rats (CS) which was then generalised to other objects that appeared similar to the rat.

Question 20

The loud noise of the washing machine may initially be very noticeable but becomes barely obvious after a short time. This is an example of:

Answer 20

Habituation refers to the decreasing strength of a reflex response after repeated presentations of the stimulus.

Question 21

You are sitting in a room that has a loud ticking clock. At first, you are annoyed by the constant ticking noise. However, after a period of time, you no longer hear the noise. You have undergone:

Answer 21

Habituation refers to the decreasing strength of a reflex response after repeated presentations of a stimulus. A stimulus, such as the ticking clock, initially gets your attention, but the more the stimulus is presented, the weaker your response becomes.

Question 22

The sound of a bell predicts a puff of air, which elicits an eye blink. What is the puff of air?

Answer 22

An unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is a stimulus that elicits/stimulates a biological response. The puff of air is a stimulus, not a response. It automatically elicits a blink, indicating that it is an UCS.

Question 23

You are house-sitting for a friend who has a large grandfather clock that chimes every 15 minutes. At first, you startle each time you hear it. However, after a short period of time, you don’t even hear it anymore. You have undergone:

Answer 23

Habituation refers to the decreasing strength of a reflex response after repeated presentations of the stimulus.

Question 24

The migrating of salmon to their ancestral breeding grounds is __________; the traveling that university students do during mid-semester break is __________

Answer 24

Learning refers an enduring change in behaviour based on experience (learning that holidays are fun) whereas a reflex is a behaviour that is automatically elicited by environmental stimuli (such as migration).

Question 25

A victim of sexual harassment at work is highly uncomfortable when male co-workers tell ‘dirty jokes’, yet laughs at a dirty joke told by her husband. Her different responses to seemingly similar situations are an example of:

Answer 25

Stimulus discrimination is the learned tendency to respond to a restricted range of stimuli or only to the stimulus used during training - this makes it almost the opposite of generalisation, which involves response to any sound.

Question 26

A young child is bitten by a dog and then is afraid of all small animals. This is an example of:

Answer 26

Stimulus generalisation is the process by which an organism comes to respond to a stimulus that is similar to the original conditioned stimulus, but not exactly the same as it.

Question 27

If your dog was classically conditioned to wag his tail when you pick up a leash to go for a walk, what would extinguish this behaviour?

Answer 27

In classical conditioning, extinction refers to the process by which a CR is weakened by presentation of the CS without the UCS.

Question 28

Ava extinguished her fear of spiders several months ago, but then she suddenly felt her heart pounding when she saw a small spider on her desk. This is an example of:

Answer 28

Spontaneous recovery refers to the short-lived re-emergence of a previously extinguished conditioned response.