homework 2

Question 1

Which of the following is an example of positive punishment?

Answer 1

At daycare, when Tom steals the toy from a classmate, she bites him

Question 2

Which of the following findings provides evidence against the behaviorists’ theory that language, just like any other behavior, can be learned via classical conditioning:

Answer 2

Children don’t simply copy what they hear, but also make mistakes and create new expressions

Question 3

According to the lecture, what are common limitations to the studies investigating the bilingual advantage?

Answer 3

• Researchers who didn’t find a bilingual advantage often did not see their work published
• Many studies use a correlational design
• Many studies have small sample sizes

Question 4

What is true of the Nicaraguan Sign language study?

Answer 4

Children imposed structure on impoverished linguistic input

Question 5

In the Bruin et al. (2014) study, the authors found that _______ of studies supported a bilingual advantage while _____ of studies challenged it.

Answer 5

about 60%; about 35%

Question 6

According to lecture, which of the following reward schedules do casinos use to entice people to keep gambling at slot machines?

Answer 6

Variable ratio

Question 7

According to lecture, which of the following best predicts whether a child will learn a new language?

Answer 7

Whether the language is commonly used by the child’s peer group

Question 8

Which is a cause of the reproducibility crisis?

Answer 8

• Journals are more likely to publish positive, non-contradictory results
• Scientists are incentivized to running small studies or tweaking experiments on the fly
• Confirmation biases lead to reporting studies that worked as predicted

Question 9

What is a negative punishment?

Answer 9

Removing a reward to discourage the repetition of a behavior

Question 10

What approach was used in the Paap study (see press article) that showed evidence against the prevailing idea that bilingualism benefits executive functioning?

Answer 10

Attempted replication of classic experiments

Question 11

Classical conditioning reinforces __________ behaviors, while operant conditioning reinforces _______ behaviors.

Answer 11

Instinctual; voluntary

Question 12

Noam Chomsky championed which prominent theory about language learning?

Answer 12

Infants are born with a special learning mechanism that is devoted to specifically learning language

Question 13

Reducing a child’s whining by never responding to it is an example of:

Answer 13

Extinction

Question 14

Overall, parental report of children’s language abilities are:

Answer 14

Overestimate what their children really know

Question 15

Johnson and Newport found that adults who immigrated to a country after the age of 8-10 don’t learn the language of their new home as fully as those who arrived before age 7. This suggests that:

Answer 15

language learning has a biologically sensitive period