Learning Flashcards

Question

What is Continuous Reinforcement in Operant Conditioning?

Answer 1

In this schedule, every correct response is met with some form of reinforcement. This type of reinforcement strategy facilitates the quickest learning but also the most fragile. As soon as the rewards stop, the animal stops performing.

Answer 2

In this schedule, not all correct responses are met with reinforcement. this strategy may require a longer learning time, but once learned, these behaviors are more resistant to extinction. There are 4 types: Fixed Ratio Schedule, Variable Ratio Schedule, Fixed Interval Schedule, Variable Interval Schedule.

Answer 3

In this schedule, a reinforcement is delivered after a consistent number of responses. If the ratio is 6:1, after every 6th correct response there is a reward. Because the ratio is fixed, the behavior is vulnerable to extinction when the rewards don't come as scheduled.

Answer 4

In this schedule, learning takes the most time to occur, but the learning is least likely to become extinguished. A variable ratio is different from a fixed ratio in that reinforcements are delivered after different numbers of correct responses. The ratio therefore cannot be predicted. Slot machines are the perfect example of variable ratio schedule!

Answer 5

With interval schedles, rewards come after the passage of a certain period of time rather than the number of behaviors. So, for example, if the fixed interval is 5mn, the rat will get the reward the first time it presses the lever after a five minute interval.Can be argued that this dose little to motivate an animal's behavior.

Answer 6

In this schedule, rewards are delivered after differing time periods. Variable interval schedule is the second most effective strategy in maintaining behavior. The length of time varies so no one knows when the reinforcement is right around the corner.

Answer 7

An artificial mini-economy is usually found in prisons, rehab centers, or mental hospitals. Individuals are motivated by secondary reinforces, tokens in this case. Desirable behaviors are reinforced with tokens, which can be cashed in for more primary reinforces, such as candy, books, privileges, or cigarettes.

Answer 8

-Exploratory drive: The motivation to simply try something new or explore their environmnet -Fritz Hiders balance theory, Charles Osgood and Percy Tannenbaum's Congruity Theory, and Leon Festinger's Cognitive dissonance theory all agree that what drives people is a desire to be balanced with respect to feelings, ideas, or behaviors.

Answer 9

Performance = Drive x Habit This means individuals are first motivated by drive, and then they act according to old successful habits.

Answer 10

Performance = Expectation x Value The idea here is that people are motivated by goals that they think they might actually be able to meet. Another factor is how important the goal is.

Answer 11

He applied this theory to individual behavior in large organizations. Individuals who are the lowest on the totem pole do not expect to receive company incentives, so these carrots do little to motivate them.

Answer 12

A need for Achievement (nAch). This maybe manifested through a need to pursue success or a need to avoid failure, but either way, the goal is to feel successful.

Answer 13

He suggested a theory of motivation in which people who set realistic goals with intermediate risk sets feel pride with accomplishment, and want to succeed more than they fear failure. But because success is so important, these people are unlikely to set unrealistic or risky goals or to persist when success is unlikely

Answer 14

Proposed by Neil Miller, this conflict refers to the the state one feels when a certain goal has both pros and cons. Typically, the further one is from the goal, the more one is focuses on the pros or the reasons to approach the goal. The closer one is to the goal, the more one focuses on the cons or the reasons to avoid the goal.

Answer 15

The theory that individuals are motivated solely by what brings the most pleasure and the lease pain

Answer 16

The idea that people are motivated to do what they do not want to do by rewarding themselves afterward with something they do like. ex: a child may be rewarded with desert only after he eats his spinach

Answer 17

He postulated that medium arousal is best for performance. Specifically, for simple tasks the optimal leval of arousal is toward the high end. For complex tasks, the optimal level of arousal is toward the ow end so that the individual is not too anxious to perform well (This is also called the Yerkes-Dodson effect)

Answer 18

For simple tasks the optimal level of arousal is toward the high end. For complex tasks, the optimal level of arousal is toward the ow end so that the individual is not too anxious to perform well. On a graph this looks like an inverted U-Curve , with the lowest performance at the extremes of arousal.

Answer 19

Any event that an organism reacts to. The stimulus is the first link in a stimulus-response chain.

Answer 20

The ability to discriminate between different but similar stimuli. ex: differentiating between a phone ringing and the doorbell ringing

Answer 21

The opposite of Stimulus Discrimination. To generalize is to make the same response to a group of similar stimuli ex: Not all fire alarms sound a like but we know that they all require the same response.

Answer 22

The failure to generalize a stimulous

Answer 23

The form of learning in which one links together chains of stimuli and response. One learns what to do in response to particular triggers. ex: Learning to leave a building in response to afire alarm.

Answer 24

Also known as conceptual learning. Refers to learning about something in general rather than learning-specific stimulus-response chains. An individual learns about something (ex: history) rather than any particular response.

Answer 25

Uses punishment to decrease the likelihood of a behavior.The most common example is the drug antabuse, which is used to treat alcoholism. When taken with alcohol it causes severe nausea and vomiting. Eventually the person associates these unpleasant side effects with alcohol and no longer wants to drink it

Answer 26

teaches an animal how to avoid something the animal does not want ex: Dog in shuttle box jump fence when they see a light that comes on before the shock that comes to avoid the coming shock.

Answer 27

teaches an animal to perform a desired behavior to get away from a negative stimulus ex: dog in shuttle box jumps fence to other side when feet are shocked on one side to escape the pain.

Answer 28

Promotes extinction of an undesirable behavior. After an unwanted behavior is preformed, the punishment is presented. This acts as a negative stimulus, which should decrease the the likelihood that the earlier behavior will be repeated. This method has mixed reviews, some animal experiments have shown that severe punishment effectively extinguishes undesirable behavior. However, many including Skinner himself argue that punishment is not effective in the long run.

Answer 29

Evoking responses o the autonomic nervous system through training. ex: Using yoga or breathing exercises to lower the heart rate.

Answer 30

The concept that what a person learns in one state is best recalled in that state. ex: If you learned something while drunk, you might be able to recall it better while drunk

Answer 31

The reversal of conditioning. The goal is to encourage an organism to stop doing a particular behavior. This is generally done by repeatedly withholding reinforcement for a behavior or by disassociating the behavior from a particular cue. ex: Parents can reduce temper tantrums in children by not giving into, or reinforcing, the child's behavior.

Answer 32

The reappearance of an extinguished response, even in the absence of further conditioning or training.

Answer 33

Learning that takes place even without reinforcement. ex: watching other people play chess many times, the fact that you are learning about chess from watching may not be evident but when you play later you may be surprised by what you know

Answer 34

Accidental Learning. Unrelated items are grouped together during incidental learning. ex: pets often learn to dislike cars because it means they are going to the vet. though it is actually the vet that the animal fears, pets associate cars with the pet experience.

Answer 35

Occurs when someone "learns" that a specific action cause an event when in reality the two actions are unrelated. ex: a football fan that always wears the same shirt when his favorite team plays its rival may do so because he noticed that every time he wore it his team won.

Answer 36

The act of linking together a series of behaviors that ultimately result in reinforcement. One behavior triggers the next and so on and so forth. ex: Learning the alphabet is a perfect example. 26 letters are required to complete the chain and each letter stimulates remembering the next

Answer 37

The decreasing responsiveness to stimulus as a result of increasing familiarity with the stimulus. ex: Not noticing the feeling of wearing a watch that you wear every day

Answer 38

Increased sensitivity to the environment following the presentation of a strong stimulus. ex: Noticing a speaker says "uh" every other word an then becoming more and more annoyed

Answer 39

A Classical Conditioning concept referring to an animal's inability to infer a relationship between a particular stimulus and response due to the presence of a more prominent stimulus. ex: trying to train a dog by saying "sit" while holding a treat over their head. The treat overshadows the "Sit" making it ineffectual.

Answer 40

Experiments in which an apparatus allows an animal to control its reinforcements through behaviors such as bar pressing or key pecking. The animal, in a sense, is shaping its own behavior

Answer 41

Individuals learn through their culture. People learn what are acceptable and unacceptable behaviors through interacting in society

Answer 42

The act of learning something by watching

Answer 43

A specific concept withing social learning that refers to learning and behaving by imitating others. A particularly famous study of modeling was done by Albert Bandura using the Bobo Doll.

Answer 44

In this study, children who watched adults physically abuse a blowup doll in a playroom proceeded to do the same during heir playtime with the bobo doll; children who did not witness the aggression did not behave in this way. Excellent example of Modeling

Answer 45

Discovered by John Garcia in his classical conditioning experiments. Also known as conditioned taste aversion. Aversion to a certain smell or taste that was associated with a negative reaction such as vomiting. Animals are programmed through evolution to make certain connections, nausea was invariably connected with food or drink. The concept that certain associations are more easily learned than others is called preparedness. These automatic connections need little conditioning. This is especially strong in Children.

Answer 46

Performed experiments in which electrical stimulation of pleasure centers in the brain were used as positive reinforcement. Animals would perform behaviors to recieve the stimulation. This was viewed as evidence against drive-reduction theory.

Answer 47

Continuous motor tasks are easier to learn. Tasks such as riding a bicycle is one continuous motion that once started continues naturally. A discrete task is one that is divided into different parts that don't facilitate recall of each other such as setting up a chess board.

Answer 48

Previous learning makes it easier to learn another task later

Answer 49

Previous learning that makes it more difficult to learn a new task

Answer 50

Humans are primed to learn between the ages of 3 and 20. From the age of 20-50 the ability to learn remains fairly constant. After the age of 50 the ability to learn drops.

Answer 51

Was first described by Hermann Ebbinghaus and refers to the fact that when learning something new, the rate of learning usually changes over time. ex: when learning a new language someone may quickly learn a bunch of vocab and basic sentence structure but as they try to learn more complex grammatical constructions the rate of learning decreases

Answer 52

This branch is concerned with how people learn in educational settings. Educational psychologists examine things like student and teacher attributes and instructional processes in the classroom.

Answer 53

Edward Thorndike in 1903. He developed various methods to assess students skills and teaching effectiveness

Answer 54

A set of characteristics that are indicative of a person's ability to learn

Answer 55

Involves students working on a project together in small groups

Answer 56

Occurs when a teacher encourages the student to learn independently and only provides assistance with topics or concepts that are beyond the students capabilities. As the student continues to learn the teacher aids with less to encourage the student's independence.