Learning And Ethology

Question 1

What unethical experiment did JohnWatson carry out?

Answer 1

Little Albert experiment - paired loud stimuli with a white rat.

Question 2

What became a recognized discipline after the work of Konrad Lorenz?

Answer 2

Ethology - study of animals in their natural environments.

Question 3

What is acquisition?

Answer 3

The period in which an organism is learning the association between stimuli.

Question 4

What is a spontaneous recovery?

Answer 4

After resting after extinction, the CS will elicit a faint reaction.

Question 5

Want is sensory preconditioning?

Answer 5

Pair two neutral stimuli, pair one neutral stimulus with UCS, present the opposite neutral stimulus = elicits response.

Question 6

What is Rescorla’s contingency explanation of classic conditioning?

Answer 6

CS is a learning signal for the UCS, produces additional information about it.

Question 7

What did blocking experiments do to enhance the contingency theory of classic conditioning.

Answer 7

Findings with rats not responding to lights but to hissing sounds before shocks demonstrates that CS must provide non redundant information about the UCS.

Question 8

Who is Edward Thorndike?

Answer 8

A functionalist/early behaviouralist who developed the law of effect : we do (and continue) what we are rewarded to do.

Question 9

Which four concepts did Skinner develop for operant conditioning?

Answer 9

Positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, extinction.

Question 10

Explain escape and avoidance.

Answer 10

Escape - behaviour removes something undesirable

Avoidance - behaviour stops behaviour from ever happening.

Question 11

Instead of classifying reinforcers and punishes as good and bad, how did Skinner classify them?

Answer 11

In accordance to whether or not the behaviour increased or decreased in likelihood.

Question 12

What is a discriminative stimulus?

Answer 12

Stimulus indicating that future behaviour will have a consequence (positive reinforcement is only given to pigeons if they press the lever when the light is on).

Question 13

What is the partial reinforcement effect?

Answer 13

Notion that extinction is harder if you’ve only been rewarded occasionally.

Question 14

What are the four schedules of reinforcement?

Answer 14

Fixed ratio, variable ratio (highest response rate, most resistant to extinction), fixed interval, variable interval.

Question 15

What is a continuous reinforcement schedule?

Answer 15

When an animal is rewarded for every response.

Question 16

What is shaping/differential reinforcement?

Answer 16

Rewarding approximations of the desired behaviour until desired behaviour is attained.

Question 17

What are behaviour therapies based on classic conditioning most used for?

Answer 17

Phobias and OCD.

Question 18

Name three methods of counter conditioning.

Answer 18

Flooding, implosion (imagining fearful situation), systematic desensitization (Wolpe).

Question 19

What are four therapies based on operant conditioning?

Answer 19

Behavioural contracts, time-out procedures (theory that behaviour is reinforced in environment behaviour is conducted in), token economies, Premack principle (more preferred activity can reinforce a less preferred activity).

Question 20

How did Kohler disagree with Thorndike?

Answer 20

He said that animals could learn via insight, when not forced to use trial and error. He demonstrated this with chimps trying to get to food.

Question 21

What did Edward Tolman propose?

Answer 21

Cognitive map with rats in mazes, when the normal route was blocked they automatically went to the next available route.

Question 22

What are biological constraints?

Answer 22

Different species’ different predispositions.

Question 23

What is the Garcia effect?

Answer 23

That preparedness can affect operant conditioning; rats tend to associate external cues with external behaviours (lights and shocks) and internal cues with internal behaviours (sweet water and drug).

Question 24

What is instinctual drift?

Answer 24

Tendency for animals to revert to their animal ways (Breland and Breland).

Question 25

Rather than learned behave, ethnologists are interested in ___________.

Answer 25

Instinctual behaviour.

Question 26

Who introduced experimental methods in the field of ethology?

Answer 26

Niko Tinbergen.

Question 27

What is the difference between sign stimuli and releasers? How do these relate to fixed-action patterns?

Answer 27

Sign stimuli features of a stimulus that brings about a fixed action pattern, releasers are environmental stimuli that function as signals from animal to animal. Fixed action patterns are stereotyped behaviour sequences.

Question 28

What is a supernormal stimulus?

Answer 28

Stimulus more effective at triggering FAP than actual stimulus found in nature.

Question 29

What is an innate releasing mechanism?

Answer 29

Mechanism that connects stimuli with the right responses.

Question 30

Where are reproductive isolating mechanisms found?

Answer 30

In locations where similar species share common environment.

Question 31

What did Karl Von Frisch (among others) find?

Answer 31

That honey bees do a dance to communicate the location of food.

Question 32

What is altruism and inclusive fitness?

Answer 32

Altruism is any behaviour that decreases an animals reproductive fitness (number of offspring living to reproduce). Inclusive fitness is number of offspring and other relatives who live to reproduce.

Question 33

Who is E. O. Wilson?

Answer 33

Sociobiologist believing in the interplay of genetics and environment.