test 3 content

Question 1

punishment vs negative reinforcement

Answer 1

punishment decreases instances of a behavior either by adding something or taking something away whereas negative reinforcement increases a behavior by taking something (typically aversive) away

Question 2

influence of contingency on punishment

Answer 2

the punishment must depend on the behavior and the organism must understand this (ex: I am yelling at you because you stole my pencil)

Question 3

influence of intensity on punishment

Answer 3

effective punishment is strong, especially the initial punishment; no bitch ass shocks that aren’t that bad

Question 4

influence of delay on punishment

Answer 4

immediate punishment is more effective (probably because it helps to establish contingency) and if punishment is delayed, the effects will not last as long

Question 5

influence of schedules on punishment

Answer 5

continuous schedules of reinforcement are more effective; can’t punish every other and expect the behavior to go away

Question 6

influence of verbal explanation on punishment

Answer 6

punishment is more effective if you can explain to someone why they’re being punished

Question 7

influence of experience with behavior on punishment

Answer 7

punishment is less effective if they’ve gotten away with it in the past; will probably try again

Question 8

influence of alternative responses on punishment

Answer 8

punishment for bad behavior is more effective if there is another way for the subject to get to what he wants without engaging in the bad behavior

Question 9

influence of motivation on punishment

Answer 9

organisms that are highly motivated to carry out behavior will be harder to effectively punish (ex: hungry rats don’t care as much if they’re shocked when they try to eat)

Question 10

spanking

Answer 10

creates short term compliance to punish bad behavior but doesn’t promote good behavior, time outs have been shown to be equally as effective as spanking; not effective in the long term and can make children less compliant, more aggressive, and changes them to view situations as hostile when they are not

Question 11

learned helplessness

Answer 11

a sense of powerlessness developed from a persistent failure to succeed; Seligman studied with dogs in which they were shocked until they learned they could not escape and then wouldn’t try to escape once possiblilty of shock was removed

Question 12

alternatives to punishment

Answer 12

response prevention (create a situation in which the bad behavior can't occur in the first place)
extinction (if attention based, ignore behavior to extinguish it)
time out (a form of negative punishment in which you take person out of the situation that they're worked up about and don't pay attention)
differential reinforcement (reward responses that are mutually exclusive with bad behavior- reward kid for sitting instead of punishing for getting up)

Question 13

primary reinforcers

Answer 13

based on innate physical needs, rewards such as food/water/sex

Question 14

secondary reinforcers

Answer 14

learned through association with primary reinforcement (ex: token economy)

Question 15

Premack principle

Answer 15

responses capable of being reinforced must occur less often than the reinforcing activities; more probable behavior can be used to reinforce less probable behaviors (ex: finish vegetable [low prob] before you can eat dessert [high prob]

Question 16

generalization

Answer 16

tendency for learned behavior to spread to new situations

Question 17

discrimination

Answer 17

ability to distinguish between different situations; what you learn one place won’t always work for everyone else

Question 18

semantic generalization

Answer 18

generalization based on meaning, pairing farm-themed words with a shock meant that people would freak out over the word “tractor” even though it wasn’t in the original list

Question 19

discrimination training in classical conditioning

Answer 19

learn the association between bell and food, then have a learned lack of association between buzz and food(bell gets you food, buzz does not)

Question 20

discrimination training in operant conditioning

Answer 20

reward for one behavior but not another; ex: reward pigeon for pecking a green light but not the yellow

Question 21

errorless training procedure

Answer 21

it is necessary to combat frustration in learning so keep non-rewarded stimulus at a low perceptual level and progressively increase the level of intensity so the organism pretty much can’t pick the wrong choice

Question 22

peak shift phenomenon

Answer 22

following discrimination training, peak response to stimulus will shift slightly away from the original stimulus as predicted by the Hull-Spence theory of algebraic summation (discrimination will go even further in the direction of the training)