Question 1

What is the law of effect?

Accepted Answer

Idea that responses that cause positive outcomes are repeated and responses that cause negative outcomes dwindle

(part of operant conditioning)

Question 2

What is the Skinner box?

Accepted Answer

An enclosed device that is used to study operant conditioning in animals

Question 3

What is an operant?

Accepted Answer

A behavior that has some effect on the environment

(part of operant conditioning)

Question 4

What is a reinforcer?

Accepted Answer

A stimulus that increases the likelihood of a behavior occurring

Question 5

What is positive reinforcement?

Accepted Answer

Adding a pleasant stimulus to make a behavior more likely

Question 6

What is negative reinforcement?

Accepted Answer

Removing a negative stimulus to make a behavior more likely

(annoying someone until they do something for you)

Question 7

What is positive punishment?

Accepted Answer

Adding a negative stimulus to make a behavior less likely

(spanking a child for throwing a tantrum)

Question 8

What is negative punishment?

Accepted Answer

Taking a positive stimulus away to make a behavior less likely

(taking away a child's phone for misbehaving)

Question 9

What are the drawbacks of punishment?

Accepted Answer

Behavior is likely to reappear after the punishment stops

(punishment causes temporary behavior change, while rewards cause more permanent change)

Question 10

What is aversive conditioning?

Accepted Answer

The use of punishment to stop an unwanted behavior

Question 11

What is escape conditioning?

Accepted Answer

Conditioning where an individual learns leave the situation to escape a stimulus

(a monkey learns to pull a lever to stop a loud noise)

Question 12

What is avoidance conditioning?

Accepted Answer

Conditioning where an individual learns to take an action to avoid an unpleasant stimulus

(a dog jumping when it hears a buzzer to avoid a shock)

Question 13

What is punishment?

Accepted Answer

Use of a negative stimulus to suppress a behavior

Question 14

What is an antecedent stimulus?

Accepted Answer

The stimulus that cues a behavior

Question 15

What is a discriminative stimulus?

Accepted Answer

A stimulus that signals whether a behavior or response will lead to reinforcement

(if a pigeon is rewarded whenever it pecks a green light, but not a red light, it will learn to peck only when the light is green)

Question 16

What is shaping?

Accepted Answer

Gradually molding behavior to get a final desired response

(done by reinforcing responses that are more and more similar to the desired response)

Question 17

What is a primary reinforcer?

Accepted Answer

A stimulus that is pleasant, often due to being a primitive need

(giving food to dogs)

Question 18

What is a secondary reinforcer?

Accepted Answer

A stimulus that individuals have been conditioned to desire, via a primary reinforcer

(a dog learning to associate a bell with getting food)

Question 19

What is a token economy?

Accepted Answer

A system where tokens are used to give rewards and punishments

(giving a child a star for answering the question correctly)

Question 20

What are schedules of reinforcement?

Accepted Answer

A plan for determining how often behaviors will be reinforced

Question 21

What is the most effective schedule of reinforcement?

Accepted Answer

Variable Ratio

Question 22

What is the partial reinforcement extinction effect?

Accepted Answer

Behaviors learned on a partial reinforcement schedule are harder to extinguish than behaviors learned on a continuous reinforcement schedule

(if you are rewarded every time, your behavior will extinguish faster than if you are only rewarded once and a while)

Question 23

What is behavior modification?

Accepted Answer

Therapy to remove an unwanted behavior

Question 24

Who was John Garcia?

Accepted Answer

Psychologist that discovered taste aversion

Question 25

Who was Robert Rescorla?

Accepted Answer

Psychologist that studied classical conditioning

(believed unconditioned stimuli are more effective if they surprise the learner)

Question 26

Who was Martin Seligman?

Accepted Answer

Psychologist that developed the concept of learned helplessness

Question 27

Who was Edward Thorndike?

Accepted Answer

Behaviorist known for the law of effect

(helped influence Skinner's operant conditioning)

Question 28

Who was Edward Tolman?

Accepted Answer

Behaviorist who developed the idea of latent learning

Question 29

What is learning in psychology?

Accepted Answer

A permanent change in behavior, based on an experience

Question 30

What is classical conditioning?

Accepted Answer

Learning through association

Pairing a neutral stimulus and a stimulus that causes a response, so that the neutral stimuli causes the same response

(If you ring a bell before feeding your dog, the dog will come to associate the bell with food, and may salivate only at the ring of the bell)

Question 31

How can classical conditioning apply to schools?

Accepted Answer

If a student associates school with negative experience, they will not want to come to school

Question 32

What is social/observational learning?

Accepted Answer

A form of learning that occurs by watching others

(if you watch someone slam the door when they are angry, you are more likely to repeat this behavior when you are angry)

Question 33

What is operant conditioning?

Accepted Answer

A method of learning that increases/decreases a behavior through rewards and punishment

(giving your dog a treat when it rolls over so that it is more likely to roll over)

Question 34

What is an unconditioned stimulus in classical conditioning?

Accepted Answer

Some stimulus that automatically triggers a response

(a dog salivating when it is near food)

Question 35

What is an unconditioned response in classical conditioning?

Accepted Answer

The automatic response to some stimulus

(smell of food=unconditioned stimulus; hunger=unconditioned response)

Question 36

What is a neutral stimulus in classical conditioning?

Accepted Answer

A stimulus that does not produce a response

(an untrained dog doesn't care if you ring a bell)

Question 37

What is a conditioned stimulus in classical conditioning?

Accepted Answer

A formerly neutral stimulus that now produces a response

(if a dog learns to associate a bell with getting food and the bell now causes the dog to salivate)

Question 38

What is a conditioned response in classical conditioning?

Accepted Answer

A learned response produced by a conditioned stimulus

(a dog salivating when it hears a bell: salivating=conditioned response; bell=conditioned stimulus)

Question 39

What is acquisition?

Accepted Answer

When a behavior has been learned through classical conditioning

(in Pavlov's dog experiment, the period of time when the dogs salivated at the ring of a bell is acquisition)

Question 40

What is higher-order conditioning?

Accepted Answer

A form of classical conditioning where a previously conditioned stimulus is used to further learning

(if a bell causes a dog to salivate, you can then pair the bell with a light, so the light will cause the dog to salivate)

Question 41

What is expectancy?

Accepted Answer

Anticipating future events based on past experience

Question 42

What is stimulus generalization?

Accepted Answer

The tendency to respond to a similar stimulus

(if flashing a green light causes a dog to salivate, it may have a similar response to a blue light)

Question 43

What is extinction in classical conditioning?

Accepted Answer

When a learned response to a stimulus ends

(usually caused by the conditioning process being stopped)

Question 44

What is spontaneous recovery in classical conditioning?

Accepted Answer

A learned response reappearing after seemingly going extinct

Question 45

What is cognitive learning?

Accepted Answer

High-level learning that involves thinking

(learning to solve new types of math problems)

Question 46

What is a cognitive map?

Accepted Answer

A mental representation of an environment

Question 47

What is latent learning?

Accepted Answer

Learning that occurs without reinforcement, and often goes undetected

Question 48

What is the Bobo doll experiment?

Accepted Answer

A study where children learned to be aggressive by watching others

(conducted by Albert Bandura)

Question 49

What is self-efficacy?

Accepted Answer

How much a person believes that they can do well

Question 50

What is insight learning?

Accepted Answer

A type of learning that occurs without trial and error

Question 51

What is the Little Albert Experiment?

Accepted Answer

An experiment where a young child learned to fear rats

(performed by John Watson)

Question 52

What is taste aversion?

Accepted Answer

An active dislike for a certain food, developed through conditioning

Question 53

What is learned helplessness?

Accepted Answer

Learned inability to overcome obstacles

Question 54

What is systematic desensitization?

Accepted Answer

A behavior modification that attempts to treat phobias

(repeatedly exposes the individual to the feared stimulus)

Question 55

What is aversion therapy?

Accepted Answer

Behavior modification that works attempts to remove an undesired behavior

Pairs that behavior with an unpleasant stimulus

Question 56

What is coping?

Accepted Answer

Behavioral and cognitive strategies to manage stress

Unit 4: Learning, AP Psychology Flashcards