Learning -
Psychology 53.1
Dr. Delamater
Study Questions - Exam #1
Historical issues
1. What are the 3 basic questions important for the study of
associative
learning?
2. What are 3 good reasons for non-human animals to study
learning
processes?
3. Discuss some of the important features of Descartes philosophy
which
have had impact on contemporary thinking about learning.
4. What are the three basic tenets of British Empiricism?
State
them and describe them.
5. Discuss Sechonov's approach to spontaneous and voluntary
behavior.
5. How did Pavlov extend the work and ideas of Sechenov?
6. Describe how Pavlov's paradigm could be used to study one of
the
British Empiricists associative laws.
7. What are the implications for learning theory of evolutionary
theory's
notions of mental continuity and species diversity?
8. How were Thorndike's ideas on instrumental conditioning
influenced by
Darwin's evolutionary theory?
Nonassociative learning
1. What is habituation?
2. How has habituation been distinguished from response fatigue
and
sensory adaptation processes?
3. What does dishabituation refer to, and why is it important?
4. What is sensitization?
5. Describe the experiment which is suggestive of the possibility
that
habituation has both short-term and long-term components. Be sure
to
indicate the procedures used, the results obtained, and know which
features of
the results allow us to reach the conclusion.
6. Describe two lines of evidence suggestive of the view that
dishabituation and sensitization
are different psychological processes.
7. What are the key elements of opponent process theory and how
might it explain drug tolerance? What other situations might you
use this theory to explain human behavior?
Basic concepts of Conditioning (EXCEPT FOR QUESTION 10!!!!!)
1. Pavlovian conditioning is said to be a rather general form of
learning. Why is this claimed? Describe at least four
examples of Pavlovian learning as it has
been studied in the laboratory.
2. Describe the sexual conditioning study of Domjan Blesbois,
&
Williams (1998) being sure to point out the CS, US, UR, and CR. What response system would you say
comes under Pavlovian control in this study?
3. Explain drug tolerance using Siegel’s Pavlovian conditioning
model. Also, offer two ways of
testing the basic ideas. Why does
drug overdose occur according to this view?
4. Describe the delay, long delay, trace, simultaneous, and
backward
conditioning procedures. What is inhibition of delay?
5. Describe one good way of going about measuring excitatory
conditioning
when the CS is not observed to evoke any obviously detectable CR.
Hint: think about the phenomenon of second-order conditioning.
6. What constitutes a
good control group for assessing excitatory
Pavlovian conditioning?
7. Why did Pavlov think that extinction of
excitatory conditioning does
NOT result in unlearning? In other words, discuss three phenomena
that
suggests otherwise.
8. What was Pavlov's preferred alternative explanation of the
effects of
extinction?
9. What is one good way of producing inhibitory
conditioning. What
are the two most common ways of measuring conditioned inhibition?
10. What constitutes a good control group for assessing inhibitory
Pavlovian conditioning? Also, what is wrong with using the
explicitly unpaired
control procedure as a control to assess excitatory conditioning?