Learning
This term refers to the initial stage of learning in classical conditioning, during which a neutral stimulus becomes paired with an unconditioned stimulus to elicit a response.
What is acquisition?
Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov famous discovered classical conditioning while studying the digestion of these animals.
What are dogs?
This famous behaviorist conditioned fear in a baby known as "Little Albert" by pairing a white rat with a loud clang.
John B. Watson
Estimating the likelihood of an event based on how easily vivid or recent examples come to mind is known as this cognitive shortcut.
What is the availability heuristic?
A mental shortcut or "rule of thumb" used to make quick, efficient decisions—though it doesn't guarantee a correct answer—is called this.
What is a heuristic?
Giving a child a piece of candy after they clean their room to increase the likelihood of that behavior is an example of this type of reinforcement.
What is positive reinforcement?
Learning by observing and imitating the behavior of others, rather than through direct experience, is known as this type of learning.
What is observational learning (or modeling)?
A teacher giving pop quizzes at unpredictable intervals throughout the semester is using this time-based reinforcement schedule.
What is a variable-interval schedule?
The three basic steps in processing memory are encoding, storage, and this final step of bringing stored information back into conscious awareness.
What is retrieval?
Grouping numbers into smaller units, such as hyphenating a 10-digit phone number, is a classic memory trick known as this.
What is chunking?
Albert Bandura demonstrated that children can acquire new behaviors without direct reinforcement by watching adult role models in this famous study.
What is the Bobo doll experiment?
When a student automatically gets nervous at the sound of any school bell because it reminds them of a loud fire alarm, this classical conditioning process has occurred.
What is stimulus generalization?
In Pavlov's classic experiment, the meat powder that naturally caused the dogs to salivate without any prior training served as this.
What is the unconditioned stimulus (UCS or US)?
Looking for a lost set of keys by systematically searching every single room in your house step-by-step is an example of using this problem-solving strategy that guarantees a solution.
What is an algorithm?
The tendency to only search for or pay attention to information that supports your existing opinions while ignoring opposing facts is known as this bias.
What is confirmation bias?
Receiving a paycheck every two weeks on a set calendar date is an example of this predictable, time-based reinforcement schedule.
What is a fixed-interval schedule?
B.F. Skinner designed this enclosed chamber equipped with a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain food or water as rewards during experiments.
What is a Skinner box (or operant conditioning chamber)?
Rewarding a dog step-by-step with treats as it gets closer and closer to rolling over is an operant conditioning technique known as this.
What is shaping?
When new information causes you to forget previously learned information (such as learning a new phone number and forgetting your old one), this type of interference has occurred.
What is retroactive interference?
The inability to realize that a common item can be used in an unconventional way (such as using a shoe as a hammer) is known as this cognitive barrier.
What is functional fixedness?
Martin Seligman found that organisms subjected to inescapable negative events eventually stop trying to escape even when opportunities arise, demonstrating this phenomenon.
What is learned helplessness?
Turning off an annoying seatbelt chime by buckling up is an example of this type of reinforcement, which increases a behavior by removing something unpleasant.
What is negative reinforcement?
A mental category or "best example" that incorporates the average features of an object (like pictured a Robin when asked to think of a bird) is called this.
What is a prototype?
Noam Chomsky argued against B.F. Skinner’s behaviorist view of language by proposing that humans possess an innate brain mechanism for language development called this.
What is the Language Acquisition Device (LAD)?
The smallest unit of sound in a spoken language that distinguishes one word from another (such as the sound b in "bat") is called this.
What is a phoneme?