Animal Learning and Behavior Exam Preparation Guide
Course Introduction
Animal Learning and Behavior explores the mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, and retain new information, and how these processes influence behavioral adaptations in natural and laboratory settings. Covering topics such as classical and operant conditioning, social learning, and cognitive processes, the course examines the neurological, genetic, and ecological factors underlying animal behavior. Students will also analyze the evolutionary significance of different learning strategies and behavioral patterns, gaining insight into experimental methods and ethical considerations in animal research. This course prepares students to critically assess animal learning studies and apply foundational concepts to related fields such as psychology, biology, and behavioral ecology.
Recommended Textbook
The Principles of Learning and Behavior 7th Edition by Michael Domjan
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Chapter 1: Introduction
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the general-process approach? What evidence supports adopting such an approach in the study of learning phenomena? Why should caution be used in interpreting this evidence?
Answer: Answer not provided
Q2) Describe Descartes' conception of the reflex and how the concept of the reflex has changed since his time.
Answer: Answer not provided
Q3) Describe the contributions to the study of learning made by three of the following individuals: René Descartes, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Brown, Aristotle, Hermann Ebbinghaus, I.M.Sechenov, Ivan Pavlov, Charles Darwin.
Answer: Answer not provided
Q4) Compare the research of Ivan Pavlov and Hermann Ebbinghaus.What do the two lines of investigation have in common?
Answer: Answer not provided
Q5) Briefly describe the two intellectual traditions that were stimulated by Cartesian dualism.How is each tradition represented in contemporary investigations of learning phenomena?
Answer: Answer not provided
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Chapter 2: Elicited Behavior, Habituation, and Sensitization
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Sample Questions
Q1) Applying a shock to the tail of the Aplysia
A)has no effect on the responses to stimulation of the siphon or mantle.
B)increases responding to stimulation of the mantle but not the siphon.
C)increases responding to stimulation of the siphon but not the mantle.
D)increases responding to stimulation of both the siphon and mantle.
Answer: D
Q2) Which of the following is true of visual attention in human infants?
A)All stimuli elicit similar responses across repeated presentations.
B)Infants initially increase responding to repeated presentations of complex stimuli and decrease responding to repeated presentations of simple stimuli.
C)Infants initially increase responding to repeated presentations of simple stimuli and decrease responding to repeated presentations of complex stimuli.
D)Infants increase responding to all stimuli as they become familiar with repeated presentations.
Answer: B
Q3) Describe sign stimuli involved in the control of human behavior.
Answer: Answer not provided
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4
Chapter 3: Classical Conditioning
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Sample Questions
Q1) In order for food to be presented in an autoshaping procedure, the pigeon must do which of the following?
A)approach the food hopper before the food is delivered
B)approach the signal light before the food is delivered
C)avoid the signal light until after the food is delivered
D)There are no requirements for the pigeon.
Answer: D
Q2) Normally, you eat breakfast every morning at Sam's Diner.For the past three mornings, a large yellow banner has stated that Sam's is closed.Now, every time you see a yellow banner you turn away from the banner.Your conditioning is an example of
A)short-delayed conditioning.
B)differential inhibition.
C)Pavlov's procedure for conditioned inhibition.
D)a negative CS-US contiguity.
Answer: C
Q3) Describe the interplay of elicited and classically conditioned behaviors that is necessary in successful nursing.
Answer: Answer not provided
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Chapter 4: Classical Conditioning
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Rescorla-Wagner model assigns the associative value of to a stimulus that is a fully conditioned inhibitor.
A)lambda
B)1/2 lambda
C)0
D)lambda.
Q2) Which of the following regions provides a biological link that endows a CS with the capacity to elicit fear?
A)the basolateral amygdala
B)the central amygdala
C)the PAG
D)the red nucleus
Q3) Sucrose (sugar) pellets serve to satisfy an innate drive, because of this
A)they are always CSs.
B)they are always USs
C)they are sometimes CSs and sometimes USs
D)they are always URs
Q4) Describe an experimental design that allows investigators to distinguish between S-R and S-S learning.
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Chapter 5: Instrumental Conditioning
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Q1) Ralph only gets to watch television in the afternoons if he doesn't hit his sister.Otherwise, he must spend the afternoon in his room.This is an example of A)differential reinforcement of other behavior.
B)avoidance training.
C)punishment.
D)negative reinforcement.
Q2) What is meant by belongingness in instrumental conditioning? How does belongingness contribute to animal "misbehavior" in learning situations?
Q3) Your sister's hamster keeps escaping from its cage.On the first day, it took the hamster 14 hours to escape, but by the second week, the hamster could only be confined for 30 minutes before it worked its way to freedom.According to Thorndike's theory,
A)the stimulus of the cage has become associated with the desire to be free.
B)the stimulus of the cage has become associated with the jumping necessary to gain freedom.
C)the hamster jumps in order to gain freedom.
D)the hamster "operates" on its environment to gain freedom.
Q4) Describe alternative explanations of the learned helplessness effect.
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Page 7
Chapter 6: Schedules of Reinforcement and Choice
Behavior
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Q1) The orbitofrontal cortex
A)lies within the prefrontal cortex.
B)seems to provide executive control in weighing values of alternative choices.
C)has connections with the amygdala and striatum.
D)all of the above
Q2) A pigeon responds more on key "A" than on key "B." The relative rate of responding to key "A" could be .
A)5
B)0.79
C)0.5
D)0.3
Q3) A subject that has mostly short inter-response times is responding at a A)high rate.
B)low rate.
C)fixed interval rate.
D)variable interval rate.
Q4) Describe the generalized matching law equation and explain each of its parameters.
Q5) Compare ratio and interval schedules.What patterns of behavior are generated by fixed and variable schedules?
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Chapter 7: Instrumental Conditioning
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Q1) Which of the following cannot be explained well without R-O mechanisms?
A)A rat decreases lever-pressing for food when presented with a CS for footshock, but increases pressing when a CS signaling access to food is presented.
B)A rat decreases rod-pushing for food when presented with a CS that signals the end of access to food, but increases pushing when a CS signaling access to sugar water is presented.
C)A rat decreases licking a grape-flavored solution after that solution was paired with illness, but continues to lick a strawberry-flavored solution.
D)A rat decreases pushing a bar to the right for food after that food was paired with illness, but continues to push the bar to the left for water.
Q2) Describe similarities and differences between the Premack principle and subsequent response allocation models.
Q3) The bliss point can be identified by
A)the relative frequency of behavior under instrumental constraint.
B)the relative sensory input under instrumental constraint.
C)the relative sensory input in an unconstrained situation.
D)the relative frequency of behavior in an unconstrained situation.
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Page 9
Chapter 8: Stimulus Control of Behavior
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Q1) According to Spence, discrimination training results in
A)only excitatory conditioning.
B)only inhibitory conditioning.
C)either excitatory or inhibitory conditioning.
D)both excitatory and inhibitory conditioning.
Q2) Spence's theory suggests that the peak shift phenomenon will only occur when
A)the excitatory and inhibitory generalization gradients overlap.
B)the excitatory and inhibitory generalization gradients do not overlap.
C)the inhibitory generalization gradient shifts towards the S+.
D)the excitatory generalization gradient shifts away from the S-.
Q3) Context is an important determinant of learned behavior performance
A)only when the contingency requires the subject to attend to the context.
B)when the context is more than background cues.
C)only when the context serves as a discriminative stimulus.
D)even when it is truly background.
Q4) Describe the phenomenon of overshadowing and describe how it may be explained by elemental and configural approaches to stimulus control.
Q5) Describe a way to determine if an animal is demonstrating stimulus generalization.
Q6) What does the steepness of a stimulus generalization reveal to a researcher?
Page 10
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Chapter 9: Extinction of Conditioned Behavior
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Q1) What associations are learned during extinction? What evidence is there to support your answer?
Q2) Suppose Betty wants to extinguish her boyfriend's annoying habit of biting his toenails.She should conduct extinction trials
A)at home.
B)at a therapist's office.
C)alternating them with conditioning trials that reinforce his biting behavior.
D)in as many contexts as possible.
Q3) According to frustration theory,
A)continuous reinforcement trains an animal to be persistent in the absence of reinforcement.
B)partial reinforcement teaches an animal the difference between rewarded and nonrewarded trials.
C)there is nothing about continuous reinforcement that teaches an animal to respond when it expects nonreward.
D)memory of nonreward becomes the cue for performing the instrumental response.
Q4) Why can reinstatement be considered a special form of renewal?
Q5) Compare extinction to forgetting.What procedures characterize each?
Q6) Describe the basic behavioral and emotional consequences of extinction.
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Averse Control
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which theory rejects the importance of instrumental conditioning in the development of the form of avoidance behavior?
A)the predatory imminence hypothesis
B)the safety-signal hypothesis
C)SSDR theory
D)the shock-frequency reduction theory
Q2) Suppose you want an organism to learn to make avoidance responses in a free-operant avoidance procedure.To aid in training, you should provide
A)a longer S-S interval and a shorter R-S interval.
B)a longer R-S interval and a shorter S-S interval.
C)short S-S and R-S intervals.
D)long S-S and R-S intervals.
Q3) Your friend tells you that she studies to avoid getting bad grades.Her explanation of the behavior is most like
A)the safety-signal hypothesis.
B)SSDR theory.
C)shock-frequency reduction theory.
D)the two-process theory of avoidance.
Q4) Compare and contrast discriminated and free-operant avoidance procedures.
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Chapter 11: Comparative Cognition I
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following can serve as a retrieval cue?
A)contextual cues
B)the US
C)the CS+
D)all of the above
Q2) Compared with traditional views of memory acquisition, storage, and recall, contemporary views suggest
A)that acquisition is more difficult, recall is easier.
B)that items in long-term storage are more permanent than previously thought.
C)that items in long-term storage can be made more malleable than previously thought.
D)that most of what we consider memory is actually classical or instrumental conditioning.
Q3) Describe the delayed matching to sample task.What are three procedural aspects critical to determining the accuracy of performance in this task?
Q4) Describe the phenomenon of directed forgetting and what it tells us about memory processes.
Q5) Describe spatial learning tasks and mechanisms that have been used to explain efficient performance in this situation.
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Chapter 12: Comparative Cognition Ii
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is most closely analogous to human episodic memory?
A)the contents of value transfer in pigeons
B)the contents of memory for hidden food items in scrub jays
C)the contents of paired associate learning in chimpanzees
D)the contents of the internal clock in pigeons
Q2) A cat is trained to fetch a piece of balled paper.The cat has learned that the sound of the paper being crumpled means that the game is on.The game being on tells the cat that the paper is about to fly.Seeing the flying paper means that it is time for the hunt.Grabbing the paper lets the cat know that a treat is waiting.This cat must have learned
A)paired associates.
B)a serial pattern.
C)stimulus-response associations.
D)serial representations.
Q3) Describe similarities and differences in language learning among chimpanzees and human children.
Q4) Describe how the behavior of food storing birds can be used to provide evidence of episodic memory.
Q5) Compare and contrast the scalar expectancy model of timing and the behavioral theory of timing.
Page 14
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