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Chapter 1
Studying learning
1.
What is the difference between basic learning and specialized learning?
2.
Why we cannot identify learning with an increase on responding?
3.
What is the relationship between learning and responding?
4.
Why studying learning is important?
5.
Write a brief definition of the experimental method.
6.
What is an independent variable?
7.
What is a dependent variable?
8.
What is the difference between experimental and control groups?
9.
A work psychologist arrives to the Santana factory in Linares with the goal of improving productivity. After analyzing the assembling chain suggests that productivity would increase if 5 minutes of guided exercise are conducted every hour. After 6 months applying the treatment, management reports an increase in productivity of 80%. The psychologist concludes that such increase is due to the 5-min guided exercise program. May she reach that conclusion? Why?
Present a design that would allow her to reach that conclusion.
10.
An educational psychologist in a high school evaluates whether the morning or the evening turns will be more appropriate to establish learning. To test this idea, he talks to the morning and evening teachers requesting them to give their students a test. As each teacher knows what he/she have taught the students, they decide to give two independent tests, one in each turn.
When the psychologist analyzes the grades he discovers that the mean score in the morning group was 6.3 while it was 8.5 in the evening group. What should he conclude, if anything? Why?
Suggest alternative designs to evaluate this problem.
11.
What is the difference between phenomenon and process?
12.
Which are the reasons that justify the use of nonhuman animals in the study of learning?

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Chapter 2
Learning about a single stimulus
1.
What is an eliciting or signal stimulus?
2.
What is reflex behavior?
3.
Describe the reflex arc.
4.
Imagine that you want to discover the signal stimulus that elicits the reflex response of aggression in male dogs. How would you do it?
5.
How would you discover the stimulus that elicits the suction reflex in the newborn? Describe the procedure you would follow.
6.
Describe the habituation effect and the sensitization effect.
7.
Describe a situation in which habituation and sensitization co-occur. What is the main feature of the situation?
8.
What does it mean that habituation is stimulus specific?
9.
How can we distinguish between habituation and fatigue?
10.
What is spontaneous recovery from habituation? Does it always occur? Justify your answer.
11.
What is neophobia?
12.
What is the difference between short- and long-term habituation? How would you distinguish between them?
13.
What is the effect of the frequency of the presentation of the stimulus on habituation?
14.
What is the best way of get habituation to a very intense stimulus? Justify your answer.
15.
Why do we say that a common test is necessary to establish a between-group comparison?
16.
What is dishabituation?
17.
What is the main feature of sensitization? Give an example.
18.
Describe the Dual-process theory of habituation and sensitization.
19.
Give a brief description of Wagners’ (1981) habituation theory.
20.
How does Wagner explain short-term habituation?
21.
How does Wagner explain long-term habituation?
22.
What is a homeostatic system? Give a brief description of how it works, including an example.
23.
What is the function of the opponent processes in a homeostatic system?
24.
Give a brief description of the standard pattern of affective dynamics and the pattern of affective changes to habituated stimuli.
25.
Which are the mechanisms that underlie the opponent process theory? How does it work?
26.
Apply the opponent process theory to love and attraction during marriage.

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Chapter 3
Learning about relationships among stimuli
1.
Define standard classical conditioning and each of the elements involved (US, UR, CS and CR).
2.
Do CS and US have to have differential biological strength? Justify your answer.
3.
What do imply sensory preconditioning, second-order conditioning and counterconditioning with respect to the nature of the CS and the US?
4.
Give a brief description of an experiment that shows selectivity of the associations in classical conditioning.
5.
The CR, is always identical to the UR? Justify your answer.
6.
What does the form of the UR depends on?
7.
What does the form of the CR depends on?
8.
Which control will you use in a T+ design? Justify the use of those control conditions.
9.
Give a definition of inter-stimulus interval, trial, intertrial interval and trace interval.
10.
Simultaneous conditioning seems worse than delayed conditioning. However, you know that the test usually employed to test learning presents an important disadvantage for simultaneous conditioning. Could you explain which is that disadvantage designing an experiment that solves it
(Rescorla, 1980)?
11.
Which phenomena demonstrate that contiguity is not enough for associative learning to appear?
Justify your answer.
12.
Give a short description of backwards blocking.
13.
What does define contingency according to Rescorla (1968)?
14.
Give a brief description of conditioned inhibition procedures. What is the common feature to all of them? In other words, what is needed in a procedure for conditioned inhibition to appear?
15.
Write a well controlled withinsubject design of conditioned inhibition using the summation test.
Justify the design reasoning what you expect to find.
16.
Write a well controlled withinsubject design of conditioned inhibition using the retardation test.
Justify the design reasoning what you expect to find.
17.
Describe the facilitation phenomenon and give an example.
18.
Describe the three essential phenomena that are caused by preexposure to the stimuli.
19.
Describe the outcome devaluation procedure and explain why this is an adequate procedure to distinguish between S-S learning and S-R learning in classical conditioning.
20.
Describe the outcome inflation procedure and explain why this is an adequate procedure to distinguish between S-S learning and S-R learning in classical conditioning.
21.
Which are the two possible associative structures that may be formed in conditioned inhibition?
22.
Show a design that allows for determining the contents of learning in a situation of facilitation
(positive occasion setting) by using the CR topography. Justify your answer.
23.
Describe semantic conditioning.
24.
Describe informed pairing and informed unpairing procedures, and compare them with instructed conditioning and extinction.
25.
Give an example of evaluative conditioning.

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Chapter 4
Classical conditioning and causal learning theories
1.
What do a, b, c, and d cells represent in a contingency matrix?
2.
Calculate the value of unconditional contingency (DP) in the following contingency matrixes, calculating contingency between worms and allergy (matrix 1), between a tone and an electrical shock (matrix 2), between swimming on the sea and get a cold (matrix 3), and between illegal parking and a fine (matrix 4).
Alergy No Alergy Shock
Worms
No worms
Swim
No swim
Cold
6
1
15
25
2
20
No Cold
3
50
Tone
No tone
Illegal parking
Legal parking
8
15
Fine
10
0
No
Shock
10
2
No fine
100
100
3.
Are there parallels between human causal learning and animal conditioning?
4.
What is the difference between associative models of learning and rule models?
5.
Illustrate and explain the essential part of the formula of Rescorla & Wagner (1972) model.
6.
According to Rescorla & Wagner (1972) model, what is the reason that underlies blocking?
7.
What is the difference between Mackintosh (1975) and Pearce & Hall (1980) theories?
8.
According to Pearce (1987), what is the reason that underlies blocking?
9.
May traditional associative learning theories explain backward blocking? Justify your answer.
10.
Calculate rule “a” in the contingency matrixes of question 2.
11.
Calculate rule “a-b” in the contingency matrixes of question 2.
12.
Calculate rule “a-c” in the contingency matrixes of question 2.
13.
Calculate rule Delta D in the contingency matrixes of question 2.
14.
May Delta D and Delta P rules explain blocking? Justify your answer.
15.
What is the difference between correlation and causation? Give an example.
16.
Imagine that you have two different causes of a result. Apply the probabilistic contrasts model and calculate unconditional and conditional contingencies for each of the matrixes that follow.
Explain and reason the results. Matrix 1: Probability of developing and allergy after ingesting shrimp and peanuts. Matrix 2: Probability of a shock in the presence of a Tone and a Light. Matrix
3: Probability of could after a swimming in the sea and riding a bike. Matrix 4. Probability of getting a fine as a function of illegal parking and how close the street is from downtown. Within each matrix the total number of times the result appeared is presented as a function of the total number of experiences with each combination of cues.
Shrimp
Peanuts
20/20
No peanuts
0/10 Tone
Light
8/8
No light
10/10
10/10 0/25 No Tone 0/15 0/20 No Shrimp
Swim
No swim
Bike
0/25
25/25
No bike
12/12
0/50
Illegal parking
Legal parking
Downtown
10/10
0/20
Suburbs
10/100
0/50

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Chapter 5
Learning about relationships between responses and outcomes
1.
What does the concept “trial-and-error” learning means?
2.
What is “insight” in terms of learning?
3.
Which are the elements of instrumental conditioning? Give a definition of them.
4.
Describe the way shaping procedure works. Give an example.
5.
Present the different procedures of instrumental conditioning organized in a two-entrance table as a function of the type of outcome and the type of response-outcome contingency used, explaining the table.
6.
May operant conditioning be understood as a response-selection process? Justify your answer.
7.
Which are the two methods that we can use to avoid the effects of reinforcement delay in instrumental conditioning?
8.
What is a conditioned reinforcer?
9.
What is the role of contingency in instrumental conditioning?
10.
Which are the implications of positive and negative contrast experiments for the nature of the outcome in instrumental conditioning?
11.
According to what you know about instrumental conditioning, when and why will punishment be efficient?
12.
Which are the contents of instrumental conditioning? Give a brief description of the associative structures.
13.
Give a brief explanation of the transfer technique and the reasons to use it.
14.
What is a reinforcement schedule?
15.
What does define a ratio schedule? Give examples of fixed ratio and variable ratio reinforcement schedules.
16.
What does define an interval schedule? Give examples of fixed interval and variable interval reinforcement schedules.
17.
Define and give two examples of differential reinforcement of rate schedules.
18.
Which is the reinforcement schedule used on slot machines? Justify your answer.
19.
Describe how chain reinforcement schedules work.
20.
What is the difference between feedback functions of ratio and interval schedules? Which is the reason underlying such differences?
21.
What are concurrent reinforcement schedules? What do they allow us to study?
22.
Describe the matching law and the conditions under which the law works. Give an example.

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Chapter 6
Theories of performance and instrumental learning
1.
Give a brief description of Thorndike’s reinforcement theory.
2.
What do Thorndike’s reinforcement theory and Hull’s drive reduction theory have in common?
3.
Give a brief description of Hull’s drive reduction theory and point out the results that are contrary to the theory.
4.
Give a definition of primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, primary drives, and secondary drives and explain why they allow for increasing the predictive power of Hull’s theory.
5.
Which is the basic idea of consumatory response hypothesis? Describe a result that is in agreement with this idea.
6.
Do reinforcers have intrinsic value according to Premack? Base the justification of your answer on experimental evidence.
7.
Describe an experimental situation in which Premack’s principle is fulfilled. Describe another situation in which the principle is fulfilled, but the effect of reinforcement is not obtained.
8.
Present the similarities and differences between the response deprivation hypothesis and
Premack’s principle.
9.
What does it make something efficient as a reinforcer, according with the response deprivation hypothesis?
10.
Give a brief description of behavior regulation theory.
11.
Which are the limits of reinforcement according to behavior regulation?
12.
Does it make sense to differentiate between punishment and reinforcement? Justify your answer.
13.
Is avoidance a classical conditioning procedure? Justify your answer.
14.
Give a description of the two-process theory applied to conditioned avoidance. Which are the problems of this theory?
15.
Describe the safety signal hypothesis.

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Chapter 7
Changing behavior, extinction and interference
1.
Which are the special features of extinction of conditioned avoidance and conditioned inhibition?
2.
Does extinction effect imply unlearning of the CS-US or R-O associations originally learned?
Justify your answer.
3.
What do demonstrate external inhibition, spontaneous recovery, renewal and reinstatement?
4.
Which is the methodological interest of the spontaneous recovery design used by Rescorla
(1996)?
5.
Describe ABA, AAB and ABC renewal. What do they have in common?
6.
Describe the reinstatement effect.
7.
May we integrate renewal, spontaneous recovery and reinstatement within a single explanation?
Justify your answer.
8.
Does changing the context equally affect retrieval of any type of information? Justify your answer.
9.
Why does information retrieval become context specific according to Bouton (1993) and Nelson
(2002)?
10.
Which is the explanation of Rosas et al. (2005) for the effects of changing the context on information retrieval? In what is this explanation based?
11.
Which are the experimental results underlying the idea that no cue-outcome inhibitory relationships are established during extinction? Which is the most likely association established during extinction?
12.
Give a description of the discrimination hypothesis as explanation of partial reinforcement effect on extinction (PREE) and present an experiment that discards this hypothesis.
13.
Describe sequential theory as explanation of PREE.
14.
Describe frustration theory as explanation of PREE.
15.
Compare sequential and frustration theories as PREE explanations. According to what you know, could we consider those theories as compatible?

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Chapter 8
Learning from others: Observational learning
1.
May phobias be learned by observation? Describe an experiment that supports this idea.
2.
Are food preferences innate or learned? Justify your answer.
3.
Is son-learning of White-crowned sparrows innate or learned? Justify your answer.
4.
Why would you say that the alarm calls in vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops) are a consequence of observational learning? Justify your answer.
5.
Give a definition of contagious behavior, mimetic behavior and imitation.
6.
Define observational conditioning and give an example.
7.
Taking in account everything you know about imitation, give an example of observational learning maximizing the probabilities of success justifying why.
8.
What does the idea of imitation as an instinct suggest? May we consider it an explanatory theory?
Justify your answer.
9.
According with behavioral theories of imitation, why does imitation appear and which are the necessary conditions for imitation to appear?
10.
Give a brief description of Bandura’s social learning theory. According to this theory, which are the processes that mediate observational learning?