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CH 01 - Vocab
Definitions
26
Psychology
Graduate
09/07/2015

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Term
Learning
Definition
The acquisition, maintenance, and change of an organism's behavior as a result of lifetime events (the ontogeny of behavior).
In everyday language, it is often used to refer to transitional changes in behavior (e.g., from not knowing to knowing one's ABC), but conditions that maintain behavior in a steady state are also part of what we mean (e.g., continuing to recite the alphabet).
Term
Behavior
Definition
Everything that an organism does, including covert actions such as thinking.
Term
Experimental Analysis of Behavior
Definition
The method of investigation most commonly used in behavior analysis.
The method involves breaking down complex environment - behavior relations into component principles of behavior. The analysis is verified by arranging experimental procedures that reveal the underlying basic principles and controlling variables. This involves intensive experimentation with a single organism over an extended period, rather than statistical assessment of groups exposed to experimental treatments.
Term
Reinforcement
Definition
An increase in the rate of operant behavior as a function of its consequences.
Also refers to the procedure of presenting a reinforcing event when a response occurs.
Term
Science of Behavior
Definition
Also known as Behavior Analysis.
Term
Behavior Analysis
Definition
A comprehensive experimental approach to the study of the behavior of organisms. Primary objectives are the discovery of principles and laws that govern behavior, the extension of these principles over species, and the development of an applied technology.
Term
Applied Behavior Analysis
Definition
A branch of behavior analysis that uses behavior principles to solve practical problems such as the treatment of autism or improvement of teaching methods. It is also referred to as behavior engineering.
Term
Reflex
Definition
When an unconditioned stimulus elicits an unconditioned response (US -> UR), the relationship is called this.
Term
Respondent
Definition
This refers to behavior that increase or decreases by the presentation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) that precedes the conditioned response (CR).
We say that the presentation of the CS regulates or controls the respondent (CR).
This type of behavior is elicited, in the sense that it reliably occurs when the CS is presented. The notation system used with elicited behavior is CS -> CR. The CS causes (arrow) the CR.
Term
Respondent Conditioning
Definition
This occurs when an organism responds to a new event based on a history of pairing with a biologically important stimulus.
Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov discovered this form of conditioning at the turn of the century.
Term
Operant Conditioning
Definition
An increase or decrease in operant response as a function of the consequences that have the response.
Term
Operant
Definition
Behavior that operates on the environment to produce a change, effect, or consequence.
Particular responses increase or decrease in a situation as a function of the consequences that they produced int eh past.
This type of behavior is said to be emitted (rather than elicited) in the sense that behavior may occur at some frequency before any known conditioning.
Term
Selection by Consequences
Definition
Applies at all three levels:
- Natural/Darwinian selection - Selection over generations for genes related to survival and reproduction.
- Selection by Operant Conditioning - The selection for behavior within the lifetime of an individual organism
- Cultural Selection - The selection for behavior patterns (practices, traditions, rituals) of groups of human beings that endure beyond the lifetime of a single individual.
Term
Immediate Causation
Definition
Refers to the kind of mechanism studied by physics and chemistry; the "billiard ball" sort of process where we try to isolate a chain of events that directly result in some effect.
Term
Remote Causation
Definition
Involves explaining how a phenomenon by pointing to remote events that made it likely. Thus, the causal explanation of a species characteristic (e.g., size, coloration, exceptional vision, etc.) involves the working of natural selection on the gene pool of the parent population.
Term
Contingency of Reinforcement
Definition
A definition of the relationship between the occasion, the operant class, and the consequences that follow the behavior (e.g., Sd: R --> Sr).
We change them by altering one of the components and observing the effect on behavior.
They can include more than three terms, as in conditional discrimination; also, the effectiveness of them depends on motivational events called establishing operations (e.g., deprivation and satiation).
Term
Neuroplasticity
Definition
Alterations of neurons and neural interconnections during a lifetime by changes in environmental contingencies.
Term
Behavioral Neuroscience
Definition
A scientific area that integrates the science of behavior (behavior analysis) with the science of the brain (neuroscience).
Areas of interest include the effects of drugs on the brain (behavioral pharmacology), neural imagining and complex stimulus relations, choice and neural activity, and the brain circuitry of learning and addiction.
Term
culture
Definition
Usually defined in terms of the ideas and values of a society.
However, behavior analysts define it as all the conditions, events, and stimuli arranged by other people that regulate human action.
Term
conditioned reflexes
Definition
Same as conditioned response and conditioned stimulus.
Term
Behaviorism
Definition
The scientific philosophy of behavior analysis.
Term
Trial-and-Error Learning
Definition
A term coined by Thorndike, which he used to describe the results of his puzzle-box and maze-learning experiments.
Animals were said to make fewer and fewer errors over repeated trials, learning by trial and error.
Term
Law of Effect
Definition
As originally stated by Thorndike, this law refers to stamping in (or out) some response.
For example, a cat opened a puzzle-box door more rapidly over repeated trials.
Currently the law is stated as the principle of reinforcement - operants may be followed by consequences that increase (or decrease) the probability or rate of response.
Term
Correlations
Definition
As used in respondent conditioning, the percentage of conditioning trials in which the conditioned stimulus (CS) is followed by the unconditioned stimulus (US), and the percentage or trial in which the C S is not followed by the US
Term
Behavior analysts
Definition
Researchers and practitioners of behavior analysis.
Term
Private Behavior
Definition
Behavior that is only accessible to the person who emits it (e.g., thinking).
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