Principles of operant conditioning have been used to help explain why people get attached to "lucky" hats, charms, and rituals. Using these principles, explain how an athlete might show this type of behavior
How did Skinner demonstrate the phenomenon of superstitious behavior with eight pigeons in his laboratory?
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: A good answer will include the following key points.
• Superstitious behavior can be learned through operant conditioning.
• For example, you might be wearing a new pair of socks during the first game that your basketball team wins.
• Even though the socks had nothing to do with the win, wearing the socks was followed by reinforcement, so the behavior is likely to strengthen.
• Skinner taught pigeons to behave superstitiously by rigging their cages to deliver food every 15 seconds regardless of what they were doing.
• Whatever the animal happened to be doing when the food was delivered was reinforced.
• Within a short time, six of eight pigeons were practicing some sort of consistent ritual, such as head bobbing or turning counterclockwise, even though these behaviors had nothing to do with getting reinforcement.
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Which of the following is a psychoactive drug?
ACE inhibitors streptomycin retinoic acid tobacco
If test scores correlate with measures of constructs that an underlying theory says are related, then we say the test has
a. convergent evidence of validity. b. discriminant evidence of validity. c. evidence of validity based on content. d. concurrent evidence of validity.
What is the next step in an experiment if the results of an independent samples t-test are statistically significant?
a. Correlate the scores on the dependent variable with the conditions of the independent variable. b. Compute a predicted score for each true score on the dependent variable. c. Make a prediction about the strength of the relationship based on the scatterplot. d. Compute a confidence interval for the difference between the ?s.
Piaget's law of conservation describes the developmental accomplishment of being able to understand that changing the form or appearance of a substance does not change its _____________.
A. color B. smell C. texture D. amount