Dr. Sardonicus wants to train a rat to play basketball. She could wait until she was old and gray, however, before she could reinforce the rat for playing basketball! What conditioning procedure does Dr. Sardonicus need to use?
Outline, step by step, what she can do to meet her goal.
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: A good answer will include the following key points.
• Dr. Sardonicus needs to use shaping, a process of reinforcing successive approximations.
• First, she would reinforce the rat with a small bit of food for sniffing at the ball, then for putting its paws on the ball, then for picking it up, and so forth.
• Eventually, she would be able to train the rat to approach the ball, pick it up, and drop it in the basket.
You might also like to view...
May does not want to go to college nor does she want to get a job, but she has got to do one or the other, according to her parents. She is experiencing which type of conflict?
a. approach-approach b. approach-avoidance c. avoidance-avoidance d. multiple approach-avoidance
Stress activates two systems. One is the ____.
A. HPA axis, which reacts more quickly than the other B. HPA axis, which becomes increasingly important with prolonged stressors C. autonomic nervous system which secretes the hormone ACTH D. autonomic nervous system which secretes the hormone cortisol
The learning perspective suggests that the most important factors in determining our ability to identify a percept are
a. time, weather, and day of the week. b. our eyes, our ears, and our brain. c. the object, its environment, and the presence of distractors. d. the laws of continuity, similarity, and proximity. e. context, expectation, and perceptual sets.
An axon is very thick and usually much shorter than dendrites
a. True b. False