The purpose of this assignment is to get you would apply some of the learning principles learned in class to real life events and experimental situations. For every example a description of the...

The purpose of this assignment is to get you would apply some of the learning principles learned in class to real life events and experimental situations.

For every example a description of the technique/principle is required.

Assignments will be marked on the basis of:

1. Completeness (Have all the questions been answered? Is it well written?)
2. Comprehension (Have you demonstrated an understanding of the techniques?) Important! Put it in YOUR OWN WORDS
3. Originality (Are the examples/solutions interesting and well presented?)
4. Details (Have you given a complete explanation or a vague one? Things like CS, US, CR, UR, S, R, and S* should be referred to when appropriate)
5. Must be submitted as a Word .doc (or .docx)

1) Pick a phobia someone might have and explain (in detail) how you would use systematic desensitization to treat it. How are extinction and generalization important parts of this procedure? (20 points)

2) Each of the 11 groups of rats below was presented with a noise until there was little, if any, startle response to the noise. Then, following a recovery period that differed for each group, the same noise was again presented to the animals. Explain the graph below. What property of habituation does it illustrate? (20 points)

1. Given the data below, describe and explain a procedure (involving discrimination) that likely produced the results. (15 points)

4) Let us call P (US/CS) the probability of the US given the CS is present, and P (US/No CS) the probability of the US if the CS is absent.

a) Based on contingency being positive, negative or neutral, complete the following table:

b) Suppose that in each of the five cases above, the CS was a tone, the US was food, and the animal was a hungry dog. If we make this supposition, then Case 1 corresponds to Pavlov’s original experiment because i) food always followed the presentation of the tone and ii) food was never delivered in the absence of the tone. In this case, Pavlov reported reliable and strong salivation to the tone.

For each of the other cases, predict whether the tone will excite, inhibit, or not affect salivation and, in the appropriate cases, predict whether the excitation or inhibition will be strong or weak. Explain your predictions. (20 points)

5) Review the concept of the Rescorla-Wagner model and its equation. The following questions apply to the equation. The US is food pellets and the CS is a light:

1. In the beginning of training, what is the value of V?
2. In a typical experiment, subjects show large improvements early in training. However, as training progresses, the improvement that results from each conditioning trial gets smaller and smaller. Which term in the equation represents the size of the improvement that occurs with each trial? How does this term change as training progresses? Which term on the right side of the equation causes this change?
3. Assume that after three sessions of training a CS (the only one in this experiment) has been conditioned to asymptote. What will the value of V be at the end of these three sessions?
4. What will the value of V be if the conditioning is continued past the three sessions?
5. Assume that one group of rats is conditioned with 1 pellet of food and the other group is conditioned with 4 pellets of food. Which term in the equation will represent these differences? (25 points)