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miércoles, 1 de diciembre de 2010

Edward Thorndike - B.F. Skinner

Edward Thorndike

1. Explain Thorndike's puzzle-box experiment.
- Thorndike had a cat put in a trap box he himself constructed. In order to open it, the cat put inside the box was required to open a hatch and also to move a wire with its nose, and after they could reach. Thorndike discovered that the more times he put the cat inside the box, the faster the cats got out of the box. With this he theorized his law of effect.

2. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Effect".
-After doing the puzzle-box experiment, Thorndike theorized that  when someone or something recieves a satisfying result after doing something, then he would do that thing again in order to recieve the result again.

3. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Exercise".
- The law states that when someone or something does something, and continues to do so, he/she/it will become better at doing it because of repetition.

Ivan Pavlov - John B. Watson

Ivan Pavlov:
    
     1. What was Pavlov actually studying when he developed his theory of classical conditioning?
-He was trying to discover what was the function of saliva in digestion in organisms.
    
     2. Explain (in detail) how Pavlov's experiment was conducted.
-Pavlov first operated the dogs he had by making the salivary glands salivate into a tube outside the body. He brought a plate of food without a stimulus, then the dog salivated when he saw food. After a few times doing that the dog started salivating even before the plate was presented, it salivated by hearing Pavlov bring the plate. The, Pavlov tried to make him stop hearing that by making noises with different objects. The dog then salivated when thee noises were related to food as well. Like this he discovered calssical conditioning.
    
     3. Identify the conditioned stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned response from Pavlov's experiment.
-Conditioned Stimulus: It is a neutral stimulus that got to be conditioned.
-Unconditioned Stimulus: It is a stimulus without any stimulus or meaning.
-Conditional Response: It is a response that is obtained by a conditional stimulus, or unconditioned.
    
    4. Explain what extinction means in relation to classical conditioning.
-It means that the once learned stimulus becomes forgotten due to lack of practice of it or the loss of importance of the stimulus.

     5. Explain what stimulus generalization means in relation to classical conditioning.
- Stimulus generalization means that when someone has adapted to a stimulus, then it will apply its knowledge of a stimulus in similar ones as well.

     6. Explain what stimulus discrimination means in relation to classical conditioning.
- It means that when someone has learned a stimulus, and is presented with another one that has similar meaning, then the person or animal can select the best or most meaningful.

     7. Explain at least two limitations of this experiment.
-One is that Pavlov Used only dogs in his experiment, and the second one is that the dog's themselves had been operated in the salivary glands.
   
      8. Explain what Pavlov theorized about how we learn.
-He theorized that we learned in the most basic way by linking things to meanings and by that it made it easier to us to know the meaning of something.