Study Guide for Exam 1

General Points:

• Bring scantron sheet #4521 and a number 2 pencil to the exam.

• Make sure you have obtained all the class notes. Some of the material presented in lectures is not covered in the book.

• Questions will be true/false, multiple choice, and short-answer/essay.

Study Tips:

• Make notes from the lectures. Study to know all the details related to each concept covered.

• **Some of the true/false questions will be drawn from (but not identical) the Quick Quizzes and Chapter Test in your textbook, so it's a good idea to study those.

• **Also do the study questions at the end of the chapters. These will help you better learn the information.

• Study with a friend: make up exam questions to quiz each other.

• Cover information with your hand and see if you can write it out (and understand what you are writing!)

• Apply the material to your own life; make up your own examples

• Refer back to and memorize the examples that particularly helped you understand a concept.

• Put things in your own words (don't just memorize definitions without understanding them), as I probably won't use the exact wording of definitions provided in the text or in lecture (but the meaning will be identical).

• I will ask questions that require that you be able to apply the information to a real world scenario (not just definition quesions).

• To do well on the exam you have to overlearn the material: really know it!!

Overall concepts covered on the exam: (These are to guide your studying. You should make sure you thoroughly understand all the material covered on and related to each of these topics, and be able to come up with examples that illustrate the concepts. So, know what the concepts are, any characteristics of the concepts, examples of the concept, and any experiments on the concept).

• What is a behavior?
• What is learning? -- understand potential behaviors
• Historical Background
  • From the Book you should know:
    • Aristotle: Empiricism and 4 laws of association(similarity, contrast, contiguity, and frequency)
    • Descartes: Mind-body dualism and the reflex
    • British Empiricists: knowledge through experience (John Locke, etc.)
    • Structuralism--mind studied by breaking into elements
    • Functionalism--study adaptive processes of the mind
  • Behaviorism & Watson's reasons for proposing it
  • 5 schools of Behaviorism (understand their views & characteristics, how they were similar, and how they differed from each other.)
    • Watson's Methodological Behaviorism
      • S-R theory & mechanistic
    • Hull's Neobehaviorism
      • operationalization of internal processes
    • Tolman's Cognitive Behaviorism
      • cognitive map & latent learning (understand the experiments and their findings & conclusions)
    • Bandura's Social Learning Theory
      • imitation & observation
      • reciprocal determinism
    • Skinner's Radical Behaviorism
      • environmental consequences on behavior
• Research Methods
  • Stimulus & Response
  • Appetitive and Aversive
  • Deprivation & Satiation
  • Contiguity and Contingency
  • (You do NOT need to know the recording methods & research designs in particular for the test, although you should be familiar with them to help understand the studies later it the class . So, you do not need to know pages 56-80).

• Elicited Behaviors - what is an elicited behavior?
  • Reflexes & characteristics
  • Fixed Action Patterns & characteristics
• Habituation
• Sensitization
• Opponent-Process Theory of Emotion (what does it say and how does it work?) & problems with the theory
• Classical Conditioning & associative learning
  • Five Elements of CC -- NS, US, UR, CS, & CR (know what they are and how they relate--be able to identify each one)
  • Procedure for conditioning a CS (before, during, and after conditioning)
  • Appetitive & Aversive Conditioning
  • Conditioned Suppression & Suppression Ratio (how it is calculated and what it tells us)
  • Conditioned Facilitation
  • Excitatory and Inhibitory Conditioning
  • Contiguity and Temporal Arrangement of stimuli in conditioning
    • delayed, trace, simultaneous, and backwards
  • Practical Applications of Classical Conditioning (examples of it in the world -- pedophilia, phobias, etc.)
• Basic Phenomena in Classical Conditioning
  • Acquisition & Extinction (factors affecting them)
  • Spontaneous Recovery & disinhibition
  • Generalization & Discrimination
  • Higher Order Conditioning (second order & beyond)--characteristics
  • Sensory Preconditioning
• Properties of a CS that affect conditioning
  • Latent Inhibition
  • Overshadowing
    • compound stimulus
    • what determines salience
  • Blocking
    • Learned Inattention Hypothesis

(Note: There may be more or less material on the exam depending on what material we cover on Tuesday. I'll post another announcement regarding exactly what will be covered after Tuesday).

Test Taking Tips:

• Make sure you answer each question (even if you have to guess on one).

• On true/false questions make sure that you read each one carefully. Don't overlook one word that would change the truthfulness of the statement.

• On the multiple choice questions, make sure you read through each answer thoroughly, and understand exactly what the question is asking. Eliminate answers you know are wrong.

• Don't dwell on questions that confuse you. Come back to them at the end.

• Read all possible choices for each multiple choice question, even if you think you found the correct answer right away.

• Answer all parts of each essay question.

• Answer what the question asks, not just what you know about the topic.

• Make a quick outline on the side to organize your thoughts for an essay question.