• Director's Note
• Get Training Materials
• Sessions This Week
  • In the Classroom: Classical and Operant Conditioning
  • In the Library: Summarizing Operant Conditioning
  • In Practice: Analysis of Behaviors
• Training Checklist
• Next Week's Sessions

Director's Notes

Welcome to your third week at the Institute. I hope everyone is on track and getting into the groove of the semester.

I have been reading the icebreakers this week and getting to know everyone. I think we have a great group of interns and am excited to be working with you this semester. The threaded discussions that everyone posted this last week will help us to continue to get to know one another even better. I am enjoying reading everyone's pretest. You are providing me with helpful information that assists me in getting to know you better. Everyone that sent me a pretest should receive some individual feedback by this evening.

This week I am issuing the following additional reminder:

• Quizzes
  While you can view your quiz score immediately after you submit the quiz, some quizzes will have short or long answers or fill in the blanks that will make it necessary for me to hand grade these items. This will not be completed until the following week because I wait until the due date has passed to insure everyone has taken the quiz so I can grade them all at once. At times, I may drop a question due to obviously poor wording or other common errors in test creation so it is likely that the total possible points may change if this occurs. Once I have posted the correct answers then you should certainly review your quiz and your score and send me an email if you have any specific questions about items. If you do this prior to when I grade then I will likely send you an email asking you to wait until I have graded the quizzes and posted the answers. I know waiting a week to find out your score on a quiz might be agony for some, but I do not think it is any different than taking a quiz on campus in class and receiving your grade the following week in class. So if you keep this in perspective then maybe it won't drive anyone too crazy to wait for my review prior to seeing all the correct answers.

NEW THIS WEEK

We have 2 chapters to read in the Ormrod text again this week. These two chapters cover classical and operant conditioning. Based on results of your pretest, behaviorism is familiar to many but all the different stimulus-response types and combinations can sometimes be overwhelming. With these 2 chapters I am also providing you the opportunity to listen to two lectures (audio with PowerPoint slides), one on early behaviorism (classical conditioning) and one on radical behaviorism (operant conditioning). These lectures are not meant to replace your reading of the text but serve only to supplement what you learn from the text. The content of your quizzes is taken directly from your text readings and not from these lectures although these lectures might further explain concepts that might need clarifying. If you prefer this format for information delivery you might want to try it out. I am not promising that I will have these every week but these are two lectures I have in my library (so don't be surprised if they reference other text materials that we may not currently be using) and that follow rather well with the content of these chapters. Along with these lectures I have provided note pages that you may want to use to follow along with the lecture. These note pages are for the lecture and not for the text although you might be able to fill in some of the blanks using your text. Please check below in the training materials section for the links to download the note pages and the lectures. You will also need the real audio player in order to listen to the lectures. A link to download this free player is also provided in the training materials section.

Our objectives this week (please read this as "likely questions on the quizzes for this week") are to:

1. Discuss and identify assumptions of behaviorism including equipotentiality, tabula rasa, S-R, black box, and parsimony
2. Describe Pavlov’s early experiments in classical conditioning.
3. Label each of the elements of classical conditioning in an example
4. Indicate the order in which the three stages of classical conditioning occur
5. Identify the most accurate descriptions of extinction, spontaneous recovery, stimulus generalization, stimulus discrimination, higher-order conditioning, and counterconditioning in classical conditioning
6. Discuss contemporary perspectives of classical conditioning.
7. Identify statements describing learning, the law of effect, law of exercise and their revisions within Thorndike's connectionism theory
8. Identify statements describing the law of frequency and law of recency from Watson
9. Identify statements describing contiguity theory
10. Identify Guthrie's definition of habit, discuss the processes by which habits can be broken, and identify appropriate uses of punishment from Guthrie.
11. Identify statements consistent with Hull's S-O-R theory.
12. Identify and describe aspects of Hull's intervening variables, habit strength, drive, inhibitory factors, and habit-family hierarchy.
13. Compare and contrast different early behaviorist theories of learning
14. Compare and contrast classical and operant conditioning
15. Distinguish between instances of classical and operant conditioning
16. Identify accurate descriptions of operant conditioning principles
17. Identify the most accurate descriptions of operant, free operant level, terminal behavior, extinction, and superstitious behavior in operant conditioning
18. Identify examples of extinction, shaping, chaining , cueing
19. Identify examples of and apply schedules of reinforcement
20. Distinguish between positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment
21. Describe the roles of reinforcement and punishment in operant conditioning
22. Correctly classify examples of operant conditioning into types of reinforcement, punishment, and extinction
23. Correctly classify the schedule of reinforcement being used in an example
24. Use the following operant terms to explain examples of behavior: reinforcement, punishment, extinction, schedules of reinforcement, shaping, chaining, and fading
25. Describe contributions behaviorist theories have made to learning and instruction
26. Discuss the limitations of behavioral learning theories in accounting for all types of behavior
27. Determine when when operant conditioning is appropriate
28. Distinguish between bogus and genuine concerns of using reinforcement
29. Define, describe, and recognize examples of escape and avoidance (active and passive) learning
30. Describe Mowrer's two-factor theory of avoidance learning.
31. Distinguish between Punishment I and Punishment II
32. Identify and discuss disadvantages of punishment as well as evidence of the effectiveness of punishment
33. Describe uses of punishment in classroom settings
34. Determine effective uses/methods of punishment for yourself
35. Identify and follow guidelines for using punishment
36. Describe learned helplessness and how this phenomenon occurs/develops
    

Get Training
Materials

Each week this section will provide you with any necessary material that will be essential for you completing sessions.

Task #1:
If you plan on checking out the audio lectures this week you will need to give your computer additional capabilities to fully participate in this course. You will need to have :

• Real Player (Download the Free Real Player - link in the right column - there is no cost or time limit associated with this one)
  

on your computer. Some of you may already have this. Check before you take the time to download and install it.

If you have any difficulties email Melissa (your Internship Coordinator).

Task #2:

Download note pages for Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 (these are in Word format).

Download the Classical Conditioning (early behaviorists) lecture.

Download the Operant Conditioning (radical behaviorists) lecture.

• Email your Director;
• Email the Mentor;
• Email other interns.
• Refer to the Course FAQ.