Deck 11: Behaviorism

Question 1

The work of Russian scientists Sechenov, Bekhterev, and Pavlov was among the antecedents of behaviorism.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

John B. Watson became a prominent behaviorist after a successful career in advertising.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Watson argued that consciousness is not a legitimate subject for scientific study.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

According to Watson, habits and inborn reflexes are primarily a matter of subvocal speech.

Question 5

Watson proposed that emotions involve the striped muscles while instincts involve the unstriped muscles.

Question 6

Hunter used experiments with delayed reactions and with the temporal maze to study symbolic processes.

Question 7

Karl Lashley used his studies of mass action and equipotentiality to demonstrate that learning is a series of chained reflexes.

Question 8

Skinner proposed that any stimulus that changes the probability of a preceding response is a reinforcer.

Question 9

Watson's, Hull's, and Spence's versions of behaviorism were molar, while McDougall's, Tolman's, and Lashley's was molecular.

Question 10

Classical behaviorism was replaced by information theory and cognitive psychology.

Question 11

Among the antecedents of behaviorism were

A) Russian reflexologists
B) Hunter's work on symbolic processes in animal
C) Tolman's sign-Gestalt expectations
D) Lashley's work on mass action and equipotentiality

Question 12

Loeb, Romanes, Morgan, Jennings and Lubbock

A) all studied animal behavior
B) all undertook studies of delayed reaction
C) were among the reflexologists of the mid 20th century
D) showed that instincts are hereditary, but that habits are reflex arcs

Question 13

John B. Watson argued that

A) all of these
B) thinking is subvocal speech
C) consciousness is not a legitimate subject for scientific study
D) conditioning can explain all learned behavior

Question 14

The S-R connection, according to the behaviorists, is

A) the basic unit of behavior
B) a result of hereditary instinctual processes
C) an inborn reflex
D) subvocal speech

Question 15

The motor theory of thinking proposes that

A) thought is subvocal speech or other minute muscular movements
B) thinking is an instinctive motor phenomenon
C) conditioning controls instinctive thought processes
D) "motors" in the brain control thinking

Question 16

Hunter's procedure of delayed reaction

A) studies animals' responses to stimuli that have been removed
B) investigates behavior in the temporal maze
C) measures responses to delayed subvocal speech
D) shows that animal behavior may display features that occurred at lower levels of evolution

Question 17

Lashley's extirpation experiments on rat memory

A) all of these
B) demonstrated mass action and equipotentiality
C) showed that parts of the brain can take on new functions
D) convinced him that learning is not a series of chained reflexes

Question 18

Hull's drive-reduction theory of reinforcement argued that

A) reduction of a drive is required for reinforcement
B) satisfiers strengthen, and annoyers weaken, S-R connections
C) the hypothetico-deductive method generates "cognitive maps"
D) none of these

Question 19

Skinner's utopian society, Walden Two, is based on

A) the environmental control of behavior
B) classical Pavlovian conditioning
C) cognitive "sign-Gestalt expectations"
D) Hullian drive-reduction reinforcement

Question 20

Classical Watsonian behaviorism

A) dominated US psychology during the second quarter of the 20th century
B) dominated US psychology during the last quarter of the 20th century
C) superseded information-based cognitive psychology
D) was followed by the dominance of structuralism and functionalism

Question 21

What did Pavlov mean by a "conditional reflex?"

Question 22

What role did conditioning play in Watson's behaviorism?

Question 23

What was Watson's position on the role of consciousness in a science of psychology?

Question 24

What is the motor theory of thinking?

Question 25

How did the behaviorists contrast instincts and habits?

Question 26

What role did drive reduction play in Hull's hypothetico-deductive theory of reinforcement?

Question 27

Why did Hull argue that psychology must use what he called the hypothetico-deductive method?

Question 28

What was Guthrie's single law of learning?

Question 29

What is meant by "physicalism" and by "cgs terms?"

Question 30

What two principles of brain function did Lashley propose?

Question 31

What preceding school is most closely related to behaviorism?
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Answers to short answer questions for Chapter 11: Behaviorism

Question 32

What is "subvocal speech," and what role did it play in the behaviorist school?

Question 33

How did Hunter propose to study symbolic processes in animals?

Question 34

What did Lashley mean by "mass action" and by "equipotentiality," and what experimental results led him to conclude that they characterize the brain?

Question 35

Contrast Tolman's molar with Hull's molecular approach

Question 36

What did Tolman mean by "sign-Gestalt expectations?"

Question 37

What was Skinner's operational definition of a "reinforcer?"

Question 38

What, according to Skinner, is "descriptive behavioristics?"

Question 39

What is a "cognitive map," according to Tolman?

Question 40

What was the chief objection of the behaviorist school to all the other schools?

Question 41

Briefly summarize the history of the behaviorist school during the 20th century