Nash is fed up with hearing his friends brag about the tricks their dogs can do,so he decides to train his hyacinth macaw how to shoot basketball,using a bird-size ball and hoop.He starts out by giving Indigo a treat for touching the ball with his beak.When Indigo reliably touches the ball,Nash begins reinforcing Indigo for picking the ball up in his beak,and,behavior by behavior,eventually trains Indigo to shoot hoops.Nash is using ____.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Nash is using shaping, which involves reinforcing successive approximations of the desired behavior. He starts with a simple behavior (touching the ball with his beak) and gradually reinforces more complex behaviors, such as picking the ball up and shooting hoops. This is different from classical conditioning, which involves pairing a neutral stimulus with a reflexive response (e.g., Pavlov's dog salivating at the sound of a bell) and observational learning, which involves watching and imitating the behavior of others. Reflex arcs refer to the neural pathways involved in reflexive behaviors (e.g., pulling your hand back from a hot stove).

Nash Is Fed Up with Hearing His Friends Brag About