Exam-style questions

Suggest why acquiring new behaviours through social imitation would be quicker than through operant conditioning. 

-Operant conditioning is a process that requires shaping/gradual change of behaviour. 

-Social imitation or learning is a process that can be quickly observed, imitated and reinforced. 

Explain why it would be necessary to obtain informed consent from both the children and their parents. 

-Informed consent is when participants agree to participate in a study and are told the aim/ what they will have to do in the study. 

-Children under the age of 16 are unable to give sole consent to participate. 

-A parent or guardian must give informed consent for their child to take part in psychological research

Identify two examples of sex-typed behaviour in the children.

- Boys were more likely to imitate physical aggression. 

-Girls were more likely to imitate verbal aggression (although finding was not at level of significance). 

-Boys were more likely to imitate same-sex models than girls. 

-Non-imitative verbal responses from children reflected attitudes around sex-typed behaviour, e.g. 'that's no way for a lady to behave'. 

Explain what is meant by the guideline of 'choice of species and strain'. 

-animals must be scientifically suitable based on their relevance to the behaviors being investigated.

Explain why positive reinforcement was used in the Fagen et al. study

-Positive reinforcement was used as a more ethical alternative to punishment. 

-Positive reinforcement was used as part of protected contact which is safer for elephants and handlers 

-Positive reinforcement techniques have been found to be effective in training other animals. 

Explain one benefit of Fagen et al.'s study. 

- The study showed that positive reinforcement techniques could be used to obtain trunk wash samples as most of the sample were successfully trained to give an accurate sample.

-Accurate TB testing can help both elephants and humans. This is useful because the disease is transmissible between species. 

Describe two findings from the study by Fagen et al.

-The four juvenile elephants successfully learned the trunk wash, however the adult elephant did not. 

-Some behavioural tasks were more difficult than others |l|, e.g. the trunk-here task required more offers/cues than the bucket or blow-into-bucket tasks. 

-Elephants gradually improved their performance over time; the mean success rate went from 39% after 10 sessions of training to 89.3% after 35 sessions of training. 

Evaluate the strengths of the study by Fagen et al. 

-Use of controls increased the validity of the results (the elephants did not receive cues or signals from mahouts during training sessions). 

-Ethically sound procedure (elephants were housed appropriately, minimised pain and suffering). 

-Use of quantitative data increased objectivity (use of percentages to compare success of training over time). 

Evaluate the weaknesses of the study by Fagen et al. 

 -A small sample was used from one single stable (five elephants may not be representative of how other elephants respond to SPR training). 

-There were additional distractions to the elephants during training such as the presence of a baby elephant (this could lower the reliability of the training programme) 

-Individual differences between the elephants could have affected the results (e.g. one of the elephants was ill; age of the elephants may also have played a factor in their ability to learn the trunk wash).These are examples of good answers. Alternative answers may also be appropriate. 

Explain why the study by Saavedra and Silverman was carried out. 

- Researchers wanted to treat a nine-year-old boy with a button phobia using a type of exposure therapy that could reduce the disgust and distress associated with buttons. 

Define what is meant by operant conditioning. 

- learning through consequence/reward 

Describe how operant conditioning was used to help reduce the boy's phobia in the study. 

-The study used contingency management/a form of positive reinforcement therapy. 

-The boy was rewarded for showing less fear/handling the buttons. 

Describe the conclusions from the study by Saavedra and Silverman

-Emotions and cognitions relating to disgust are important when learning new responses to phobic stimuli. 

-Imagery exposure can have a long-term effect on reducing the distress associated with specific phobias.