Study Guide

Psychology 3202 - Test 3

1. Understand Thorndike's "Puzzle Box" experiments. Why did he do them? What did he find? How did he interpret the results?

2. What was Guthrie's explanation of Thorndike's results? What are his views about the Law of Effect?

3. Understand Hull's "need reduction" and "drive-reduction" explanation of the Law of Effect.

4. Understand the difference between Hull's approach to the Law of Effect and Skinner's "empirical" Law of Effect.

5. Be able to define positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment according to Skinner.

6. Be able to identify the occurrence or nonoccurrence of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment from descriptions of situations.

7. Understand the technique of shaping by successive approximations.

8. Understand Skinner's views about operant responses and the concept of the discriminative stimulus.

9. Understand the difference between Meehl's and Skinner's approach to the Law of Effect.