A student sometimes got As on his midterm exams last year when he used his green pen to write the exams. Now he always takes his lucky green pens to exams. How did the students superstitious behavior arise?

OPERANT CONDITIONING

Please wait while the activity loads.
If this activity does not load, try refreshing your browser. Also, this page requires javascript. Please visit using a browser with javascript enabled.

If loading fails, click here to try again

Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]

A student sometimes got A’s on his midterm exams last year when he used his green pen to write the exams. Now he always takes his lucky green pens to exams. How did the student’s superstitious behavior arise?

A	Classical conditioning
B	Operant conditioning
C	Either A or B
D	None of the above

Explanation:

Detailed explanation-1: -Shaping is the process of reinforcing successively closer and closer approximations to a desired terminal behavior. The shaping of behavior starts at an early age.

Detailed explanation-2: -Stimulus generalization is the tendency to respond to a new stimulus as if it is the original conditioned stimulus.

Detailed explanation-3: -For example, after pairing a tone with food, and establishing the tone as a conditioned stimulus that elicits salivation, a light could be paired with the tone. If the light alone comes to elicit salivation, then higher order conditioning has occurred.

Detailed explanation-4: -The main difference between classical and operant conditioning is that classical conditioning associates involuntary behavior with a stimulus while operant conditioning associates voluntary action with a consequence.

There is 1 question to complete.

AP PSYCHOLOGY

LEARNING

OPERANT CONDITIONING