Question

Although Mr. Wright often tells his children about the importance of donating time and money to charitable causes, he rarely does so himself. He believes that this hypocrisy will not rub off on his children, however, as long as he has plausible excuses for his lack of charity.
A. Use your understanding of learning processes to explain how Mr. Wright’s children are likely to be affected by their father’s behavior.
B. What advice would you give to Mr. Wright?
Many people who are addicted to drugs report not being able to control themselves when their drug of choice is available. Learning principles may help explain this lack of control and may provide possible solutions.
Part A. Some people with alcohol dependence report just the smell of alcohol creates a powerful sense of well-being, increasing the desire to drink the alcohol. Explain this reaction using a classical conditioning model, and describe one possible way to decrease the reaction. Use the following terms in your answer.
A. Unconditioned stimulus
B. Unconditioned response
C. Conditioned stimulus
D. Conditioned response
E. Extinction
Part B. In cases of long-term addiction, some users report continuing their drug use to avoid the side effects of being without the drug. Explain this behavior using an operant conditioning model. Use the following terms in your answer.
A. Tolerance
B. Withdrawal
C. Negative reinforcement

Answer 1

Answer:

1. Students should explain that observational learning theory predicts that Mr. Wright's children will imitate both his actions and his excuses. Observational learning studies indicate that observational learning will occur most powerfully when the actions and words of models are consistent; when models do one thing and say another, children will do what they see adults do and say what they hear adults say. Students should advise Mr. Wright to provide an effective model to his children by actually donating time and money to charity and continuing by talk about why this is important. This model is more likely to increase the chances of his children learning this behavior through observational learning.

2. UCS- alcohol

UCR- sense of well-being

CS- smell of alcohol

CR- sense of well-being

-alcohol (UCS) causes the UCR; UCS naturally and automatically cause (UCR) a sense of well-being, without any previous conditioning

-since the smell of alcohol is paired repeatedly with actual alcohol (UCS), it is likely to eventually elicit the UCR (sense of well-being)

—sense of well-being is the UCR to the UCS of alcohol, the smell of alcohol (CS) is likely to eventually elicit the CR of a sense of well-being

-the presentation of the CS (smell of alcohol) without the UCS (alcohol), with repeated pairings, will eliminate the conditioned response (CR). Therefore, extinction has taken place.

3. OC: stimulus (S) —> response (R) —> reinforcement (R1)

-some psychoactive drugs produce a tolerance effect. Drug users need to take increasing doses of the drug to achieve the same physiological effect. Tolerance leads to withdrawal symptoms.

-any drug that produces tolerance leads to withdrawal symptoms. Drug users experience extremely negative symptoms when they are without the drug (strokes, night sweats)

-drug addicts might use psychiatric drugs to alleviate withdrawal symptoms. Negative reinforcement occurs when a behavior is followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus (elimination/reduction of withdrawal symptoms when an addict uses a drug again). This negative reinforcement increases the likelihood that the drug addict will use the drug again.

Explanation: