1. Why did simultaneous and backward conditioning seem to pose problems for the principle of contiguity? How can these apparent anomalies by explained?
2. The principle of contiguity suggests that contiguity is both necessary for conditioning (conditioning will occur only if the CS and US occur closely together in time) and sufficient (if a CS and US occur together, then conditioning will occur). How did the research of Rescorla, Garcia, and Kamin pose problems for this principle?
3. How did Rescorla disentangle the roles of contiguity and contingency in conditioning?
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4. How did Garcia and Koelling show that the conditioning of a stronger aversion to a taste than to a light was not simply the result of greater salience of the taste as a conditioned stimulus?
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5. How might classical conditioning contribute to an animals survival? Why might it be better not to associate a US with all the stimuli that precede it?
6. How did Kamin account for blocking?
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7. What is the difference between signal and substitution accounts of conditioning? What evidence supports each?
8. What is the two-system hypothesis? How does it account for the conflicting evidence on whether a CS functions as a signal or a substitute for the US?
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9. The two-system hypothesis suggests that conditioning can occur even when we are not consciously aware of the relationship between the CS and the US. What kind of evidence has been used to test this claim, and what has it shown?
10. How did Rescorla and Wagner build on Kamin's work? What changes did they make to his explanation of blocking?
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11. What equation did they use to predict learning? What does each symbol represent?
12. Why didn't Rescorla and Wagner try to determine the real values of the parameters c and Vmax? What approach did they take instead?
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13. What are the three main criteria usually used to evaluate theories? How does the Rescoral-Wagner model fare on each?
14. Why did the evidence for latent inhibition pose a problem for the Rescoral-Wagner model?