A thorough survey of
modern learning and conditioning principles. This course emphasizes the
experimental analysis of learning and adaptive behavior. It demonstrates how our
behavior follows general principles, usually without our awareness, and how
these general principles have been discovered by laboratory research. It also
shows how applied behavior analysis can be used to create positive changes in
our lives and in those around us. The required laboratory component exposes
students to the techniques of the experimental analysis of behavior. It also
allows students to carry out publication-quality research with rats,
culminating in a final research report in APA style. Students will use computer
spreadsheets to organize and analyze the quantitative data they collect, carry
out tests of inferential statistics on those data, and create technical,
publication-quality graphs that depict the quantitative relations in the data
they have collected from their experiments on learning and memory.
- Professor: Reid