Check understanding
Use a concept to explain a situation. These original scenarios are constructed for learning, not copied textbook assessments, research findings or psychological tests. Your responses stay on this page.
What changed the behavior?
In a constructed learning example, submitting work on time stops a recurring reminder. Over repeated opportunities, on-time submissions become more frequent.
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Negative reinforcement. The specified behavior increased after something was removed. That is negative reinforcement. Negative describes removal, not whether the event is morally bad. The classification depends on the observed change in behavior.
Read the concepts: Reinforcement · Punishment
Keeping information active
A person keeps a short set of directions in mind while deciding which turn to take. They also use familiar knowledge about their neighborhood.
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Working memory supports the current use of information and can draw on long-term knowledge. Working memory supports holding and using information for the ongoing task. Long-term knowledge can help. Naming one system does not establish that the other contributes nothing.
Read the concepts: Working memory · Long-term memory
Reading a population estimate
A report describes heritability of a measured trait in a particular sampled population and environment. It does not examine the causes of any one individual’s score.
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The estimate concerns variation in that population under those conditions. Heritability concerns variation among individuals in a defined population and set of conditions. It does not partition one person into genetic and environmental percentages or establish immutability.
Read the concepts: Heritability · Neuroplasticity
A directive from an authority
In a constructed workplace example, a supervisor explicitly instructs a team member to use a particular reporting format. The employee follows the instruction. No evidence of group pressure is provided.
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Obedience. Obedience concerns responding to an authority’s directive. Conformity would focus on actual or perceived group pressure. Real situations can contain both, but this description supplies evidence of a directive.
Read the concepts: Obedience · Conformity
An attitude and an action
A club member expresses a negative evaluation of applicants from a social group. A separate record documents applicants from that group being treated differently.
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The evaluation is relevant to prejudice; the treatment is relevant to discrimination. Prejudice concerns evaluations associated with group membership; discrimination concerns differential treatment. They can be connected, but evidence about an attitude is not automatically evidence about each action.
Read the concepts: Prejudice · Discrimination · Stereotype
Reading an ambiguous word
A reader uses the surrounding sentence to recognize an unclear printed word. Its visible letter shapes still constrain the possible readings.
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Top-down context can interact with bottom-up input. Prior knowledge and sentence context can influence interpretation, while the current visual input also matters. The concepts emphasize different contributions within an interacting perceptual process.
Read the concepts: Top-down processing · Bottom-up processing · Perception
Several motives at once
A student enjoys solving a puzzle and also wants the course credit attached to completing it.
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Intrinsic and extrinsic motives may both contribute. Inherent enjoyment and a separable consequence are different sources of motivation. They can coexist. This short scenario does not establish how a particular incentive changes later interest.
Read the concepts: Intrinsic motivation · Extrinsic motivation
A cue and an outcome
In a constructed example, a sound reliably occurs before an event that already elicits a response. Later the sound elicits an anticipatory response. No consequence is made contingent on performing a new action.
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Classical conditioning involving a predictive cue. The description centers on a cue predicting another event and an acquired response to that cue. Operant conditioning would center on the relationship between an action and its consequences. Both forms can occur together in more complex situations.
Read the concepts: Classical conditioning · Operant conditioning