MALKA212 Refinement of Behavior Analytic Terms Course description

This course is a refinement and nuancing of basic and higher-order concepts from research on respondent and operant conditioning.

Coursework requirements from MALK4000-401, MALK4000-403 and MALKA211 or equivalent must be approved to participate and submit coursework requirements in MALKA212.

On successful completion of the course, the student has the following learning outcomes classified as knowledge and competence:

Knowledge

The student can

• differentiate between classical and operant conditioning, and provide examples of interaction between classical and operant conditioning
• describe the contingency in respondent and operant conditioning, and differentiate between contingency and contiguity
• give satisfactory accounts of aspects of concepts in classical conditioning, including reflexes, conditioning procedures and their effectiveness, and experimental methods
• give satisfactory accounts of aspects of concepts in operant conditioning, including reinforcement, punishment, reinforcement schedules, stimulus control, motivating operations, higher order classes, and molar and molecular analyses
• give an account of a functional perspective on ethical behavior and discuss how it is determined by contingencies operating at individual as well as cultural levels.

Skills

The student can

• distinguish between motivating operations and discriminative control
• differentiate between extinction and forgetting
• decide whether conditioning and extinction has taken place
• interpret data from cumulative records, generalization gradients, histogram, and contingency spaces
• discuss ethical issues when using nonhuman animal subjects in research
• discuss the ethical considerations involved in the use of punishment

Competence

The student can

• evaluate whether a behavior is the result of classical or operant conditioning
• predict whether and how relevant environmental variables might affect the immediate and future probability of behavior
• evaluate whether desired stimulus control is established or not

In the BSCA specialisation, campus-based lectures and seminars are the main teaching methods, in addition to study questions and student presentations. The lectures will partly be based on Interteaching sequences using readings from the curriculum. Texts used for Interteaching are announced in the digital learning platform of the university. In the BSII specialisation, the main teaching method is digital course sequences, and feedback on details of course content, and supervised discussion groups will be available during pre-determined time periods. Feedback on written assignments is used in both specialisations.

The following required coursework must be approved before the student can take the exam:

• 3 individual written assignments submitted digitally, each with a maximum length of 6000 characters, including spaces. References are to be included in the 6000 characters.

Individual home examination, 4 hours, combination of essay assignments and multiple choice/digital tests. Exam questions are in English. Students may submit their exams in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English.

All

Grade scale A-F

Essay assignments: All answers are assessed by one examiner.

An external examiner is used regularly, at a minimum of every third completion of the course. When selecting answers for external evaluation, a minimum of 10 percent of the answers shall be included, with no fewer than 5 answers. The external examiner’s assessment of the selected answers shall benefit all students.

Multiple choice/digital test: quality assured by an examiner and automatically assessed.