In a famous experiment of animal behaviour, newly hatched goslings were observed to follow the actively moving experimenter. This process, where some young animals learn to follow the first encountered moving object, is explained by which of the following?
C. Imprinting, first described by Konrad Lorenz is a form of learning that occurs in the very early life of certain animals. The exposure to a stimulus must occur during a critical period, though this could be of a short duration. Imprinted associations are very resistant to change. Lorenz described newly hatched goslings that are programmed to follow a moving object, typically the mother, but in this experiment followed Lorenz because he was the first moving object they came in contact with. Imprinting does not depend on any reinforcement and it is not clear whether this occurs in human infants and all primates.
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‘If you eat your spinach, you can have your dessert’.
This is an example of which one of the following?
E. Premack’s principle is based on the concept that high-frequency behaviour can be used to reinforce a low-frequency behaviour. In this particular example, children eat a lot of sweets (high-frequency behaviour), but this can be made contingent on eating their greens (lowfrequency behaviour), thus increasing this behaviour (also called the Grandma’s rule).
Brian is dressed shabbily when he walks into the New Year party for junior doctors. When he finds everyone in the room to be dressed at their best, he feels depressed and unattractive.
Which of the following can explain the above?
C. The Social Comparison Theory was developed by Festinger. It refers to an individual’s drive to look around him in the society to evaluate his own abilities. When the individual compares himself to someone who is deemed socially better, it is called an upward social comparison. The opposite is called a downward social comparison. Often individuals try to compare themselves with someone with whom they should be reasonably similar, for example their peers. The Self-Referential Encoding (SRE) effect holds that information relating to the self is preferentially encoded and organized above other types of information.
In a medical careers fair, most psychiatry trainees are noted to form a small social group on their own. The principle by which we categorize and identify ourselves as psychiatrists is explained by which one of the following?
A. Social Identity Theory is concerned with explaining when and why individuals act as part of social groups. At the psychological level it tries to answer why individuals identify with the group that they are a part of. At a social level, it tries to explain why individual interactions are different from interaction between individuals as members of different groups. The main concepts of social identity include:
Social comparison refers to comparing oneself with one’s peers while social coherence refers to identifying commonalities with the wider social network.
Harry was recently diagnosed with an advanced carcinoma of the lung. He goes through a phase where he blames himself for the illness and asks ‘why me?’.
Which one of the following stages of reaction to impending death is he in?
B. The stage of dying described in this scenario corresponds to that of ‘anger’. Kubler-Ross described the fi ve stages of dying in her book ‘Death and dying’. According to her theory, people’s reaction to impending death follows fi ve stages. The first one being a state of denial, where the person is in a state of shock and denies the diagnosis of terminal illness. He may blame the doctor for giving him a wrong diagnosis. The second stage is that of anger, where the person becomes irritable and frustrated, often asking the question ‘Why me? ’ blaming himself or even God for being in the state he is in. In the third stage of bargaining, the person may try to negotiate with the doctor or family members or God to alleviate his illness in exchange of good deeds. Stage four is that of depression, where the cognitive triad of hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness are demonstrable. This may require treatment with antidepressant if severe. The fi fth and final stage is of acceptance where the patient acknowledges and comes to terms with the inevitability of his/ her death.
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