Dr. Marcus is conducting a laboratory experiment to investigate how different schedules of reinforcement affect the resistance to extinction of a target-touching behavior in domestic dogs. He trains twenty dogs to touch a red disc with their nose. Group 1 is reinforced with a food treat after every 5 nose-touches (a fixed-ratio schedule), whereas Group 2 is reinforced with a food treat after an unpredictable number of nose-touches that averages out to 5 (a variable-ratio schedule). Once the behavior is firmly established, Dr. Marcus ceases all reinforcement and records the duration (in seconds) that each dog continues to perform the nose-touching behavior before ceasing the response.
State the independent variable (IV) and dependent variable (DV) in this study.
Practise Edexcel A Level Psychology Content with exam-style questions for A Level Psychology. 1,059 questions covering Bowlby's work on attachment, Ainsworth and the Strange Situation, Research into deprivation, Research into privation, Research into day care, Cross-cultural research into attachment, Autism, Individual differences, and Developmental psychology, matched to the Edexcel A Level Psychology (9PS0) specification and written in Paper 1, Paper 2 and Paper 3 style. Every question includes a full worked solution and mark scheme, so you can see where marks are awarded rather than just whether you got the answer right.
