PSYC 332 Behaviour Analysis Assignment Questions 2025-26 | VUW

PSYC 332 Final Integration Exercise

Choose one question from each set below. Use information from across PSYC332 to answer the two questions you have selected. Only include material from PSYC332 – you can draw on anything from lectures, labs or assigned readings.

You must incorporate material from lectures after Test 2 into your answer to at least one question. When you submit your answers, we will ask you to briefly tell us which material you have incorporated from after Test 2, just to make sure we don’t miss it. The answer to this question is not included in your word count.

Draft your answers in a Word document. You will then copy and paste each of your answers into the assignment (copying and pasting rather than uploading the file helps us mark more quickly). Nuku should preserve formatÝng like bold text, underlining and numbered lists.

Each question has a 250-word limit. You can decide how to split these words across parts A and B. There is no penalty for exceeding this word limit, but if your answer is longer than 250 words, we will not read anything from the 251st word on. You can use any format you like to answer.

Your answers must be your own work written in your own words. 

If you chose to describe a specific experiment, you should reference it using an APA-style in-text citation. Do not include a reference list. Citations do not count in the word limit. You do not need to provide citations for other information you have learnt through lectures or the textbook.

Material used in your answer to one question cannot be used in your answer to the other question.

Please include the question number but not the question text in your submission. Including the question text can inflate your similarity index on Turnitin. The question number is not included in your word count. 

Critical Thinking Questions Set

1. The behaviour analytic approach to language use, remembering, and other private events is that they are not different from other behaviours, and might be understood in terms of the four-term contingency. To demonstrate this, some researchers have investigated these behaviours experimentally in controlled environments with non-human animals.

Select one behaviour listed above, and:

a. Describe a method or procedure that has been used to investigate this behaviour in non-human animals. Be sure to identify how the procedure incorporates relevant elements of the four-term contingency.

b. Critically evaluate whether this method or procedure used with non-humans captures the key features of this behaviour in humans.

2. Across the course, you have learnt about a range of procedures researchers use with human participants in the lab with the aim of better understanding day-to-day human behaviour outside the lab. These procedures can be called experimental analogues.

a. Describe one human experimental analogue you have learnt about. What is one important result that researchers have found using this analogue, and why is it important? 

b. Critically evaluate this experimental analogue as a tool for research to better understand day-to-day behaviour.

3. Maree tended to put off doing dishes until there were no clean plates to use. When it was Maree’s day to do the dishes in the morning, she intended to wash them right after dinner, but in the evening, she didn’t follow through. 

Anne developed an intervention which she describes as “theory-based”. In the first two days of the intervention, Maree began listening to her favourite funny podcast while washing the dishes. Next, Anne implemented an intervention where Maree agreed to do the dishes as soon as there were more than 11 items. If Maree did the dishes when there were 12 items, her partner provided her with a coffee immediately. If she waited until there were 15 items, she had to provide her partner with a coffee. After the intervention, Maree reported that she enjoyed doing the dishes more and does them even if there are only 7 or 8 dishes in the sink- she doesn’t even wait for 12 items to accumulate or for her partner to be around to witness it.

a. Outline a component of the intervention based on Pavlovian conditioning, and another based on operant conditioning.

b. Take either of the components identified in a. and describe what one of the following models might have predicted about the success of the intervention:  the Rescorla-Wagner Model, the Hull-Spence theory of discrimination, the hyperbolic discounting model, or behaviour momentum theory. In your answer, make sure you outline the model and why it leads to the prediction.

Creative Problem-Solving Question Set

4. Toby, a young adult with developmental disabilities, is having difÏculty learning self-care skills like cooking simple meals and maintaining personal hygiene. You discover that Toby lacks some generalised operants most adults have: rule-governed behaviour, imitation, and equivalence class formation. You decide to design an intervention to teach one of these generalised operants. This is a first step towards working on self-care skills with Toby. Your goal is to teach the generalised operant, not the self-care skill directly.

a. Describe what generalised operants are, and how they differ from other (simple) operants.

b. Select one of the three generalised operants listed above. Describe an intervention to help Toby develop this generalised operant. As part of your answer, select one feature of a good applied behaviour analytic intervention and explain how you would incorporate it into your intervention. Hint: consider the list titled “to carry out a good ABA intervention you should” that we discussed in lectures.

5. Sam has decided to quit drinking coffee. They decided to take an extended holiday while giving up and found it easy to not drink coffee while they were away. However, after arriving back in Wellington, Sam went out with friends to their usual cafe. Arriving at the café, Sam suddenly had a strong desire for a coffee. When they arrived back at their flat, the urge for a coffee went away.

a. Outline how Pavlovian conditioning could account for Sam’s sudden desire to resume coffee drinking. Identify potential CS, US, CR, and UR

b. Based on past research and/or theory, outline a better intervention to help Sam quit coffee and/or not relapse back to their caffeine addiction. As part of your answer, select one feature of a good applied behaviour analytic intervention, identify it, and explain how you would incorporate it into your intervention. Hint: consider the list titled “to carry out a good ABA intervention you should” that we discussed in lectures.

6. Slot machines (also called pokies or fruit machines) are a form of gambling particularly associated with gambling harm. 

Some more gambling information: people who gamble problematically are also more likely to engage in other risk-taking behaviours; a higher percentage of people living in poorer areas have problems with gambling; slot machines are typically in venues that provide a range of other reinforcers such as food, alcohol and social interaction.

The New Zealand government has implemented a range of policies that might reduce gambling harm. These include: banning smoking or vaping while gambling, pop-up messages asking people whether they want to end or continue a gambling session, and advertisements describing the negative consequences of gambling.

Select two of the following areas of behavioural research that you have learnt about in the course: behavioural momentum, nudging, evaluative conditioning, the generalised matching law, rule-governed behaviour, delay discounting, and probability discounting. For each:

a. Describe an important theory, concept, or research finding and

b. Explain how that theory or research finding might be related to the persistence of gambling and/or the effectiveness of the government interventions described above. Make sure you draw specific connections between the theory or research finding you described for a. and you answer for b