Jia is a bear trainer at the circus. She wants to teach Barney the bear to ride a unicycle. To do this, Jia first rewards Barney for sitting up. Then she rewards Barney only if he sits on the unicycle seat. Next she rewards him only for sitting on the unicycle seat and raising his paws towards the pedals and so on. By show time, Barney can ride the unicycle. This method is called

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Jia is a bear trainer at the circus. She wants to teach Barney the bear to ride a unicycle. To do this, Jia first rewards Barney for sitting up. Then she rewards Barney only if he sits on the unicycle seat. Next she rewards him only for sitting on the unicycle seat and raising his paws toward the pedals and so on. By show time, Barney can ride the unicycle. This method is called

a. shaping.

b. latent learning.

c. higher-order conditioning.

d. reconditioning.

The method Jia is using is called a. shaping.

Explanation:

Shaping is a method commonly used when teaching animals new behaviors. It consists of rewarding simpler actions at first. Then, the actions are broken down or developed into more complex ones. From this point on, the animal is only rewarded if it can perform the new, complex action. The training progresses to the point where the animal is only rewarded when performing the desired behavior intended by the trainer. That is what Jia did with Barney. At first, she rewarded him simply for sitting up. As training progressed, she ended up rewarding him for more complex actions until, finally, rewards were given only when the target behavior - riding the unicycle - was performed.

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