Unit 04: Learning

Question 1

The learned response that occurs to the conditioned stimulus is known as the __________.

a) conditioned stimulus
b) unconditioned stimulus
c) conditioned response
d) unconditioned response

Answer 1

c)

Question 2

A once neutral stimulus that elicits a conditioned response because it has a history of being paired with an unconditioned stimulus is known as a(n) __________.

a) unconditioned response
b) unconditioned stimulus
c) conditioned response
d) conditioned stimulus

Answer 2

d)

Question 3

In classical conditioning, the process during which a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus is known as __________.

a) discrimination
b) acquisition
c) extinction
d) spontaneous recovery

Answer 3

b)

Question 4

Your dog barks every time a stranger’s car pulls into the driveway, but not when you come home. Reacting to your car differently is a sign of __________.

a) generalization
b) acquisition
c) spontaneous recovery
d) discrimination

Answer 4

d)

Question 5

Conditioning a response can take longer if the subject experiences the conditioned stimulus repeatedly before it is actually paired with a US. This phenomenon is known as ___________.

a) acquisition
b) extinction
c) latent inhibition
d) preparedness

Answer 5

c)

Question 6

________ removes the immediate effects of an aversive stimulus, whereas ________ removes the possibility of an aversive stimulus from occurring in the first place.

a) Avoidance learning; escape learning
b) Negative reinforcement; negative punishment
c) Escape learning; avoidance learning
d) Positive reinforcement; positive punishment

Answer 6

c)

Question 7

Lucy is having difficulty understanding a concept in her psychology textbook. She asks her instructor for assistance and ends up getting the question correct on the exam. This is an example of _________.

a) negative reinforcement
b) positive punishment
c) negative punishment
d) positive reinforcement

Answer 7

d)

Question 8

A basic need such as food may be used as a ________ reinforcer, whereas a stimulus whose value must be learned is a ________ reinforcer.

a) secondary; shaping
b) primary; secondary
c) continuous; secondary
d) primary; continuous

Answer 8

b)

Question 9

The difference between a discriminative stimuli and discrimination (as it applies to operant conditioning) is that

a) a discriminative stimulus tells you when behaviours could be reinforced whereas discrimination involves responding to some stimuli but not others.
b) discrimination tells you when behaviours could be reinforced whereas discriminative stimuli involve an animal responding to some stimuli but not others.
c) discriminative stimuli can only affect behaviour after the process of discrimination has taken place.
d) discriminative stimuli are used only in animal research (which involve simple cues) where discrimination occurs in psychological studies involving human participants.

Answer 9

a)

Question 10

A reinforcement schedule in which the first response occurring after a set amount of time leads to a reward is known as a ________

a) fixed-interval schedule.
b) variable-interval schedule.
c) variable-ratio schedule.
d) fixed-ration schedule.

Answer 10

a)

Question 11

be shifted from one type of memory to another?

a) serial position processes
b) control processes
c) recency effects
d) primacy effects

Answer 11

b)

Question 12

Chris forgot about his quiz, so he had only 5 minutes to learn 20 vocabulary words. He went through the list once, waited a minute, and then went through the list again in the same order. Although he was confident, his grade indicated that he missed approximately half of the words. Which words on the list did he most likely miss, and why?

a) According to the recency effect, he would have missed the last few words on the list.
b) According to the primacy effect, he would have missed the first few words on the list.
c) According to the primacy effect, he would have missed all of the words on the list.
d) According to the serial position effect, most of the items he missed were probably in the middle of the list.

Answer 12

d)

Question 13

Which of the following systems coordinates attention and the exchange of information among memory storage components?

a) phonological loop
b) episodic buffer
c) visuospatial sketchpad
d) central executive

Answer 13

d)

Question 14

Memories for information that was learned without our being aware of it are known as ___________.

a) nondeclarative memories
b) episodic memories
c) semantic memories
d) declarative memories

Answer 14

a)

Question 15

_________ is a process that all memories must undergo to become long-term memories.

a) Retrieval
b) Chunking
c) Amnesia
d) Consolidation

Answer 15

d)

Question 16

The time and manner in which information is retained between encoding and retrieval is known as __________.

a) recall
b) elaborative rehearsal
c) maintenance rehearsal
d) storage

Answer 16

d)

Question 17

According to the levels of processing approach to memory, thinking about synonyms for a word (i.e., thinking about the word’s meaning) is one method of _______ processing that should _______ memory for that term.

a) shallow; increase
b) deep; increase
c) deep; decrease
d) shallow; decrease

Answer 17

b)

Question 18

If you are learning vocabulary for a psychology exam, you are better off using a(n) ________ technique.

a) elaborative rehearsal
b) maintenance rehearsal
c) consolidation
d) serial processing

Answer 18

a)

Question 19

Which statement best sums up the status of flashbulb memories?

a) Over time, memory for details decays, similar to what happens with non-flashbulb memories.
b) Recall for only physical details is highly accurate.
c) Due to the emotional strain of the event, flashbulb memories are largely inaccurate.
d) Both emotional and physical details are remembered very accurately.

Answer 19

a)

Question 20

Dual coding seems to help memory by

a) allowing for maintenance rehearsal.
b) ensuring that the information is encoded on two separate occasions.
c) duplicating the rehearsal effect.
d) ensuring that the information is encoded in multiple ways.

Answer 20

d)

Question 21

A dental drill can become an unpleasant stimulus, especially for people who may have experienced pain while one was used on their teeth. In this case, the pain elicited by the drill is a(n) __________.

a) unconditioned stimulus
b) unconditioned response
c) conditioned response
d) conditioned stimulus

Answer 21

b)

Question 22

____________ is the reoccurrence of a previously extinguished conditioned response, typically after some time has passed since extinction.

a) Discrimination
b) Acquisition
c) Extinction
d) Spontaneous recovery

Answer 22

d)

Question 23

When a heroin user develops a routine, the needle can become the ______, whereas the body’s preparation for the drug in response to the presence of the needle is the ______.

a) CS; CR
b) US; CR
c) CS; US
d) US; UR

Answer 23

a)

Question 24

Why are humans biologically prepared to fear snakes and not guns?

a) Guns are not a natural phenomenon, whereas snakes do occur in nature.
b) Guns kill fewer people than do snakes.
c) Guns are a more recent addition to our evolutionary history.
d) Snakes are more predictable than guns.

Answer 24

c)

Question 25

As a consequence of misbehaving, many parents give their children a “time out” (where the child sits alone instead of being with other people). How does this consequence affect a child’s behaviour?

a) It takes away a stimulus in order to increase bad behaviour.
b) It takes away a stimulus in order to decrease bad behaviour.
c) It adds a stimulus in order to increase bad behaviour.
d) It adds a stimulus in order to decrease bad behaviour.

Answer 25

b)

Question 26

Jack’s mother rewarded him for cleaning his messy room by baking him cookies. As a result, Jack cleaned his room every week. However, after a few months, Jack’s mother stopped rewarding his cleaning behavior. As a result, Jack didn’t clean his room very often. This is an example of ________.

a) Skinner’s paradox
b) reward devaluation
c) extinction
d) discrimination

Answer 26

c)

Question 27

Jennifer is about to leave for her walk to work and notices it has started to rain. She decides to wear her rain boots and raincoat and puts her umbrella up as she leaves the house. This is an example of ______________.

a) secondary reinforcers
b) escape learning
c) avoidance learning
d) positive reinforcement

Answer 27

c)

Question 28

Pete cannot seem to stop checking the change slots of vending machines. Although he usually does not find any money, occasionally he finds a quarter. Despite the low levels of reinforcement, this behavior is likely to persist due to __________.

a) positive punishment
b) generalization
c) escape learning
d) the partial reinforcement effect

Answer 28

d)

Question 29

Frederick trained his parrot to open the door to his cage by pecking at a lever three times. Based on this description, which schedule of reinforcement would he most likely have used?

a) fixed-ratio
b) fixed-interval
c) variable-ratio
d) variable-interval

Answer 29

a)

Question 30

Observational learning

a) is the same thing as teaching.
b) involves a change in behaviour as a result of watching others.
c) is not effective for long-term retention.
d) is limited to humans.

Answer 30

b)

Question 31

The unconditioned stimulus is defined as

a) the stimulus that automatically elicits the unconditioned response.
b) the previously neutral stimulus that has acquired the capacity to produce the conditioned response.
c) the previously neutral stimulus that automatically produces the unconditioned response.
d) the stimulus that remains neutral throughout classical conditioning.

Answer 31

a)

Question 32

When a conditioned response is elicited by a similar (but not exact) form of the original stimulus, ___________ has occurred.

a) conditioning
b) generalization
c) discrimination
d) extinction

Answer 32

b)

Question 33

Last month, Wouter became sick after eating two chili dogs and he now finds the very thought of chili dogs to be repulsive. Wouter has experienced

a) evolutionary drift.
b) conditioned taste aversion.
c) generalization.
d) higher-order conditioning.

Answer 33

b)

Question 34

How does the concept of preparedness explain why it is more difficult to condition a fear of flowers than a fear of snakes?

a) Humans have evolved a strong predisposition to fear things known to cause severe injury or death.
b) Humans already have an innate fear of snakes while a fear of flowers develops only if a person has been hurt by one.
c) Humans have evolved a strong predisposition to fear all predators.
d) Humans cannot be conditioned to fear things that are not actually a threat, such as flowers.

Answer 34

a)

Question 35

Why is it that a drug user may experience very different effects from the same drug if they use that drug in a new location?

a) Drug users abandon the safe practices associated with their usual location.
b) Cues that normally trigger a conditioned response that helps prepare the body for the drug are missing in the new location.
c) Drug users tend to ingest a larger dose in new locations.
d) Cues from the new location trigger a stronger conditioned response than in the usual location.

Answer 35

b)

Question 36

Recently, a mattress store tried to make itself more memorable through the use of a visual gimmick. They purchased an old, full-sized sedan, painted it to look like local police cars, and parked it out front on the driveway. Since they did so, the store employees noticed that people have started slowing down in front of the store. This is probably happening because

a) it takes time to perform stimulus discrimination and slowing down is the best way to get that extra time.
b) the sales at the mattress store are actually quite appealing and the car is meaningless.
c) the sedan looks like a police cruiser and people are conditioned to slow down to avoid speeding tickets.
d) most people slow down to look at changes in their environment.

Answer 36

c)

Question 37

The use of “negative” emotions to change or bias people’s opinions of political candidates is known as

a) manipulation.
b) evaluative conditioning.
c) aversive conditioning.
d) operant conditioning.

Answer 37

b)

Question 38

Presenting a stimulus to a person or animal that increases the probability of a particular response is known as

a) negative punishment.
b) vicarious punishment.
c) positive punishment.
d) positive reinforcement.

Answer 38

d)

Question 39

In which type of learning is an organism’s behavior influenced by the consequences of that behavior?

a) classical conditioning
b) vicarious learning
c) operant conditioning
d) insightful conditioning

Answer 39

c)

Question 40

Marley is going door-to-door selling Girl Guide cookies. Marley is motivated to win a prize for selling the most cookies. Which schedule of reinforcement underlies the cookie program?

a) variable-interval.
b) fixed-interval.
c) variable-ratio.
d) fixed-ratio.

Answer 40

c)

Question 41

Which of the following is the best distinction between a ratio and an interval schedule of partial reinforcement?

a) A ratio schedule determines reinforcement by the number of responses that have occurred, while an interval schedule determines reinforcement by the passage of time.
b) An interval schedule is primarily used for the administration of punishment, while a ratio schedule is primarily used for administration of reinforcement.
c) A ratio schedule is primarily used for the administration of punishment, while an interval schedule is primarily used for administration of reinforcement.
d) An interval schedule determines reinforcement by the number of responses that have occurred, while a ratio schedule determines reinforcement by the passage of time.

Answer 41

a)

Question 42

Food is an example of a primary reinforcer because ________, whereas praise is an example of a secondary reinforcer because _________.

a) it satisfies a basic motivational need; it satisfies a basic human desire
b) it satisfies a basic motivational need; it acquires value through learning
c) it is taught to be valuable; it satisfies a common human desire
d) it satisfies a learned need; it satisfies a desire

Answer 42

b)

Question 43

Greg tends to take aspirin when he has a headache. Greg’s behaviour is an example of

a) shaping.
b) classical conditioning.
c) negative reinforcement.
d) generalization.

Answer 43

c)

Question 44

Which of the following is an example of negative punishment?

a) taking away privileges if a child does not follow classroom rules
b) ending class 10 minutes early if students work hard during class
c) giving a child candy for completing her or his homework
d) removing a child’s chores when he or she completes homework

Answer 44

a)

Question 45

When we don’t see immediate evidence that learning has taken place, but rather see it at some point in the future, we have witnessed the phenomenon of

a) innate learning.
b) insight.
c) latent learning.
d) vicarious learning.

Answer 45

c)

Question 46

When Tolman and Honzik studied the ability of rats to successfully navigate a maze, which of the following did they find?

a) Rats were able to learn without receiving reinforcement.
b) Rats learned only when reinforcement was presented immediately following behaviour.
c) Rats were not able to learn if reinforcement was withheld for long periods of time.
d) Rats learned when receiving punishment but not when receiving reinforcement.

Answer 46

a)

Question 47

Studies of latent learning emphasize the importance of ______________ on learning.

a) conditioning
b) cognitive processes
c) practice
d) reflexes

Answer 47

b)

Question 48

When the lights are off in your home, you are typically able to find your way around without hitting or bumping into furniture because you have __________________ of your surroundings.

a) a visual map
b) a cognitive map
c) a spatial map
d) a learning map

Answer 48

b)

Question 49

Observations of nonhuman animal species and the means by which they teach their own offspring adaptive and effective behaviours have found which of the following?

a) Several animals can imitate behaviours demonstrated by humans, but they cannot learn new behaviours from members of their own species.
b) Only primates are capable of imitation; hence the phrase “monkey see, monkey do.”
c) Humans are the only species known to transmit information through demonstration and imitation.
d) Researchers have observed members of several species transmitting new behaviours to others through imitation.

Answer 49

d)

Question 50

Observing children who played with a doll after watching an adult play in a violent manner produced which of the following findings reported by Albert Bandura?

a) Exposure to aggressive models did not influence levels of aggression in children.
b) Exposure to nonaggressive models led to increased levels of aggression in children.
c) Exposure to aggressive models led to decreased levels of aggression in children.
d) Exposure to aggressive models led to increased aggression in children.

Answer 50

d)

Question 51

________ lasts less than a second, whereas ________ holds information for extended periods of time, if not permanently.

a) Iconic memory; long-term memory
b) Short-term memory; sensory memory
c) Sensory memory; short-term memory
d) Long-term memory; process memory

Answer 51

a)

Question 52

Brain scans show that recently encountered items are processed in one area of the brain, whereas older items are stored in a different area. Which concept does this evidence support?

a) complex control processes
b) retrieval
c) multiple memory stores
d) a single memory store

Answer 52

c)

Question 53

Which of the following working-memory systems combines images and sounds into story-like episodes?

a) central executive
b) episodic buffer
c) visuospatial sketchpad
d) phonological loop

Answer 53

b)

Question 54

Memories that can be verbalized, whether they are about your own experiences or your knowledge about the world, are called __________.

a) declarative memories
b) conditioned memories
c) procedural memories
d) nondeclarative memories

Answer 54

a)

Question 55

Mary suffered a head injury during an automobile accident and was knocked unconscious. When she woke up in a hospital the next day, she could tell that she was in a hospital room, and she immediately recognized her sister, but she had no idea why she was in the hospital or how she got there. Which memory system seems to be affected in Mary’s case?

a) semantic memories
b) working memories
c) nondeclarative memories
d) episodic memories

Answer 55

d)

Question 56

Long-term potentiation can be described as

a) a decrease in a neuron’s electrical signaling.
b) two or more neurons generating stronger signals than before, which then persist.
c) decreased neural networking.
d) an example of working memory.

Answer 56

b)

Question 57

Damage to the hippocampus is most likely to produce ________.

a) blindness
b) consolidation
c) retrograde amnesia
d) anterograde amnesia

Answer 57

d)

Question 58

Prolonging exposure to information by repeating it to yourself is referred to as ________.

a) elaborative rehearsal
b) maintenance rehearsal
c) storage
d) recall

Answer 58

b)

Question 59

When taking a math exam, the concept of ________ would indicate that you would do best if you took the exam in the same physical setting as the setting where you learned the material.

a) state-dependent memory
b) context-dependent memory
c) environmental dependency process
d) sensory-dependent memory

Answer 59

b)

Question 60

Jonathan witnessed a robbery. The police then asked him to select the perpetrator from a lineup. You can be most confident in his selection if

a) the lineup included individuals of different races and ethnicities.
b) the authorities had the lineup presented all at the same time so Jonathan could compare the individuals.
c) the authorities smiled after Jonathan’s response so that he would feel comfortable during the lineup procedure.
d) Jonathan was given the option to not choose any of the people from the lineup if no one fit his memory.

Answer 60

d)

Question 61

In order to increase the efficiency with which our short-term memory stores data, we often rely on a strategy called chunking. This involves

a) immediately forgetting irrelevant details.
b) combining information into meaningful units.
c) storing long-term memories.
d) arranging details into a hierarchy from most to least important.

Answer 61

b)

Question 62

____________ memories include actions or behaviours that you can remember and perform without awareness.

a) Explicit
b) Semantic
c) Declarative
d) Nondeclarative

Answer 62

d)

Question 63

Often when someone loses consciousness, they are unable to recall the events just prior to being knocked out. The degree of memory loss is often related to the duration of loss of consciousness (i.e., more memory loss when unconscious state lasts longer). Why does this occur?

a) With loss of consciousness, there is interference with long term potentiation.
b) The process of consolidation is interrupted, preventing the transfer of memories from short- to long-term stores.
c) Loss of consciousness impairs the ability to encode retrieval cues, so information is essentially “lost.”
d) Because of its location in the brain, the hippocampus is highly susceptible to injury from sharp impacts.

Answer 63

b)

Question 64

Daniela, a researcher, identifies a neuron in the brain that sends signals to a second neuron. After stimulating the neurons, she finds that the signal being sent between the neurons is stronger than before. What phenomenon can explain this result?

a) long-term potentiation
b) excitatory conduction
c) decay
d) synaptogenesis

Answer 64

a)

Question 65

Ricardo is a 72-year-old male suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He has severe difficulty recalling recent events and tends to discuss events that happened 40 or 50 years ago. For someone with Alzheimer’s disease, this is a common phenomenon and represents

a) intergraded amnesia.
b) retrograde amnesia.
c) anterograde amnesia.
d) posterograde amnesia.

Answer 65

b)

Question 66

The Atkinson-Shiffrin model contains the following memory stores:

a) sensory, short-term, and long-term
b) visual, short-term, and long-term
c) sensory, short-term, mid-range, and long-term
d) episodic, short-term, and long-term.

Answer 66

a)

Question 67

How can we distinguish between short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM)?

a) Rehearsal only applies to long-term memory and not short-term memory, so we know they operate according to different principles.
b) The primary and recency effects and the evidence from the serial position curve suggest that short-term and long-term memory are distinct systems.
c) There is no valid evidence that short-term and long-term memory are distinct systems.
d) The evidence from recent card-sorting tests indicates that short-term and long-term memory are distinct systems.

Answer 67

b)

Question 68

The order of the basic memory processes in which information enters the memory system and is later used is

a) iconic memory, echoic memory, olfactory memory.
b) sensory memory, short-term memory, working memory, long-term memory.
c) encoding, storage, retrieval.
d) sensation, transduction, perception

Answer 68

c)

Question 69

Amira was in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, to attend a conference on electronic components. She went for a run in the morning along the Potomac River and saw the airplane crash into the Pentagon. She can still recall the explosion, black smoke, and confusion of the event. To this day, Amira vividly remembers what she was doing. This is an example of a(n)

a) flashbulb memory.
b) flashlight memory.
c) state-dependent memory.
d) content-dependent memory.

Answer 69

a)

Question 70

If you were a follower of the levels of processing model, first proposed by Craik and Lockhart, you would believe that

a) the longer someone is exposed to information, the more they will encode.
b) memories are easier to recall in the same context they were originally processed and encoded.
c) long-term memories are processed at a deeper level than short-term memories.
d) thinking deeply about information leads to better encoding than shallow thinking.

Answer 70

d)

Question 71

One way to improve memory is to use techniques that allow the information to be stored in more than one form. This is known as

a) maintenance rehearsal.
b) dual coding.
c) engramming.
d) polar processing.

Answer 71

b)

Question 72

Which rehearsal method would be best suited for improving long-term learning and remembering?

a) elaborative rehearsal
b) maintenance rehearsal
c) differentiated rehearsal
d) constructional rehearsal

Answer 72

a)

Question 73

In this form of learning, retrieval is more effective when it takes place in the same physical setting (e.g., a classroom) as encoding.

a) context-dependent
b) mood-dependent
c) content-dependent
d) state-dependent

Answer 73

a)

Question 74

Shakira was studying vocabulary terms, but quickly shifted her attention to the television when she heard the news that one of her favourite actors had died in an accident. According to research on the effects of emotions on memory, what effect would the emotions related to the news story have on Shakira’s memory for the vocabulary words?

a) Shakira should remember the vocabulary terms but forget what she saw on the news.
b) The emotions from the news should lead Shakira to forget her vocabulary terms.
c) Shakira should have better memory for vocabulary terms that are in the news report but worse memory for those that are not.
d) The emotions may actually increase Shakira’s memory of the vocabulary terms.

Answer 74

d)

Question 75

Information that does not fit our expectations for a situation, but is not extremely unexpected, is likely to be __________.

a) forgotten.
b) accommodated.
c) assimilated.
d) chunked.

Answer 75

a)

Question 76

Dr. Loftus’s study on ______ demonstrated that by simply changing “bumped” to “smashed” in the question “How fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other?”, participants would rate the accident as much more severe than it actually was.

a) the differentiation effect
b) the relational effect
c) the misinformation effect
d) the attribution effect

Answer 76

c)

Question 77

To reduce the likelihood that a key witness to a crime mistakenly picks an innocent person out of a photograph lineup, police detectives should use which of the following methods?

a) They should show the photos one at a time, not all at once.
b) They should tell the witness that the person who committed the crime is definitely one of the people in the photos.
c) They should make sure the investigator asking the witness questions knows which photo is of the suspect.
d) They should tell the witness that the witness has to pick someone, even if he or she is unsure.

Answer 77

a)

Question 78

Some experts object to the concept of helping a client “recover” a lost memory. Which of the following accurately summarizes the main thrust of this objection?

a) No one has ever claimed to have successfully recovered a repressed memory.
b) Recovery of traumatic memories would have no therapeutic benefit.
c) All psychologists agree that trauma does not cause memories to be repressed.
d) The techniques used to recover memories tend to resemble the techniques used by researchers to create false memories.

Answer 78

d)