Download Chapter 5 Quiz

Chapter 5 Quiz
Name: __________________________ Date: _____________
1. Psychologists formally define learning as:
A) a process that produces a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge as
a result of past experience.
B) a process that produces a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge
due to natural or instinctive processes.
C) a relatively permanent change in behavior that is the result of developmental
factors or maturation.
D) replacing old habits with new habits.
2. To produce a learned response in classical conditioning, what two elements are
repeatedly paired?
A) a neutral stimulus and a stimulus that naturally elicits a response
B) a stimulus and a response
C) a behavioral response and a natural environmental consequence
D) an unconditioned stimulus and a voluntarily emitted behavioral response
3. Which of the following has the greatest impact on the strength of the conditioned
response?
A) the magnitude of the reinforcer
B) the timing of stimulus presentations
C) the size of the unconditioned response
D) the degree of latent learning during conditioning trials
4. Every Friday, Dr. Cruz would give a quiz in his psychology class. Students quickly
learned to be nervous on Friday mornings, just before each quiz. Halfway through the
semester, Dr. Cruz stopped giving quizzes on Fridays and the students' anxiety began to
diminish with each passing week in which there was no quiz. The decrease in the
students' anxiety may be attributed to the process of:
A) spontaneous recovery.
B) extinction.
C) stimulus generalization.
D) latent learning.
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5. Habitual coffee drinkers often experience an almost immediate sense of alertness when
they sip a fresh cup of coffee, even though it takes about twenty minutes for the caffeine
in the coffee to reach significant levels in the bloodstream. What is the best explanation
for this phenomenon?
A) After being repeatedly paired with the drug caffeine, the smell and taste of coffee
have become a conditioned stimulus that elicits the conditioned response of
alertness.
B) Negative reinforcement of a biologically prepared response is occurring.
C) Coffee drinking reinforces alertness on a fixed-ratio schedule of reinforcement.
D) The alertness is an example of the spontaneous recovery of a biologically prepared
response.
6. Modern research on advertising and marketing techniques has shown that:
A) most people are not affected by the use of classical conditioning methods in
advertising.
B) attitudes toward a product or a particular brand can be influenced by the use of
classical conditioning techniques in advertising campaigns.
C) modern advertising has abandoned the use of classical conditioning techniques,
since they have been shown to be ineffective.
D) pairing products with stimuli that naturally elicit fear is the only way in which
classical conditioning techniques affect brand preferences or product choices.
7. Your friend Madison became very ill a few hours after eating the fried chicken special
in the college cafeteria. Now, Madison feels queasy whenever she smells fried chicken.
Having read the learning chapter in your psychology class, you explain that:
A) since Madison only experienced one pairing of the fried chicken and illness, her
queasy feelings cannot be a classically conditioned response.
B) Madison has experienced a learned taste aversion, which can occur after only one
pairing of food and illness.
C) Madison has been negatively reinforced for eating fried chicken, because
consuming it led to an aversive consequence.
D) latent learning has occurred and Madison can overcome the queasy feeling by
forcing herself to eat the fried chicken.
8. Martin Seligman noted that phobias seem to be quite selective, involving only certain
stimuli. To explain this, Seligman proposed that:
A) humans are biologically prepared to develop fears of objects or situations that may
once have posed a threat to humans' evolutionary ancestors.
B) children learn from their parents at a very early age to fear these types of stimuli.
C) people rely primarily on vision, so visual stimuli lead to better fear conditioning.
D) most phobias are due to early childhood experience with painful or frightening
stimuli.
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9. Classical conditioning involves _____, while operant conditioning involves _____.
A) reflexive behaviors; voluntary behaviors
B) responses emitted by organisms; responses elicited by unconditioned stimuli
C) responses acquired through observational learning; responses acquired through
imitation.
D) voluntary behaviors; reflexive behaviors
10. Which of the following statements best captures the flavor of Thorndike's law of effect?
A) New stimuli can be conditioned to produce reflexive behaviors.
B) Learning can only occur when the CS provides information about the probability of
the UCS occurring.
C) Rewarded behaviors are more likely to be repeated, while unrewarded behaviors
are less likely to be repeated.
D) By first observing the actions of others, success can occur the first time a task is
attempted.
11. Skinner coined the term operant to describe:
A) active behaviors that operate on the environment to generate consequences.
B) the operational relationship between a conditioned stimulus as it relates to a
reinforcer.
C) involuntary behaviors that were subject to the laws of learning but operated
independently.
D) the relationship between behaviors and conditioned stimuli that elicited the
behaviors.
12. Positive reinforcement _____ the likelihood of a behavior's being repeated. Negative
reinforcement _____ the likelihood of a behavior's being repeated.
A) increases; increases
B) increases; decreases
C) decreases; increases
D) decreases; decreases
13. At the Acme Widget Company, the top salesperson each month is rewarded with a
private parking space by the front door of the company. Using operant conditioning
terms, the salesperson's behavior is being maintained by:
A) a conditioned reinforcer.
B) negative reinforcement.
C) a primary reinforcer.
D) reinforcement by removal.
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14. Howard's cat meows incessantly, and Howard frequently, but not always, gives in and
feeds her. Howard decides to stop reinforcing this problem behavior, so he ignores his
cat whenever the cat starts meowing. When Howard initiates this extinction procedure,
what is likely to happen?
A) The cat's meowing will quickly stop altogether.
B) The cat's meowing will temporarily decrease, then increase.
C) The cat's meowing will temporarily increase, then decrease.
D) The cat will leave and find a new home.
15. If you reinforce successively closer approximations of a behavior until the desired
behavior is displayed, you are using the operant conditioning procedure called:
A) negative reinforcement.
B) stimulus discrimination.
C) shaping.
D) generalization training.
16. Whose behavior is most likely to show the greatest resistance to extinction?
A) Carlos, who gets everything he asks for from his grandparents when they are out
shopping
B) Lydia, who is always told “No, we cannot afford that” by her parents when they are
out shopping
C) Kaitlyn, who does not ask for anything from her grandparents when they are out
shopping
D) Rick, who sometimes gets what he asks for from his parents when they are out
shopping
17. After dogs have experienced inescapable shocks, they are placed in a shuttlebox in
which they can easily jump over a barrier from one side of the shuttlebox to the other. If
the dogs have developed learned helplessness, they would most likely respond to
another shock by:
A) jumping over the barrier to escape the shock.
B) doing nothing.
C) jumping out of the shuttlebox altogether.
D) trying to bite the experimenter.
18. According to psychologist Albert Bandura, four processes are involved in observational
learning. Which of the following is NOT one of those processes?
A) attention to the behavior that is to be imitated
B) forming and storing a mental representation of the behavior to be imitated
C) immediate reinforcement for the imitated action
D) transforming the mental representation into actions that can be performed
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19. Studies found that adolescents who watched a great number of television programs with
a high level of sexual content:
A) were twice as likely to become sexually active in the next year than adolescents
who watched the least amount of sexually oriented television programming.
B) were more aggressive than adolescents who did not watch television programs with
sexual content.
C) were more likely to drop out of school than adolescents who watched the least
amount of sexually oriented television programming.
D) were more likely to be arrested as adults for domestic violence.
20. What general conclusions can be drawn about the nature of learning?
A) Fundamentally, all behaviors are natural extensions of physiological reflexes.
B) Only simple reflexive behaviors can be modified through conditioning.
C) The capacity to learn is essential to the survival of all humans and nonhuman
animals.
D) All aspects of human and animal behavior, including complex behaviors, can be
explained without reference to cognitive processes.
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