Practice Questions, Unit 5: Learning and Cognition

1. Which of the following is NOT an example of something that results from learning?

a. Feeling sad when you see a rose because roses remind you of your deceased grandmother
b. Not liking dogs because you were once bitten by a dog
c. Blinking when a puff of air hits your eye
d. Being able to fix a flat tire on your car

2. Which of the following has the capacity for learning?

a. A newborn human infant b. A human adult

c. A cat d. All of the above

3. Which of the following is an example of habituation?

a. Juan was teasing a dog when it bit him. Because of the pain, he learned not to tease the dog
again.
b. Teresa was trying to learn to knit. At first she had to consciously think about what she was
doing, but after practicing 3 hours, she could knit without thinking about it.
c. Jane just bought a new puppy. At first, the dog’s barking was distracting to Jane, but after a
while she didn’t notice the barking.
d. Kerry loved her boyfriend very much. Now that they have broken up, every time she hears his
favorite song on the radio, she starts to cry.

4. Which of the following is an example of classical conditioning?

a. Damon learns to ride a bike by watching his older brother.

b. Sally dislikes the smell of rose perfume because her mean third-grade teacher wore it.
c. After 20 minutes in the day-care center, Ralph barely notices the squealing of the children at
play.
d. Ted never speeds after receiving a $500 fine for speeding.

5. Which of the following is a Unconditioned Stimulus – Unconditioned Response pair?

a. receiving money – happiness

b. an electric shock to the finger – jerking one’s finger away
c. receiving a promotion – working overtime
d. seeing a snake – fear

6. A real-estate agent wants to sell a home and tells the current owner to put a pan of vanilla extract in
the oven and heat it just before the prospective buyers arrive to look at the home. She knows that the
smell of vanilla in the house will increase the chance that the people looking will buy the home because
people have been classically conditioned to respond favorably to the smell of vanilla. In this example,
what is the Conditioned Response (CR)?
Practice Questions, Unit 5: Learning and Cognition

a. the pleasant emotions evoked by the smell of vanilla

b. the smell of vanilla
c. the memory of grandma baking cookies at Christmas
d. the house

7. Juan wants to increase his son Mario’s tendency to mow the yard on Saturday mornings without
having to repeatedly ask him. To do this, Juan tells him that he will pay Mario $5 when he mows the
yard without first having been told to do so. Juan is using which schedule of reinforcement?

a. fixed ratio c. variable ratio

b. variable interval d. continuous

8. Which of the following is an example of operant conditioning?

a. Byron doesn’t go to the dentist because the last time he did, it was very painful.
b. Byron is afraid of dentists because the last time he went to the dentist, it was very painful.
c. Byron wants to go to the dentist because when his friend Gina went to the dentist, the dentist
gave Gina a toy.
d. All of the above are examples of operant conditioning.

9. Which of the following is a primary reinforcer?

a. receiving good grades

b. food, when you’re hungry
c. receiving a large sum of money
d. winning a free plane ticket in a radio contest

10. Social learning differs from operant conditioning in that ____.

a. in social learning, the person is less aware that learning is taking place
b. in operant conditioning, the person is less aware that learning is taking place
c. in social learning, the person does not have to engage in the behaviour
d. in operant conditioning, the person does not have to engage in the response

11. Which of the following is an example of social learning?

a. Henri can cook because as a child he spent a lot of time playing in the kitchen while his
mother cooked dinner.
b. Johnny slaps another child for taking her toy away.
c. Javier likes toy trains because they remind him of his childhood days.
d. Billy is able to study with the neighbour’s TV playing at full volume.

12. Tyrone watches a violent TV show, but he has never been seen to model any of the behaviours he
has seen on the show. Which of the following statements is true regarding Tyrone’s learning?
Practice Questions, Unit 5: Learning and Cognition

a. Tyrone has not learned anything from watching the show.

b. Tyrone has definitely learned something from watching the show.
c. Tyrone may have learned something from watching the show.
d. At some point in time, Tyrone’s behaviour will definitely change as a result of watching the
show.

13. In an experiment, Dr. Kelly asks participants to name the first example of a “vehicle” that comes to
mind. Based on what you know about concepts, which of the following vehicles would the average
participant be MOST likely to name?

a. a tractor c. an airplane
b. a train d. a car

14. Sue used a chair with wheels to carry a load of books to her car. She piled the books in the seat of
the chair and pushed it to her car. Trina, on the other hand, carried her books by hand, even though she
also had a chair with wheels in her office. Trina was most likely suffering the effects of ____.

a. functional fixedness
b. an ill-structured problem
c. insight
d. stupidity

15. It has been an unseasonably hot and dry for the last month. Today, you are asked to predict the
probability that prolonged heat and drought will occur in the next century as a result of global warming.
You are likely to ___ this probability because of the ____.

a. underestimate; availability heuristic

b. overestimate; availability heuristic
c. underestimate; representativeness heuristic
d. overestimate; representativeness heuristic

16. When we make decisions, we base our decisions in part on ___.

a. the likely outcomes of the decision

b. the probability of obtaining certain outcomes
c. our aversion to risk and loss
d. all of the above

17. Of the 100 people in Harry’s psych. Class, 60 are education majors and 40 are psychology majors. Yet
when Harry first met a classmate named Sally, he guessed that there was a 90% chance that she was a
psychology major because she had a poster of Sigmund Freud on her dorm room wall. Harry likely based
his judgment on ___.

a. the base rate

b. an algorithm
Practice Questions, Unit 5: Learning and Cognition

c. representativeness
d. availability

18. Babies begin ___ when they begin to make ___ sounds.

a. cooing; consonant
b. babbling; vowel
c. cooing; vowel and consonant
d. babbling; vowel and consonant

19. One’s language can influence one’s ____.

a. speech
b. memory
c. perception
d. all of the above

20. Which psychologist would be MOST likely to agree with the following statements: “Intelligence is not
a single ability. We do not possess intelligence. We possess many intelligences.”

a. Robert Sternberg
b. Francis Galton
c. Howard Gardner
d. James McKeen Cattel

21. Gilbert recently developed a new intelligence test that he plans to administer to second-grade
children, but when he wrote the questions, he used an adult-level vocabulary. What would you predict
the test to be?

a. valid and reliable

b. unreliable
c. invalid
d. valid, but not reliable

22. One day, Sabrina’s front door started squeaking at the hinges. She was out of the spray lubricant
that she would normally use for this purpose, so she went to her kitchen and got a bottle of cooking oil.
She dabbed a bit of the oil on the hinge, and the squeak went away. Sabrina best exhibits a high level of
___ intelligence.

a. analytical b. existential
c. practical d. creative

23. Opening a saved file on your computer is analogous to which function of memory?

a. encoding b. storage
c. retrieval d. forgetting
Practice Questions, Unit 5: Learning and Cognition

24. Which of the following BEST illustrates the use of explicit memory?

a. forgetting to get eggs at the grocery store

b. trying to remember the name of a woman you once met at a party
c. automatically thinking of a cat when you see a dog on TV
d. guessing the correct answer on a multiple-choice test

25. Which of the following BEST illustrates the use of implicit memory?

a. knowing the correct answer on a multiple-choice test

b. trying to remember where you left your car keys
c. forgetting where you left your car keys
d. on a hunch, you guess the right answer on a multiple-choice test

26. Which view of memory holds that information must pass through the memory storage systems in a
serial fashion?

a. the three stages model

b. the working memory view of memory
c. the parallel processing view of memory
d. all of the above

27. Remembering the definition of “elaborative rehearsal” is an example of a(n) ____ memory.

a. semantic b. procedural
c. episodic d. sensory

28. You know how to behave when you go to a fast-food restaurant because you have a(n) ___ stored in
long-term memory.

a. episode b. icon
c. script d. proposition

29. You meet and old friend on the street and search your memory for his name. This is an example of
which type of retrieval task?

a. recall b. recognition
c. implicit retrieval d. retrieval based on encoding specificity

30. Decay theory states that forgetting is due to a lack of ____ whereas interference theory states that
forgetting is due to a lack of ___.

a. availability; accessibility b. accessibility; availability

c. encoding; accessibility d. encoding; availability
Practice Questions, Unit 5: Learning and Cognition

31. Mary was married 6 months ago. Much to her dismay, her friends continue to call her by her maiden
name, even though she has legally taken her husband’s name. Mary’s friends are experiencing which
memory phenomenon?

a. encoding specificity b. repression

c. proactive interference d. retroactive interference

32. Which of the following events is MOST likely to produce a flashbulb memory?

a. taking a hard math test

b. being in a serious car accident
c. having a heated discussion with your best friend
d. going to a very scary movie on a date

33. Sally studies psychology for 12 hours on Saturday. Billy studies psychology for 1 hour each day for 12
days. All other factors being equal, who is likely to do better on the upcoming psychology exam?

a. Sally b. Billy
c. Sally and Billy will likely do equally as well
d. We don’t have enough information to predict who will do better

34. Which of the following tasks would be most difficult for a person with permanent anterograde
amnesia (like H.M.)?

a. learning to jump rope b. learning to play a new video game

c. recalling his fifth birthday party d. learning psychology

35. Sarah is learning a list of new words. If you took a PET scan of her brain as she completed this task,
where would you expect to see the greatest brain activity?

a. the cerebellum b. the hypothalamus

c. the hippocampus d. the right frontal lobe

36. Jose was in a car accident and he damaged his cerebellum. Which of the following tasks would be
most difficult for Jose after his accident?

a. learning to play piano b. learning psychology

c. recalling his childhood d. remembering what he had for breakfast