Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
1
00. According to the textbook, the main problem with
the concept of ESP (extrasensory perception) is that:
a. ESP phenomena are not replicable
b. it is too parsimonious
c. it is impossible to use controls in such research
d. all of the above
00. What kind of learning process is most likely to
involve the autonomic nervous system:
a. operant conditioning
b. classical conditioning
c. imitative learning
d. extinction
00. A habituated response typically reappears after the
passage of time. This is most similar to what other
learning phenomenon:
a. the acquisition curve
b. partial reinforcement
c. generalization
d. spontaneous recovery
00. There is an error in textbook’s diagram of the
blocking phenomenon in classical conditioning. The
error is:
a. it doesn’t show the reinforcement procedure
b. it shows a mouse instead of a rat
c. it mislabels original stimulus and second stimulus
d. it doesn’t indicate what the UCS and UCR consist of
00. In Thompson’s research on eyeblink conditioning,
rabbits do not produce a conditioned blink to a sound
after part of the cerebellum is lesioned. Suppose it is
argued that this occurs because the lesion just destroys
the rabbit’s ability to blink. To test this hypothesis, you
should:
a. see what happens when you present the UCS only
b. see what happens when you make another lesion
c. make a lesion in some other part of the brain
d. omit the UCS
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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00. Which of the following is/are examples of
correlation research:
a. comparing the incidence of heart disease in people
with different personalities.
b. looking at emotional response differences in males and
females
c. comparing SAT scores of people who do or do not
take SAT training courses
d. all of the above are examples of correlational research
00. Suppose a subject in a conditioning experiment
experiences 50 pairings of CS and UCS, 25 occurrences
of CS only, and 25 occurrences of UCS only, in a
random order. The contiguity principle would predict
_________ while the contingency principle would
predict ___________.
a. conditioning will occur; conditioning will not occur
b. conditioning will not occur; conditioning will occur
c. conditioning will occur; conditioning will not occur
d. conditioning will not occur; conditioning will not
occur
00. In classical conditioning, “contingency” refers to
_______, while in operant conditioning “contingency”
refers to:
a. autonomic nervous system reactions; voluntary
nervous system reactions
b. UCS occurrences; operant response occurrences
c. using an aversive UCS; using primary punishment
d. CS-UCS pairings; response-reinforcement pairings
00. In the punishment experiment by Skinner described
in the textbook, rats were first trained to lever-press for a
food reward. The effect of then starting to slap a rat’s
paw when it touched a lever was:
a. the same as the effect of extinguishing the bar-press
response
b. to suppress bar-pressing permanently
c. to temporarily suppress lever-pressing
d.to produce a very fearful animal
00. In the Jack & Jill experiment, food reinforcement did
not occur immediately but only at the end of a long
sequence of responses. It appears that such learning is
made possible mainly by:
a. partial reinforcement schedules
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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b. discrimination training
c. secondary reinforcement
d. variable ratio reinforcement schedules
00. In one study, Salk observed the infant-holding
behavior or women who had just given birth. This
research is best described as a:
a. correlational study
b. experimental study
c. anecdotal study
d. observational study
00. Comparing rates of left and right handed holding of
infants as a function of normal vs. low birth weight
would not be considered a true experiment because of:
a. lack of control over assignment of subjects to
conditions
b. absence of blind controls
c. lack of objectivity
d. absence of random sampling
00. According to the textbook, gambling is most like
which reinforcement schedule?
a. fixed interval
b. fixed ratio
c. variable interval
d. variable ratio
00. Which term best describes the phenomena that a dog
can learn a sound coming from one location means “raise
left leg”, and a sound coming from another direction
means “raise your right leg”, while it takes dogs forever
to learn that a metronome tick means “raise left leg” and
a buzzer means “raise right leg”?
a. extinction
b. belongingness
c. discriminate
d. chaining
00. The definition of shaping is:
a. establishing a new response by reinforcing successive
approximations to it.
b. reinforcing a behavior with the opportunity to engage
in another behavior.
c. reinforcing an organism for responding to one stimulus
and not for responding to another stimulus.
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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d. discontinuing reinforcements for behavioral responses.
00. _____ is an example of a characteristic that primarily
evolved for preferential mate choice.
a. bright beautiful feathers
b. big sharp horns
c. greater strength
d. superior size
00. Most of the studies used by Buss in support of his
sexual strategies theory come from:
a. experimental research
b. case histories
c. survey studies
d. naturalistic observation
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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00. In order to investigate the hypothesis that an infant is
held to sooth the infant with the maternal heart sound
two randomized groups were created. In group A 60
infants were given a heart beat sound, and in group B 60
infants were given no heart beat sound, and
the amount of crying was measured. The heart beat/no
heart beat groups would be the __________ variable and
the amount of crying would be the ________ variable.
a. internal, external
b. external, internal
d. dependent, independent
d. independent, dependent
00. Investigation of the effects of paroxetine on socially
avoidant behavior, 60 patients were either given
paroxetin or a placebo. The independent variable is the
__________ and the dependent variable is the
__________.
a. drug, social avoidance
b. social avoidance, drug
c. social avoidance, decrease in shyness
d. decrease in shyness, social avoidance
00. The reflex that causes you to look in the direction of
a car alarm when it is set off is an ___________, and
_________ is what occurs when you cease paying
attention to it.
a. orienting reflex, habituation
b. habituation, orienting reflex
c. orienting reflex, sensitization
d. sensitization, orienting reflex
00. Watson used __________ as the UCS to train little
Albert to avoid white furry animals.
a. shock
b. noise
c. scolding
d. restraint
00. Overdose can occur when a heroin addict injects
heroin in a new environment going through the typical
drug injection ritual. This phenomena may occur because
a _______ did not occur to prepare the body for the drug.
a. CS
b. UCS
c. UCR
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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d. CR
00. In order to train a rat to press a lever for food, the
pellet of food drops intermittently and unpredictably.
This schedule of reinforcement is known as
____________ ratio.
a. partial
b. fixed
c. intermittent
d. random
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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00. To create a secondary reinforcer, you should:
a. follow a primary reinforcement immediately by
another primary reinforcer
b. use a continous reinforcement schedule such as FR-10
c. present a neutral stimulus in conjunction with a
primary reinforcer
d. present two conditioned stimuli during classical
conditioning
00. Pressing a bar to turn off an electric shock is an
example of _____________.
a. negative reinforcement
b. punishment
c. positive reinforcement
d. secondary reinforcement
00. Punishment seems effective in preventing a behavior
when:
a. it is relatively strong
b. it occurs very soon after the behavior
c. it is contingent on the behavior
d. all of the above
00. ___________ is learning the meaning of a signal,
where _____________ is learning about consequences.
a. classical conditioning, operant conditioning
b. operant conditioning, classical conditioning
c. shaping, operant conditioning
d. shaping, classical conditioning
00. Marty is fast asleep. Suddenly the light turns on and
he opens his eyes. Opening his eye is a
___________________________.
a. conditioned stimulus
b. conditioned response
c. unconditioned stimulus
d. unconditioned response
00. Which of the following is not part of Buss’s theory
or attraction and mating:
a. it is partly based on Darwin’s theory of evolution by
selection.
b. mate selection is arbitrary and culture-bound.
c. mating strategies are context-dependent, depending on
whether the situation presents itself as a short-term or
long-term mating prospect.
Psychology 100 Madigan
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d. there are differences in mating strategies between men
and women.
00. During arousal, the increase in sweat production and
opening of pupils is controlled by the sympathetic system
of the _____________.
a. autonomic nervous system
b. endocrine system
c. central nervous system
d. somatic nervous system
00. According to Trivers’ ____________ of the sexes is
the fundamental influence on the major sex differences
in mate preference and sexual selection.
a. relative parental investment
b. intersexual competition
c. preferential mate choice
d. both b and c
00. According to one of Buss’s hypotheses of strategies
of human mating, men seeking a short term mate will
solve the problem of identifying _________ women,
whereas men seeking a long-term mate will solve the
problem of identifying __________ women.
a. high sex drive; fertile
b. physically attractive; reproductively valuable
c. fertile; sexually accessible
d. fertile; reproductively valuable
00. Cultural differences of physical beauty tend to center
on _________.
a. physical cues of youth
b. height-weight ratio
c. facial symmetry
d. physical cues on health
00. The addictive actions of drugs depends largely upon
a specific region of the brain known as the
_______________.
a. cerebellum
b. hippocampus
c. nucleus accumbens
d. prefrontal cortex
00. The current definition of psychology given in the
text is the systematic study of
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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a. behavior and experience
b. the mind
c. methods of motivating and controlling others
d. abnormal thought and behavior
00. The “demand characteristics” of research have to do
with:
a. the use of non-volunteer participants
b. research subjects figuring out the purpose or
hypothesis of a study
c. the problems associated with forced interviews or
surveys
d. the basuc requirements for large, random samples
00. Someone who supports the position of determinism
(as opposed to free will) believes that:
a. people can change their own behavior if they try hard
enough
b. the development of behavior depends more on the
environment than on genetics
c. every behavior has a cause
d. the only way to find out why people act as they do is
simply to ask them
00. Scientists would be most uncomfortable making
which of the following statements:
a. "my facts have been proven"
b. "my theory is parsimonious"
c. "my variables have been operationally defined"
d. "correlation does not necessarily imply causation"
00. To say that a theory is falsifiable means that
a. evidence is already available that contradicts the
theory
b. one can imagine evidence that would contradict the
theory
c. various scientists disagree on whether the theory is
correct
d. the theory depends on assumptions that are not
parsimonious
00. Some investigators claim they have taught monkeys
to understand spoken English, but another scientist
argues that the results might be due to a Clever Hans
effect. What does this mean?
a. the procedure works only if training begins during
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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infancy
b. the procedure works only with a few carefully selected
and especially bright individuals
c. the monkeys might be responding to subtle visual cues
accidentally given by the investigators
d. the results are not replicable
00. Which of the following could be an operational
definition of curiosity?
a. the mental activity experienced by a child in the
presence of brightly colored objects
b. the number of unassigned books that someone reads
during a month
c. discomfort provoked by recognizing that one does not
understand something
d. a desire to gain knowledge for its own sake
00. In order to study the attitudes of the people who live
in Tennessee, I obtain a copy of the census of that state
and interview every 1,000th person on that list. My
procedure will provide an approximately
a. normal sample
b. experimental sample
c. proportional sample
d. random sample
00. If the correlation between ariable A and variable B is
-.5, then
a. the relationship between A and B is random
b. increases in A are associated with decreases in B
c. we can use measurements of A to predict
measurements of B perfectly
d. measured values of A are lower than measured values
of B
00. It has been found that children who have
encyclopedias in their homes get better grades in school
than children without encyclopedias Can you conclude
that using an encyclopedia makes children do better in
school?
a. yes, this is an experimental study and encyclopedias
are the independent variable
b. yes, this is a correlational study and the correlation
is a strong positive one
c. no, this is a correlational study; something other than
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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encyclopedias might help grades
d. no, this is an experiment but there is no control group
00. Parents who frequently beat their children tend to
have aggressive children What, if anything, can we
conclude?
a. physical punishment causes aggression
b. aggressive children cause parents to use physical
punishment
c. the children probably inherited a gene for
aggressiveness
d. all of these conclusions are possibly flawed
00. Which of the following is an example of motivation
as described in drive reduction theory?
a. the desire to ride a roller coaster
b. the enjoyment of painting or ther creative activity
c. an interest in trying nfamiliar oods just for variety
d. the desire to remove a painful splinter
00. Following damage to the hypothalamus, a rat eats
meals at a normal frequency, but each individual meal is
enormous The rat, who acts as if it no longer feels the
usual sensation of distention, has probably experienced
damage to the
a. suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus
b paraventricular hypothalamus
c lateral hypothalamus
d ventromedial hypothalamus
00. The limbic system of the brain is probably most
active during:
a. fear conditioning
b. observation learning
c. orienting behavior
d. remembering
00. The strongly reinforcing effects of electrical
stimulation of the brain seem to occur because:
a. it is a homeostatic influence
b. it satisfies a biological drive state
c. it activates the normal “reward circuits” of the brain
d. it is immediate reinforcement
00. In conditioning terms, the development of
“superstitious behavior” seems to depend on:
a. secondary reinforcement
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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b. continuous reinforcement of “lucky” responses
c. fixed ratio reinforcement
d. accidental pairings of behavior and reinforcement
00. Schedules of partial reinforcement typically
a. produce high rates of responding
b. yield behaviors that are hard to extinguish
c. can give rise to emotional arousal
d. all of the above
00. What do positive and negative reinforcement have in
common:
a. they both reduce the strength of basic physiological
need states
b. they both increase the likelihood of some behavior
c. they are basic parts of classical conditioning
d. all of the above
00. In _________conditioning, the subject has to
perform some response that ____________ an aversive
stimulus, while in _________ conditioning the subject
has to perform some response that ___________ an
aversive event.
a. operant; produces; classical; prevents
b. operant; terminates; classical; prevents
c. escape; terminates; avoidance; prevents
d. one-trial; increases; operant; maintains
00. In operant conditioning, a discriminative stimulus
seems similar in its function to a ________ in
_________.
a. CS; classical conditioning
b. UCS; classical conditioning
c. punisher; operant conditioning
d. reinforcer; classical conditioning
00. If you gave a rabbit conditioning trials consisting of
repeated pairings of air puff beep, you would find:
a. good operant conditioning of an eye-blink response
b. a strong CR eventually occurs to the beep
c. habituation to air puff and beep
d. no CR developing to the beep
00. Random assignment is to ____________ as random
sampling is to __________:
a. experiments; correlation studies
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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b. correlation studies; naturalistic observation studies
c. control; generalizing
d. single-blind; double-blind
00. The “blocking phenomenon” seems to indicate that:
a. it’s hard to learn an association between CS and UCS
when another CS is already associated with the UCS
b. punishment blocks the development of new behaviors
c. contiguity is the basic requirement for classical
conditioning
d. visual stimuli are better for conditioning than auditory
stimuli
00. The conditioned taste aversion
described in the text seem to unlike
many other kinds of conditioned
reactions in that:
a. the aversive stimulus is usually
quite weak
b. no associative learning is required
c. the interval between behavior and
punishment is long
d. all of the above
00. Evolutionary theories of mate
selection and interpersonal attraction
deal mainly with _________ causes of
behavior.
a. promximate
b. rational
c. empirical
d. ultimate
00. “Positive assortative mating”
refers to:
a. mating on the basis of similarity
of traits
b. mating based on estimates of
fertility
c. mating based on minimal investment
d. mating based on estimates of
longevity
00. Studies of the correlations of
traits in couples have shown:
a. modest positive correlations for
Psychology 100 Madigan
FORM A
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most traits
b. lack of correlations for most
traits
c. modest correlations for physical
traits only
d. modest positive correlations for
physical and psychological traits
Psychology 100 Madigan
15
Fall 2001
Form A