Possible Exam 3 Questions
1. a) Describe how anticipation is important in classical conditioning.
b) Describe how anticipation is important in operant conditioning. Do NOT use any examples in your answers to a) or b).
2. A friend of yours comes up to you and says, "I'm pretty smart. Do you think that is because of how I was raised?" How would you answer your friend? Use research from Ch. 9 to support your answer.
3. The serial position effect (also called the primacy/recency effect) occurs when someone is asked to retrieve a series of pieces of information from memory immediately after hearing them. Which pieces of information from the series of information do you think would be remembered best if the person were asked to retrieve the information an hour after he/she heard the information instead of immediately? Use the concepts of short-term memory, long-term memory and elaborative rehearsal in your answer.
4. Someone comes up to you and says, "I heard about all this repressed memory stuff where people all of a sudden remember some traumatic event they had blocked out from a long time ago. Is that true?" How would you answer that person? Explain. Your answer should be consistent with the research presented in Chapter 8.
5. You are armed with a bowl of M&M's. You are ready to do some shaping. All you need now is a subject. You notice a little boy sitting off to the side not interacting at all with anyone. How could you use shaping to get him to interact freely with others? Why is shaping a likely strategy in this situation?
6. a) Choose a specific theory of forgetting discussed in class or the text. In terms of that explanation, explain why hearing a good example of a concept in class will help with retrieval of that concept at a later time. b) In terms of what the brain likes best for processing information, why would generating your own example be even more effective than hearing someone else's example?
7. a) Pick one specific heuristic or problem-solving strategy described in Ch. 9. Use that strategy to explain how it can help us solve problems more effectively. b) Pick a different heuristic or strategy. Use that strategy to explain how sometimes these strategies can interfere with or lead to errors in our problem-solving.
8. A student comes to PSY 100 and passes out sign-up sheets for a study she is conducting. Students who signed up come to a room and are first asked to fill out some personality assessments. Then subjects are taken two at a time to a room where they are asked to have a conversation with each other on any topic they choose. The student running the study is careful to give all the students the same assessments and give each pair the same length of time for their conversations. The results tell her that people who are more extroverted tend to keep the conversation going better than people who are more introverted. Did this student conduct an experiment? Explain. What goal(s) of science does this study attempt to address? Explain.
9. A psychologist conducted a study to investigate whether the presence of a pet would improve performance on a test. She had pet owners take a memory test. Half of the pet owners took the test with their pets present while the other half of pet owners took the test alone. She found that pet owners performed better on the memory test when they were with their pets (78%) than when they were alone (64%). The psychologist also gave the same memory test to individuals who did not own pets. Half of those individuals took the test alone and half of them took the test with a human friend they were permitted to bring along. The psychologist found that the individuals who had their friends with them (61%) did not perform any better than those individuals who were alone (62%).
The psychologist concluded that having your pet with you while you are taking a test will likely help you more than having a human friend with you. Based on the design of the study, is that conclusion justified? Explain.
10. As a researcher I want to find out if people with more fiber in their diet engage in more physical activity than those with less fiber in their diet. For this type of question
a) what goal(s)
of science am I addressing? Explain.
b) what kind of structured observation(s) am I likely to employ? Explain.
c) what type of conclusion (e.g., causal, correlational, descriptive) could
I possibly reach? Explain.
11. a) How can generalization (Ch. 7) occur with operant conditioning?
b) How can discrimination (Ch. 7) occur with classical conditioning?
12. a) Describe how you personally use maintenance and elaborative rehearsal to prepare for tests.
b) What do you do to make sure you have sufficiently consolidated the information you are studying? Explain.
13. Name an inappropriate behavior children sometimes engage in.
a) Explain how a child might have first learned to exhibit that inappropriate behavior by being negatively reinforced for it.
b) Explain how a parent could negatively punish that behavior to reduce it.
c) Explain how a positive punisher could be administered to reduce that behavior.
14. Your roommate tells you that she is doing poorly on the essay tests in her history course because there is a lot of material to read and the questions ask for a deep understanding of the course concepts. You ask her how she has been studying for the tests. Your roommate says that she reads the material when it is assigned, rereads it and her class notes the two days before the test, and goes over her notes with another student in the class the day before the test.
a) Using course concepts, explain to your roommate two weaknesses with her study strategy.
b) In terms of what the brain likes for information processing, suggest a new study plan for your roommate.
15. I (and the text) identified the three strategies the brain likes best for effortful processing of information into long-term memory. Use each of those three strategies to explain why outlining of your notes would be an effective study technique.
16. I mentioned in class that each of the four types of learning we discussed involved the forming of an association. Pick two of the types of learning and explain how an association is formed in each of those two types.
17. a) Using the terminology of classical conditioning, describe or diagram how a student might come to experience considerable joy each time he enters his Goldspohn classroom.
b) Using research on memory, explain why a student who learned concepts in a specific Goldspohn classroom might perform better on a test over those concepts if the test is also taken in the same Goldspohn classroom.
Possible Terms
generalization (ch. 7)
discrimination (ch. 7)
extinction
spontaneous recovery
shaping
positive reinforcement
negative reinforcement
positive punishment
negative punishment
maintenance rehearsal
elaborative rehearsal
implicit memory
explicit memory
consolidation
retroactive interference
proactive interference
chunking
misinformation effect
fixation
representativeness heuristic
availability heuristic
belief perseverance
validity