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 Multiple Choice

1. Learning is best defined as a process that involves:

a) Two stimuli being paired that produce a conditioned response over time
b) An organism interacting with its environment, becoming changed by experience, and thereby modifying subsequent behaviours
c) An organism interacting with its environment through autoshaping and conditioning
d) An organism responding to its environment based on reinforcement or punishment for behaviours
e) The effects of parents, teachers and peers

2. Which of the following does NOT represent a form of learning?

a) A snail experiences a brief jolt of the surface on which it is crawling and reacts by retracting into its shell. Subsequent jolts, however, are found to be less effective in inducing withdrawal, until the reaction finally disappears.
b) The first conspicuous moving object seen by a newly hatched chick is a laboratory attendant. As a consequence, the chick develops an attachment to that person, approaching and following him or her, and tending to avoid other things.
c) A rat is given access to a distinctively flavoured foodstuff that has been laced with a small amount of poison, enough to induce nausea but not enough to kill. On recovering from its illness, however, the rat will still go back to the flavour.
d) A hungry pigeon is given a small amount of food each time it happens to make a turn in a particular direction. After experiencing a few rewards, the bird develops an increasing tendency to circle on the spot in the ‘correct’ direction.

3. The fundamental element required for learning through classical conditioning is:

a) Conditioned stimuli
b) Unconditioned stimuli
c) Change
d) Association
e) All of the above

4. Consider this sequence: (1) food, (2) salivation with food, (3) light with food, and (4) salivation with light. This procedure for presenting stimuli and observing responses with dogs is based on Pavlov’s experiments, and represents which sequence of classical conditioning?

a) Unconditioned stimulus, conditioned response, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned response
b) Conditioned stimulus, conditioned response, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response
c) Unconditioned stimulus, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned response
d) Unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response
e) Conditioned response, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, unconditioned stimulus

5. Which of the following statements about Pavlov’s dogs is FALSE?

a) Pavlov’s standard procedure involved the following: a dog was given access to food, and each presentation was accompanied (usually slightly preceded) by the occurrence of a neutral event, such as a flashing light.
b) After several training trials (pairings of light and food), the dog would salivate at the flash of light, before any food had appeared.
c) Salivation at the presentation of food is called a conditioned response.
d) The event that evokes the conditioned response is referred to as a conditioned stimulus.

6. The basic understanding of the relationship between unconditioned response (UR) and conditioned response (CR) includes which of the following ideas?

a) The UR and CR are not always the same response
b) Organisms come to generally behave toward conditioned stimulus as they do unconditioned stimulus
c) Stimulus substitution
d) The UR and CR are always the same response
e) (a), (b) and (c)

7. Which of the following is accurate in relation to the law of effect?

a) The law of effect relates to Pavlov’s proposal that reward will strengthen the connection between the response that preceded it and any stimuli present when it is delivered.
b) In modern terminology, Thorndike’s ‘satisfiers’ and ‘annoyers’ are called enforcers and punishers.
c) In the law of effect, a stimulus–response (S–R) association is learned.
d) It is generally thought that the likelihood of an animal responding in a particular way cannot be controlled by the consequence of that response.

8. Which of the following phenomena demonstrate the importance of classical conditioning for human behaviour?

a) Salivation and responses to light
b) Illness-induced aversions and phobias
c) Nausea and headaches
d) (a), (b) and (c)
e) None the above

9. Which of the following statements applies to instrumental learning?

a) Instrumental learning is the process by which an animal learns about the relationship between its behaviour and the consequences of that behaviour.
b) Instrumentally trained responses are not entirely elicited by identifiable stimuli.
c) Instrumental learning allows the animal to control the occurrence of environmental events.
d) All of the above.

10. Instrumental learning differs from classical conditioning in which of the following ways?

a) Instrumental learning does not differ from classical conditioning
b) Instrumental learning requires a critical response from the animal whereas classical conditioning does not require a critical response from the animal
c) Instrumental learning takes longer than classical conditioning
d) Instrumental learning is affected by reinforcement or punishment from the environment
e) (b) and (d)

11. Not every organism will learn at the same rate as a result of:

a) Contiguity and conditioning
b) Habituation and contiguity
c) Blocking and preparedness
d) Blocking and autoshaping
e) Preparedness and conditioning

12. Which TWO of the following statements are true of blocking?

  1. The phenomenon of blocking provides an interesting and much-studied instance of failure to learn, in spite of contiguous presentations of the CS and the US.
  2. In a blocking experiment, animals receive training with what is termed a compound CS (Phase 2).
  3. The experimental group has first received a phase of training in which the US alone is conditioned (Phase 1).
  4. The experimental group shows no (or very little) evidence of learning about the CS that is presented in Phase 1.
a) 1 & 2
b) 2 & 3
c) 3 & 4
d) 1 & 3

13. Which THREE of the following are true regarding habituation and dishabituation ?

  1. Habituation involves a gradual reduction in the magnitude of the response to repeated presentation of a stimulus.
  2. In dishabituation, the response returns when a salient extraneous stimulus is presented just before a trial with the habituated stimulus.
  3. Habituation is caused by sensory-motor fatigue.
  4. Habituation occurs as a consequence of the repeated presentation of a single event.
a) 1, 2 & 3
b) 2, 3 & 4
c) 1, 2 & 4

14. Which of the following does NOT apply to spatial learning in the rat?

a) Rats master spatial tasks much more easily than typical configural learning tasks.
b) Spatial learning operates according to principles identical to those that underlie classical and instrumental conditioning procedures.
c) Exposure to an environment can allow the animal to form a cognitive map of that environment.
d) The animal is then able to navigate because it knows its own position with respect to its internal representation of the environment.

15. What types of learning do not rely on forming associations among stimuli and events?

a) Perceptual learning, spatial learning and discrimination learning
b) Imprinting, aversive conditioning and instrumental learning
c) Classroom learning, street-wise learning and common sense
d) Reinforcement, punishment and habituation
e) (a), (b) and (c)

16. If you intended to stop at the corner shop on the way home from school, but instead took your usual path from school to your home and missed the corner shop, then your behaviour has been controlled by which type of learning?

a) Response-outcome association
b) Stimulus-response association
c) Selective response learning
d) Instrumental learning
e) Stimulus-habit association

17. How might behaviours of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) be explained by the principles of instrumental learning?

a) OCD behaviours are naturally learned from biological relatives
b) OCD behaviours are learned from pairing anxiety-provoking stimuli with common behaviours
c) OCD behaviours are learned by perceptual processing of anxiety-provoking stimuli
d) OCD behaviours are contingent upon schedules of reinforcement
e) OCD behaviours are reinforced and maintained because they reduce anxiety

18. Which TWO of the following are true of the learning set procedure?

  1. The animal learns to focus on classes of cues that are inaccurate predictors of reward.
  2. In the win–stay, lose–shift strategy, the animal learns to persist with a choice that yields food, but shift to the other object if it does not.
  3. In the learning-set procedure, all stimuli and associations have equal effect on the animal’s behaviour.
  4. The occurrence of reward can be regarded as a stimulus that can enter into associations or acquire discriminative control over an instrumental action.
a) 1 & 2
b) 2 & 3
c) 1 & 3
d) 2 & 4

19. Phobias can be very debilitating and distressing phenomena. Which, if any, of the following statements are correct in relation to Watson and Rayner’s (1920) research into them?

  1. Watson and Rayner speculated that the complexity of emotional responsiveness in adults might be explained by the conditioning of children’s simple emotional reactions when they are exposed to new stimuli.
  2. Watson and Rayner found evidence for emotional conditioning from a test trial in which the rat was accompanied by the noise.
  3. The fear reaction in Albert could be produced by a loud noise.
  4. None of the above.
a) 1 & 2
b) 1 & 3
c) 2 & 3
d) 4

20. Which of the following statements applies to Garcia and Koelling’s (1966) experiment?

a) In the experiment by Garcia and Koelling (1966), animals given LiCl as the US showed an aversion to the light and the click.
b) Researchers have tended to assume that the results obtained from laboratory studies reveal general principles about the nature of association formation which apply to other species and other stimuli.
c) The experiment by Garcia and Koelling (1966) opposed the notion of preparedness.
d) The result of Garcia and Koelling’s (1966) experiment supported researchers’ attempts to establish general laws of learning.

 

 

Copyright 2005 BPS Blackwell