1) The anthropologist Colin Turnbull described an incident in which a pygmy man
raised in the thick African jungle was taken to an open plain. As the two men
approached a herd of buffalo by car, the pygmy became fearful of the growing animals.
The pygmys misperception illustrates the importance of _________ in perception and
long-term memory storage.
a.figure-ground
b.prior knowledge
c.proximity
d.stimulus intensity
2) Healthier eating habits make people feel better and give them more energy over the
long run. Yet many people do not improve their eating habits, especially if healthful
foods are difficult and time-consuming to prepare. Three of the following are possible
explanations for the lack of improvement (i.e., behavior change) in peoples eating
habits. Judging from what you have learned about instrumental conditioning, choose the
alternative that is not a likely explanation.
a.Extrinsic reinforcers are usually more effective than intrinsic reinforcers.
b.Eating junk food also has its reinforcers.
c.From a cost-benefit perspective, change is not worthwhile.
d.Reinforcement (in the form of feeling healthier) is delayed.
3) From Maslows perspective, which one of the following best reflects a deficiency
need?
a.Lorne writes and plays folk songs as a way of expressing himself.
b.Geri finds ancient civilizations fascinating.
c.Rachel is curious about why her science experiment didnt turn out the way she
expected it would.
d.Bill is worried that Mark might beat him up on the way home from school.
4) Three of the following common criticisms of using behaviorist approaches in the
classroom are valid ones. Which one usually is not true about behaviorist approaches?
a.When a student who enjoys an activity is given extrinsic reinforcement for doing it,
the students intrinsic interest in the activity may decrease.
b.If some misbehaviors are reduced through reinforcement or punishment, other
misbehaviors will always spring up to replace them.
c.Reinforcing a student simply for doing a task, without regard for the quality of
performance, can encourage the student to do it quickly rather than well.
d.When a student has cognitive deficits that interfere with performance, simply
reinforcing desired behaviors will be insufficient to bring about important changes.
5) Which one of the following common sayings best reflects the concept of
introspection?
a.Where theres a will, theres a way.
b.Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
c.A penny for your thoughts.
d.Old habits die hard.
6) Which one of the following is a primary reinforcer?
a.A cookie
b.A good grade
c.A thousand dollars
d.A feeling of pride about a job well done
7) A variety of discipline-specific professional organizations have developed standards
that educators might apply in identifying instructional objectives for a classroom or
school district. Three of the following are accurate statements about these standards.
Which one is not necessarily true?
a.They represent the joint efforts of many experts in a particular subject area.
b.Many of them can be found on the websites of the organizations that have developed
them.
c.Research has clearly and convincingly shown them to be appropriate for the cognitive
capabilities of students at different ages.
d.They tend to omit important objectives outside of a particular disciplinefor instance,
good study habits or effective interpersonal skills.
8) Robert does not recognize the police officer who came to the door last month to tell
him that his dog had been killed by a car. Roberts lapse of memory can probably best be
explained in terms of:
a.the fan effect
b.interference
c.construction error
d.repression
9) Given what we know about how highly anxious learners process information, which
learning strategy would we expect them to use most often?
a.Elaboration
b.Rehearsal
c.Meaningful learning
d.Organization
10) In describing the cognitive abilities of infants, Piaget appears to have:
a.Underestimated what they know and can do
b.Overestimated what they know and can do
c.Assessed their abilities quite accurately
d.Overestimated the importance of language in their early thinking
11) Three of the following statements are accurate descriptions of the effect interest has
on learning and performance. Which one is not accurate?
a.Interest promotes meaningful learning of information.
b.Interest promotes performance goals rather than mastery goals.
c.Interest increases the likelihood of conceptual change.
d.Interest increases the likelihood that students will apply what they learn.
12) Using the guidelines presented in the textbook regarding when classroom
discussions are most valuable, choose the topic below that would be most appropriate
for a classroom discussion.
a.Learning how gravity affects the speed with which an object falls
b.Studying the history of the United Nations
c.Learning the various tenses of the verb to be
d.Interpreting Edgar Allan Poes poem The Raven
13) Ms. Kontos wants students in her geometry class to learn and remember how to
calculate the area of a rectangle. To be sure her students will learn the procedure
successfully, which one of the following should Ms. Kontos not do?
a.Explain how calculating the area of a rectangle is similar to something they have
already learned: calculating the area of a square.
b.Have her students calculate the area of such rectangles as the classroom, their desk
tops, and their books.
c.Give her students lots of paper-pencil practice in calculating the area of rectangles.
d.Make sure her students are quite anxious about an upcoming quiz on calculating the
area of rectangles.
14) Peter is trying to find something his cat will eat. He presents a variety of different
foods to the cat until eventually she begins to eat something. Peters approach to the
problem of feeding a finicky cat can probably best be understood from which of the
following perspectives of problem solving?
a.Stages of problem solving
b.Trial-and-error
c.The Gestalt notion of insight
d.Response hierarchy
15) A teacher wants to encourage her students to work cooperatively with one another
as they study classroom subject matter. If she were to use the concept of a setting event
to encourage such cooperative behavior, she would:
a.Praise her students when they cooperate with one another.
b.First give students a task in which they cant work with one another.
c.Say I like how Sally and John are helping one another today loudly enough that other
students can hear.
d.Provide instructional materials that students can use only by working together.
16) To remind her 6-year-old son Steven to bring his umbrella home from school, a
mother pins a piece of paper with a picture of an umbrella to Stevens jacket collar.
Stevens mother is helping him remember the umbrella through the use of:
a.a script
b.the fan effect
c.an external retrieval cue
d.implicit knowledge
17) From the textbooks perspective, what is a key advantage of developing schemas
and scripts?
a.They reduce the amount of information we need to acquire in order to make sense of a
situation.
b.They increase the likelihood that we will perceive a situation accurately.
c.They enable us to bypass working memory and store information directly in long-term
memory.
d.They decrease the need for meaningful learning.
18) Which one of the following students definitely has a meaningful learning set?
a.Annie practices calculating the area of a triangle by completing her 20 homework
problems.
b.Benny memorizes the fact that 0.5 is equivalent to 1/2.
c.Connie knows that she will eventually learn the multiplication tables if she practices
them enough times.
d.Danny tries to figure out the logic underlying the process of long division.
19) The author of the textbook suggests that teachers should repeat important points
several times in their classroom lectures. The rationale behind this suggestion is that:
a.Students have less need to elaborate information that they hear several times.
b.Repetition helps students expand their working memory capacity.
c.Students can only process a fraction of they hear and therefore may miss information
that is presented only once.
d.Repetition has been demonstrated to be the most effective way to get information into
students long-term memories.