1) Which one of the following individuals shows motivation consistent with self-worth
theory?
a.Monica doesnt read the comments her teacher has written on her research paper
because she suspects that theyre not very flattering.
b.Isabelle goes to see the horror movie Scream with her friends; later that night, she has
considerable trouble falling asleep.
c.Jacob spends long hours staring at the sky each night, looking for various
constellations and thinking about ancient legends associated with each one.
d.Luke reads People magazine from cover to cover as soon as it arrives in the mail each
week; he especially enjoys reading stories about movie stars.
2) Which one of the following is the best example of problem-based learning?
a.Using a map to find a secret treasure in a local park helps students acquire new
map-reading skills.
b.Reading two different descriptions of a single historical event helps students
understand that historical writing is often biased in accordance with an authors political
views.
c.Solving a variety of mathematical word problems helps students practice the basic
addition and subtraction facts theyve previously learned.
d.Following a teachers instructions in a chemistry lab gives students first-hand
experience with some of the chemical reactions theyve been studying in class.
3) Which one of the following examples is consistent with what the textbook means by
giving students a sense of self-determination?
a.Jason can turn his homework in whenever he wants to, even if he waits until the last
day of school to turn all his assignments in.
b.Kenda asks her teacher for help whenever she finds a word she doesnt know the
meaning of, or whenever she runs into a problem she hasnt seen before.
c.In art class, Marie only needs to work on her art project on days when she feels
particularly creative.
d.Lonnie knows that he can demonstrate his mastery of an instructional objective in his
social studies class in either of two waysby taking an exam or completing a project.
4) Which one of the following is the best example of serial learning?
a.Learning how to fly a kite
b.Learning the months of the year in order
c.Learning French grammar
d.Learning the capitals of European countries
5) Ms. Trinh is about to start a unit on sharks. Some of her students have a strong
interest in sharks and know a lot about them. Others know very little about sharks.
When Ms. Trinh gives a reading assignment about sharks, she should expect that:
a.Students with more background knowledge will understand the reading material more
readily than their classmates.
b.Students reading comprehension will depend almost entirely on their word decoding
skills; their prior knowledge wont make much of a difference.
c.Students with more background knowledge are less likely to double-check their
understanding and so will make more comprehension errors.
d.Students with less background knowledge may be reluctant to read about an
unfamiliar topic; thus, motivating them to learn during the unit will be a challenge.
6) Mr. Rangel asks his students to write an essay describing how they would deal with
the problem of the diminishing areas in which gorillas can successfully live in the wild.
Three of the following factors should influence his students ability to describe possible
solutions to the problem. Which factor will not influence students ability to do
welleither for the better or for the worseon the essay?
a.Students anxiety about how well they do on the essay
b.How much students know about the countries in which gorillas reside
c.How carefully students internally monitor their ways of thinking about the problem
d.The number of specific algorithms students have learned for solving problems in
other disciplines (e.g., physics, mathematics)
7) Theorists have offered a number of suggestions regarding how teachers might help
students develop better summaries of classroom subject matter. Which one of the
strategies below do they not recommend?
a.Have students identify the most important ideas and then find information that
supports each idea.
b.Have students look for and delete ideas that seem relatively trivial.
c.Begin by having students read exceptionally difficult texts, so that they acquire an
appreciation for the value of summarizing.
d.Have students compare their summaries with one another and discuss their reasons for
choosing some ideas as being more important than others.
8) Three of the following reflect general dispositions that theorists have described.
Which one would not be considered a disposition as psychologists typically use the
term?
a.Anne has been afraid of snakes since she was a toddler.
b.Barry enjoys logic puzzles, mathematical brainteasers, and other logically challenging
tasks.
c.Calvin refuses to take another persons word for something unless the person back up
an idea or opinion with convincing evidence.
d.Donna is always looking ahead to future events and taking steps to be sure that things
run smoothly.
9) Karin and her mother live on welfare in a poor, inner-city neighborhood in Detroit.
Karin is quite bright and highly motivated, and she really wants to get a college
education. However, she knows that, on average, students from low-income homes
perform more poorly on the SAT tests than students from wealthier homes. When she
takes the SAT, she is so nervous that she has trouble concentrating on the test items, and
as a result her scores are lower than they should be. Which of the following concepts
best explains what has happened to Karin?
a.hot cognition
b.stereotype threat
c.cognitive dissonance
d.high motive to avoid failure
10) Which one of the following statements best describes theorists rationale for
advocating the use of authentic activities?
a.Authentic activities are the most efficient way of teaching basic skills to a level of
automaticity.
b.Authentic activities have built-in scaffolding that assures students success.
c.Authentic activities help students transfer classroom subject matter to real-world
contexts.
d.Authentic activities usually promote a mental set, which facilitates students
knowledge construction.
11) Which one of the following best describes the nature of working memory as many
contemporary psychologists view it?
a.It is a highly centralized component of memory that appears to be located in the
prefrontal cortex.
b.It converts virtually all information it receives into a verbal, language-based form.
c.It probably involves two or more different areas of the brain, which specialize in
different modalities.
d.It provides a good backup memory system for things that dont need to be stored for
more than a few hours.
12) Listed below are four reasons why students might not want to take their schoolwork
seriously or to try very hard to succeed at classroom tasks. Which one of these reasons
is most clearly consistent with the concept of self-efficacy?
a.Anthony is more interested in goofing around with his friends.
b.Bernice gets so nervous in the classroom that she cant think straight.
c.Carol doesnt believe she has the ability to do the work successfully.
d.Danny thinks his teacher doesnt like him.
13) Concept maps, whether constructed by students or teachers, have several
advantages. Which one of the following is not necessarily an advantage of concept
maps?
a.They help students learn classroom material more meaningfully.
b.They help teachers identify misconceptions that students may have about the material.
c.They provide a means through which students can visually as well as verbally encode
relationships among ideas.
d.They encourage cooperative learning because they can be constructed only when two
or more students work together.
14) After a painful experience at one dentists office, Teresas mother takes Teresa to a
different dentist, who takes great care to make her visits painless. Teresa is anxious at
first, but after a few visits, Teresa gradually becomes less resistant about going to the
new dentist. Teresas change in behavior can probably best be explained in terms of
_____. But then Teresa doesnt go to see the dentist again until three years later. On her
first visit to the painless dentist after that time interval, she is anxious once again, even
though she had not been anxious in her previous visits. The return of this response after
it had previously disappeared is known as _____.
a.extinction; spontaneous recovery
b.generalization; discriminative learning
c.higher-order conditioning; sensory preconditioning
d.sensory preconditioning; higher-order conditioning
15) DeeDee is upset that she has been taken off the basketball team because of a failing
grade in her history class. The consequence of DeeDees failure in history is an example
of:
a.Positive reinforcement
b.Negative reinforcement
c.Punishment I
d.Punishment II
16) The four students described below are using visual imagery to try to remember
information. Considering what theorists and researchers say about the strengths and
weaknesses of visual imagery, only one student is likely to remember this information
accurately. Which one?
a.Anna sees a pentagon and erroneously calls it a hexagon. The following day she is
asked to draw the figure she saw.
b.Bob studies a map of the Soviet Union. The following day he is asked to draw a map
of the Soviet Union, including the locations of mountains, rivers, and major cities.
c.Cora studies 30 pictures at an art museum. The following day she is asked to identify
them from among 60 pictures.
d.Dave tries to form a visual image of the word accommodation. The following day he
is asked to spell it.
17) Which one of the following alternatives best describes the disinhibition effect that
social cognitive theorists describe?
a.People may engage in a previously prohibited behavior if they see someone else being
reinforced for that behavior.
b.People are less likely to engage in behaviors they have seen other people punished
for.
c.People are less likely to engage in behaviors they have previously been punished for.
d.When people are punished for one behavior, they will tend to refrain from exhibiting
that behavior; however, they will be more likely to engage in similar behaviors that are
not punished.
18) After his class returns from a field trip to the local historical museum, Mr. Cordova
asks his students to write an essay describing the things they learned at the museum.
Considering factors that influence memory storage, which one of the following effects
should writing the essay have on what the students will later remember about the field
trip?
a.They will remember the trip better than if they had not written about it.
b.They will tend to confuse aspects of the trip with previous field trips that theyve
written about in other essays.
c.Although they wont necessarily remember any more about the trip, what they do
remember will tend to be remembered more as visual images than it might have been
otherwise.
d.Writing about the trip will enhance students short-term memory of the trip, but it will
not necessarily enhance their long-term memory of it.
19) Morris is taking an introductory Russian course. In the early weeks of the course, he
studies new Russian vocabulary words 10 times each, all in the same evening. Later on,
he discovers that he can remember Russian words better over the long run if he studies
them twice in an evening for five evenings in a row. Morris has discovered:
a.the spacing effect
b.the generation effect
c.the importance of consolidation
d.the advantages of implicit learning