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1) Which one of the following is the best example of hot cognition?
a.Learning a new strategy for solving a difficult problem
b.Realizing that you finally understand Einsteins law of relativity
c.Getting excited when you read about a possible cure for Alzheimers disease
d.Having a mental block that interferes with your writing ability
2) People are more likely to perceive this configuration of shapes:
$$$$
as four rows rather than as four columns. Which one of the following Gestaltist
concepts best accounts for this phenomenon?
a.Closure
b.Prgnanz
c.Proximity
d.Similarity
3) Which one of the following is the best example of someone using a heuristic (rather
than an algorithm) in problem solving?
a.Susan wants to know how long it will take her to drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles.
She knows that the distance is 400 miles, and she figures she will average 50 miles an
hour with stops, so she predicts the trip will take 8 hours.
b.Vinnie has a round hot tub that is six feet in diameter; he wants to build a top to cover
it. He remembers the formula for calculating the area of a circle and works out how
many feet of lumber he needs.
c.John wants to buy a computer. He compares prices at different computer stores and
buys whichever model is least expensive.
d.Marion cant think of a plot for the short story she needs to write. She breaks her task
into smaller pieces: First shell decide who the main character will be, then shell think of
a conflict for that character to experience, and finally shell identify a reasonable
resolution of that conflict.
4) Marnie attends very closely to the English teachers lecture because she knows she
must pass her English course in order to graduate. Marnies attentiveness demonstrates
the effect of _______ on attention.
a.stimulus intensity
b.personal significance
c.emotion
d.incongruity
5) Melissa has an ingenious method for remembering the member countries of the
NATO alliance. Using words that rhyme with the numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on, she forms
a visual image of each country interacting with a word that rhymes with a number. For
example, she pictures a huge bun (which rhymes with 1) sitting on top of Big Ben
(Great Britain), a shoe (a rhyme for 2) with a tiny Canadian Mountie (Canada) perched
on its toe, a tree (a rhyme for 3) with numerous Statues of Liberty (United States)
growing from its branches, and so on. Melissas technique illustrates the use of:
a.verbal mediation
b.an external retrieval cue
c.the pegword method
d.the method of loci
6) Which one of the following is the clearest example of a child working for an
incentive?
a.Arnolds mother gives him a dollar after he surprises her by mowing the lawn.
b.Betsy decides not to talk in class because her teacher ridiculed her earlier in the day
when she gave an incorrect answer.
c.Cyril stays out late, even though he knows he will be punished when he gets home.
d.Doris is studying for a history test with the hope that shell get an A on it.
7) Students in a fourth-grade reading group are reading a passage about snakes. Their
teacher asks, Who can think of a good title that summarizes what this passage is about?
After hearing several good suggestions, the teacher says, The author says that snakes
are helpful to farmers. What evidence does she give to support her statement? If we
consider Vygotskys concept of internalization, we might predict that such a discussion
will:
a.Be more beneficial for students who are working outside their zones of proximal
development than for students working inside their ZPDs.
b.Help students develop a greater interest in learning for its own sake.
c.Help students develop effective reading comprehension strategies (e.g., summarizing,
looking for supporting statements).
d.Be confusing and counterproductive for students who are not yet capable of abstract
thought.
8) Which one of the following is the best example of sensation (as opposed to
perception)?
a.You see a bright red car driving quickly down the street.
b.You hear your friend say, Here comes a bright red car driving quickly down the street.
c.You see the bright red car flash its left turn signal, and you predict that the car will
make a left turn.
d.Sound waves coming from the cars horn reach your right ear before they reach your
left ear.
9) Communities of learners often create conceptual artifacts as they study a topic.
Which one of the following is the best example of such an artifact?
a.Students jointly write a one-act play based on a short story theyve been reading.
b.Students write their own, individual summaries of what they think the class has
accomplished each week.
c.Students jointly create a board game that puts the economic principle of
supply-and-demand into action.
d.Students jointly create a diagram that helps them understand the water cycle. They
occasionally revise it as they learn more about evaporation and condensation.
10) Visual aids are most likely to be effective when they:
a.Are presented at the end of a lecture rather than at the beginning
b.Are used with elementary rather than secondary students
c.Do not duplicate material that has already been presented verbally
d.Focus on major ideas rather than details
11) Three of the following are assumptions that underlie contemporary cognitive
theories of learning. Which one is not such an assumption?
a.Mental events can be studied indirectly by observing behavior.
b.Humans often learn by relating new information to what they already know.
c.Researchers can study mental events only by abandoning objectivity.
d.Humans sometimes learn differently than other species do.
12) Each of the teachers below has students with misconceptions about the material
they are studying. Three of the teachers are using strategies that should help their
students correct these misconceptions. Which teacher is not using an effective strategy
for changing misconceptions?
a.Ms. Andersen identifies and then builds on things that students correctly understand
about the phenomenon at hand.
b.Mr. Bissette presents a situation that students cannot adequately explain using their
current beliefs about the topic.
c.Ms. Caro reminds her students that she will be testing them on the material they are
studying.
d.Mr. Darren shows students how the true explanation of something is different from,
and more plausible than, their existing beliefs.
13) Research regarding attribution retraining indicates that:
a.It is effective with adults but not with children.
b.One effective strategy is to teach students how to attribute their performance to
controllable factors.
c.Retraining is most effective when students dont encounter failure experiences.
d.Attributions, once established, are almost impossible to change.
14) Three of the following illustrate the Gestalt notion that the whole is more than the
sum of its parts. Which one does not reflect this idea?
a.Abby notices that a row of flashing lights look like a single moving light.
b.Bobby gazes at the stars and notices how a cluster of seven stars forms the shape of a
tennis racket.
c.Cubby is learning the concept brighter. He is shown a dim light and a bright light and
told that the second light is brighter. When he later sees the same bright light and an
even brighter one, he correctly identifies the new light as being brighter.
d.Debby learns that 2 plus 2 equal 4 and repeats this fact to herself over and over again
until she knows it perfectly.
15) Susan is introduced to Jerry. She immediately smiles and says, Hello, Jerry. A
minute later, she wants to introduce Jerry to her friend Mary, but she cannot remember
his name. Based on this information, how far in Susans memory system did Jerrys name
get?
a.It reached the sensory register.
b.It reached working memory.
c.It reached long-term memory.
d.It never got into the memory system at all.
16) Three of the following statements accurately describe environmental influences on
the development of epistemic beliefs. Which statement is not accurate?
a.As students observe experts disagreeing about a particular topic, they increasingly
realize that even authority figures arent always reliable sources of what is true and
accurate.
b.The extent to which students accept what authority figures tell them is partly a
function of the culture in which they have grown up.
c.Classroom demands for word-for-word memorization increase as students move
through the secondary grades and post-secondary education.
d.Students who have grown up in Asian cultures are apt to believe that knowledge is the
result of hard work, whereas students who have grown up in the United States are apt to
believe that knowledge should come quickly and easily.
17) Which one of the following best describes psychologists current beliefs about the
brain and learning?
a.Learning involves changes in synapses and possibly also involves the growth of new
neurons and astrocytes.
b.Large doses of certain vitamins promote brain growth and lead to more rapid learning.
c.Left-hemisphere-dominant individuals are, on average, more effective learners than
right-hemisphere-dominant individuals.
d.The brains of rapid learners are about 20% larger than the brains of slower learners.
18) Mr. Loosigian is worried about Jerri, a girl who is struggling in his seventh grade
class. He thinks about several different reasons why she might be having so much
difficulty with her schoolwork. Which one of the possible reasons that he considers is
consistent with a behaviorist perspective of learning?
a.Maybe she isnt paying attention as much as she should be.
b.Maybe I dont praise her enough when she does something well.
c.Maybe she has trouble understanding the things she reads.
d.Maybe she has trouble remembering things from one day to the next.
19) Which one of the following teaching practices is most likely to encourage students
to elaborate as they study new material?
a.Help them locate Berlin on a map of Europe.
b.Ask them how they might apply the principle that gas expands when heated.
c.Ask them, Who remembers what the chief exports of Japan are?
d.Say, Yesterday we learned the safe way to hand a pair of sharp scissors to someone
else. Who can show us how we should do that?
