psych exam 2

Why is the word "Mama" used so universally?

"Muh" is one of the first sounds uttered by infants.

After a subject has developed a classically conditioned response, an investigator begins presenting the conditioned stimulus by itself. Which of the following is likely to occur?

. extinction

According to Thorndike, reinforcement is an event that

. increases the probability of the preceding response

One unusual feature of implicit memory is that

A. people can display this kind of memory without consciously realizing that they are using their memory.

One significant problem with eyewitness testimony is that

A. people's memory sometimes fills in information that has been suggested to them, even though it did not happen.

Which of the following is generally considered to be evidence in favor of a genetic influence on behavior?

Adopted children resemble their biological parents more than they resemble their adoptive parents.

Which of the following is an example of the word-superiority effect?

B. People can identify the word WEST more easily than they can identify the letter W, after seeing both for just a split second.

In the information-processing model, one difference between short-term memory and long-term memory is that

B. you forget many short-term memories almost as soon as your attention is distracted; long-term memories can be available at any time.

Suppose an experimenter asks people a question about something they did not see. (For example, people who did not see a truck might be asked what color the truck was.) How does asking such a question affect people's memory, if at all?

C. People who hear such a question are more likely than other people are to report seeing the item (for example, the truck).

What is the difference between extinction and forgetting?

Extinction depends on specific experiences; forgetting depends on the passage of time.

Which of the following would be an example of hindsight bias?

Saying "I knew I would get an A on that test" after receiving your grade of A.

Ainsworth has devised a test of attachment that involves the mother and an infant entering a room with toys. Then, a stranger enters, the mother and stranger leave, the stranger returns, and finally the mother returns. The responses of the infant are monitored in this test, which is called the __________ test.

Strange Situation

According to Piaget's concept of accommodation,

a child modifies an old schema to fit a new object or problem

According to the information-processing model of memory, human memory is most analogous to

a computer

With regard to learning, what is meant by "preparedness"?

a tendency to learn some associations more easily than others

What is an unconditioned reflex?

an inborn, automatic connection between a stimulus and a response

Viewing memory as a process in which items enter memory and go from a brief sensory store to a short-term temporary memory to a long-term permanent memory is an example of

an information-processing model.

If you memorize a list of words, you are most likely to remember the words

at both the beginning and end of the list

An immigrant who can alternate between the native culture and the new culture is showing

biculturalism

Edgar suffers a stroke on the left side of his brain and as a result has a condition characterized by inarticulate speech and difficulties using and understanding grammatical devices. This condition is known as ____ aphasia

broca's

Some people believe Friday the 13th is unlucky because they can remember times when they had bad experiences on that day but tend to forget times when nothing bad happened. Their reasoning is an example of illusory correlations. It is also an example of the use of

categorization by features

Movie directors discovered that they can film different parts of the same scene on different days, and most viewers would not detect that the extras (background actors) had changed clothes or appearance. Psychologists call this failure to notice such differences

change blindness

In Pavlov's experiments he paired the presentation of food with a buzzer and measured salivation to each. In this experiment the buzzer was the

conditioned stimulus.

The tendency to look for evidence supporting one particular hypothesis and not considering other possibilities is known as the

confirmation bias

Which of the following is an example of a primary reinforcer?

food

What is anterograde amnesia?

inability to form new long-term memories

The problem of selective attrition is most likely to arise during

long term studies

What are algorithms?

mechanical, repetitive mathematical procedures for solving a problem

According to social-learning theory

much human learning occurs because of imitation.

Your friend asks you to name the seven dwarves from "Snow White". This is a memory test that psychologists would call a __________ test.

recall

During reading, a voluntary eye movement from one fixation point to another is called a

saccade

In decision making, __________ means searching only until you find something that is good enough.

satisficing

What did Piaget mean by the term "egocentric"?

seeing the world only from your own perspective

Children first appear to gain some concept of self in Piaget's __________ stage.

sensorimotor

A research design that combines the advantages of both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs is known as

sequential

Suppose your alarm made a slight clicking sound just before the alarm goes off. Even though you didn't wake up to the clicking sound initially, now you do, due to classical conditioning. In this example, the conditioned stimulus is

the clicking

What did Lev Vygotsky mean by a child's zone of proximal development?

the difference between what a child does alone and what the child can do with help

You attend every new movie that appears at your local theater. You find that most of them are dull (not reinforcing) but really enjoy about one-fourth of them. This is an example of a __________ schedule of reinforcement.

variable ratio

"Change blindness" is the phenomenon that

we often fail to notice something that changes slowlyor that we are not attending to

To test whether an infant has the concept of object permanence, what would Piaget be most likely to examine?

whether the infant looks for the object after it has been covered up