Psych/Soc: Learning and Memory

What is the estimated capacity and duration of our short-term memory stores? A. 5-9 item capacity; 15-30 second duration B. 5-9 item capacity; 1-5 second duration C. 15-20 item capacity; 15-30 second duration D. 15-20 item capacity; 1-5 second duration

A. 5-9 item capacity; 15-30 second duration Our short-term memory stores are estimated to have a roughly 5-9 item capacity (roughly 7 items plus or minus 2) with an approximately 15-30 second duration.

You are training a dog to perform a trick on command, using treats as a reward. According to operant conditioning principles, what type of reinforcement schedule is most ideal for the acquisition phase of training and the maintenance phase of training, respectively? A. Continuous; variable ratio B. Variable ratio; continuous C. Variable interval; continuous D. Continuous; variable interval

A. Continuous; variable ratio In continuous reinforcement, the desired behavior is reinforced every time it occurs; this schedule is best used during the initial stages of training a dog to perform a behavior because it helps create a strong association between the behavior and the reward. Once the response is firmly acquired, a variable ratio schedule, where a treat is given after a random number of correct responses, is the schedule that is best for maintaining that behavior. Variable interval schedules reward the desired behavior after an unpredictable amount of time has passed. This schedule produces a slow, steady rate of response, but is not as good as a variable ratio schedule for maintenance of a learned behavior.

You are training a dog to perform a trick on command, using treats as a reward. According to operant conditioning principles, what type of reinforcement schedule is most ideal for the acquisition phase of training and the maintenance phase of training, respectively? A. Continuous; variable ratio B. Variable ratio; continuous C. Continuous; variable interval D. Variable interval; continuous

A. Continuous; variable ratio In continuous reinforcement, the desired behavior is reinforced every time it occurs; this schedule is best used during the initial stages of training a dog to perform a behavior because it helps create a strong association between the behavior and the reward. Once the response is firmly acquired, a variable ratio schedule, where a treat is given after a random number of correct responses, is the schedule that is best for maintaining that behavior. Variable interval schedules reward the desired behavior after an unpredictable amount of time has passed. This schedule produces a slow, steady rate of response, but is not as good as a variable ratio schedule for maintenance of a learned behavior.

When does the majority of forgetting occur? A. Immediately after information is learned, if it is not repeatedly reviewed B. Forgetting occurs very gradually at first, then increases over time C. Forgetting is completely eliminated by review D. Forgetting is linear and occurs at the same rate over time

A. Immediately after information is learned, if it is not repeatedly reviewed Forgetting does not happen in a linear fashion. Rather, the "forgetting curve" indicates that the longer the retention interval, or the time since the information was learned, the more information will be forgotten, with the most forgetting occurring rapidly in the first few days before leveling off. Forgetting cannot be completely eliminated by review, though repeated review can greatly diminish the impact of forgetting.

You are conducting a study to determine the effect of one's physical environment on learning. You devise an experiment wherein a group of participants study for a test in room A. One week later, the group comes back to take a test on the material they studied in room A. Half of the participants takes the test in the original room, room A, while the other half take the test in room B, a new room. Following your analysis, you discover that the participants in room A scored significantly better on the test. Given that they were randomly assigned their testing room, you attribute this finding to: A. state-dependent learning B. cued recall C. situated cognition D. serial recall

A. state-dependent learning Cued recall happens when a person studies a set of pairs (usually words) and is then given cues, in the form of one of the words in the pair, to recall the other word in the pair. Serial recall is remembering words or events in the order they occurred, and it is not related to the physical setting in which the information was learned. Situated cognition is an approach that links doing and knowing by asserting that cognition does not occur independently of the physical environment. This approach stresses the interaction between the learner and the environment, and is an interactional strategy of learning. While situated cognition could explain some of the aspects of the phenomenon observed in the study above, state-dependent learning is a better answer because the question stem only gives information about the material environment in which the testing was done, and not about the meanings participants bring to the testing experience, as is common in studies of situated cognition in schooling.

What type of reinforcement schedule is applied if a response is rewarded after an unpredictable amount of time has passed, and what is predicted about the response to this schedule? A. Variable ratio; this schedule creates a high, steady rate of response B. Variable interval; this schedule produces a slow, steady rate of response C. Variable ratio; this schedule produces a slow, steady rate of response D. Variable interval; this schedule creates a high, steady rate of response

B. Variable interval; this schedule produces a slow, steady rate of response A variable interval reinforcement schedule describes when a response is rewarded after an unpredictable amount of time has passed; this schedule produces a slow, steady rate of response. An example of this might be checking your email (which often occurs at variable time intervals). A variable ratio reinforcement schedule describes when a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses. This schedule creates a high steady rate of responding. Gambling and lottery games are good examples of a reward based on a variable ratio schedule.

You are admitted to the hospital and the nurse places an IV in your arm. At first the IV produces a mild feeling of irritation, but the nurse promises the sensation will go away and soon you "won't even feel it." However, as time goes on, your arm becomes more and more irritated. This is an example of: A. habituation. B. sensitization. C. desensitization. D. dishabituation.

B. sensitization. Sensitization is a non-associative learning process in which repeated administrations of a stimulus results in the progressive amplification of a response; an increased irritation in your arm from the IV is an example of sensitization to that stimulus. Desensitization is the opposite - a diminished responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it; the nurse promised you this would happen, but instead you became more sensitized to the IV in your arm. Habituation is a form of learning in which an organism decreases or ceases to respond to a stimulus after repeated presentations; dishabituation occurs when a response that has become weakened by habituation is restored to full strength for some reason.

Which of the following stimuli and responses from Ivan Pavlov's experiments is not labeled correctly? A. Salivating: unconditioned response B. Salivating: conditioned response C. Dinner bell: unconditioned stimulus D. Dinner bell: conditioned stimulus

C. Dinner bell: unconditioned stimulus Dinner bell: unconditioned stimulus is not a correctly labeled stimuli and response pair from Ivan Pavlov's experiments. This question is referring to Ivan Pavlov's classical conditioning experiments in which he trained his dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell by continuously pairing the sound of the bell with the presentation of food. The unconditioned stimulus, i.e., the stimulus to which the dogs had a natural response, was the food, and the unconditioned response that they had was salivating. By temporally pairing the bell with the food presentation, the bell became a conditioned stimulus at which the dogs learned to salivate, now a conditioned response.

After suffering a brain injury, a man is no longer able to remember facts and personal information he learned in the past, but can still form new memories. Furthermore, he remembers how to perform learned motor functions, like ride a bike and drive a car. Which of the following most accurately describes his memory impairment? A. He is likely suffering from retrograde amnesia for implicit memory, but his explicit memory appears in tact B. He is likely suffering from anterograde amnesia for explicit memory, but his implicit memory appears in tact C. He is likely suffering from retrograde amnesia for explicit memory, but his implicit memory appears in tact D. He is likely suffering from anterograde amnesia for implicit memory, but his explicit memory appears in tact

C. He is likely suffering from retrograde amnesia for explicit memory, but his implicit memory appears in tact After suffering a brain injury, a man is no longer able to remember facts and personal information he learned in the past, but can form new memories. Furthermore, he remembers how to perform learned motor functions, like ride a bike and drive a car. This patient is likely suffering from retrograde amnesia (which describes loss of memory from before the injury) for explicit memory (which includes facts and personal information), but because he is still able to perform learned motor functions his implicit (or procedural) memory appears in tact. Anterograde amnesia describes when memory can no longer be consolidated from the point of injury forward, which is not occurring in this scenario.

A ticket agent tells you a 5-digit confirmation code for a standby ticket on the next flight to New York City. In order to pick up your ticket, you must walk from the ticket agent to another service counter and tell the gate agent your confirmation code. As you hurry to the next counter, you repeat the 5-digit code over and over in your head so that you won't forget it. The part of your working memory system that helps you avoid auditory memory decay is called the: A. episodic buffer. B. visuospatial sketchpad. C. phonological loop. D. central executive.

C. phonological loop. The phonological loop is the part of Baddeley's model of working memory that deals with remembering auditory information, and would be involved in repeating an auditory message over and over mentally. The episodic buffer mediates between the long-term memory and the central executive in Baddeley's model, and helps give chronological order to memories and stories. The visuospatial sketchpad preserves visual and spatial memories, not auditory memories. The central executive is a component of Baddeley's model and is responsible for directing the attention of the working memory.

Suppose that you are studying for both the MCAT and final exams. You spend three hours looking at MCAT material, then study for your history final. You immediately take your history final after studying and realize that you can't remember much of what you studied because you keep recalling MCAT information. This is an example of: A. anterograde amnesia. B. retroactive interference. C. proactive interference. D. retrograde amnesia.

C. proactive interference. Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information (MCAT material) causes you to forget newer information (history facts), and best explains the scenario described. Retroactive interference would be occurring if newly acquired information (history facts) cause you to have trouble remembering old information (MCAT material), but is the opposite of what is described in this example. Retrograde amnesia is the loss of memory from before some certain point in time (usually a traumatic brain injury), while anterograde amnesia describes an inability to code new memories from a certain point in time.

In the classic Little Albert experiment, researchers conditioned a nine-month-old boy to fear a white rat. The researchers observed that the boy also demonstrated fear in response to similar stimuli including a white dog, a white rabbit, a white fur coat, and even a white Santa Claus beard. This fear response to similar objects is known as: A. response discrimination. B. response generalization. C. stimulus generalization. D. stimulus discrimination.

C. stimulus generalization. In conditioning, stimulus generalization is the tendency for the conditioned stimulus (white rat) to evoke similar responses in the subject (Little Albert) after the response has been conditioned; in this case, Little Albert is demonstrating stimulus generalization because he is producing the conditioned response (fear) to lots of different but similar white, fluffy stimuli. Response generalization occurs when an organism emits a different response to a conditioned stimulus; so if instead of fear, Little Albert demonstrated anger in response to the white rat, this might be an example of response generalization. In classical conditioning, discrimination is the ability to differentiate between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that have not been paired with an unconditioned stimulus; therefore stimulus discrimination would mean that Little Albert responds only to the white rat and response discrimination means that he responds only with fear.

Which of the following is the best example of insight learning? A. A grade school student receives a sticker for each homework assignment she completes. B. A young girl has never poured her own milk and cereal but has watched her mom do it countless times. One morning her mom is still upstairs and she pours her own cereal and milk. C. A teenager always takes the bus to his mom's workplace after school. When he gets his license, he drives for the first time to her workplace, and even though he never explicitly paid attention to the bus route, is easily able to navigate. D. A toy falls behind a bookshelf. A child tries to reach for it but can't get to it. He gets a stick and tries to pull the toy toward him without success. Frustrated he stops for a while, and then suddenly realizes that if he pushes the toy to the other side of the bookshelf, he can easily reach it from that side. He is then successful at obtaining the toy.

D. A toy falls behind a bookshelf. A child tries to reach for it but can't get to it. He gets a stick and tries to pull the toy toward him without success. Frustrated he stops for a while, and then suddenly realizes that if he pushes the toy to the other side of the bookshelf, he can easily reach it from that side. He is then successful at obtaining the toy. Insight learning involves the abrupt realization of a problem's solution, which requires the ability to visualize the problem and the solution internally, before initialing a behavioral response. In the example with the boy and his toy behind a bookshelf, he has a flash of insight that helps him to figure out how to fetch the toy, which is the best example of insight learning. The girl who pours her own milk and cereal is modeling behavior she has seen her mom perform, so this is best described as vicarious learning. A teenager who knows how to navigate a familiar route that he has never actually paid attention to is demonstrating latent learning. Receiving a sticker for completed homework assignments demonstrates positive reinforcement, an operant conditioning principle.

Suppose that for every day a child completes her homework before dinner, she does not have to clean the dinner dishes (a chore which she hates). What is this an example of? A. Positive punishment B. Negative punishment C. Positive reinforcement D. Negative reinforcement

D. Negative reinforcement In operant conditioning, negative reinforcement occurs when a behavior is strengthened by stopping, removing or avoiding a negative outcome or aversive stimulus. This behavior (completing homework before dinner) is negatively reinforced because the child gets to avoid an aversive stimulus (cleaning the dishes). Positive reinforcement involves the addition of a reinforcing stimulus following a behavior that makes it more likely that the behavior will occur again in the future. In operant conditioning, the goal of punishment is to decrease the likelihood that an undesirable behavior will happen again. Negative punishment involves taking something good or desirable away in order to reduce the occurrence of a particular behavior occurring again. Positive punishment involves presenting an unfavorable outcome or undesirable stimulus following an unwanted behavior.

Suppose that you hear some important information about the MCAT from one of your Princeton Review instructors. Later, you remember the information, but cannot remember from where you heard it, but assume you must have seen it on the AAMC website. This is an example of: A. the misinformation effect. B. sensory decay. C. a false memory. D. a source-monitoring error.

D. a source-monitoring error. A source-monitoring error occurs when people are recalling information and forget the information's source. The misinformation effect occurs when people are intentionally exposed to misinformation, as often occurs when crime witnesses are asked leading questions. False memories are inaccurate recollections for an event and may be the result of the intentional implanting of ideas. Sensory memory includes a brief store of information for auditory and visual stimulus; this store decays within seconds.

Suppose that every time a child brings home a bad grade, he loses computer and internet privileges for a week. This would be an example of: A. positive punishment. B. negative reinforcement. C. positive reinforcement. D. negative punishment.

D. negative punishment. In operant conditioning, the goal of punishment is to decrease the likelihood that an undesirable behavior will happen again. Negative punishment involves taking something good or desirable away (computer privileges) in order to reduce the occurrence of a particular behavior occurring again (bad grades). Positive punishment involves presenting an unfavorable outcome or undesirable stimulus following an unwanted behavior. Reinforcement is used to increase the likelihood that a behavior will occur; positive reinforcement provides a reward after a desired behavior and negative reinforcement involves stopping, avoiding, or removing a negative stimulus.

This type of multiple choice question tests your: A. relearning. B. cued recall. C. free recall. D. recognition.

D. recognition. Multiple choice questions which provide various answer options to chose from test your recognition ability, which involves identifying specific information from a set of information that is presented. Free recall involves retrieving information "out of thin air," while cued recall involves retrieving the information when provided with a cue. Relearning involves the process of learning material that was originally learned. Once we have learned and forgotten something, we are able to relearn it more quickly than when it was originally learned, which suggests that the information was in the memory system to be retrieved.

Albert Bandura's experiments demonstrated that: I. children are likely to copy or model the behavior of adults. II. learning can happen in a vicarious manner. III. children tend to demonstrate fear or apprehension when their caregiver leaves the room.

I and II only Albert Bandura (considered a pioneer in the field of observational learning) conducted a series of experiments using a Bobo doll to show that even when children did not see the consequences of an adult's behavior, they tended to imitate the behavior they saw the adult modeling with the Bobo doll (I is true), which supports the idea that learning can happen vicariously (II is true). Mary Ainsworth, not Albert Bandura, conducted experiments meant to test children's reactions to their caregivers leaving the room (III is false).

A common trick for remembering a list of items is to envision those items on different parts of your body. For example, to memorize a grocery list of milk, apples, celery, carrots, etc., you could envision a gallon of milk balanced on your head, an apple in your mouth, celery and carrots coming out of each ear, and so on. This memory trick is known as: I. the dual-encoding hypothesis. II. the method of loci. III. chunking.

I and II only The dual coding hypothesis suggests that it is easier to remember words with associated images than either words or images alone; by encoding both a visual mental representation of an associated word, there are more connections made to the memory and an opportunity to process the information at a deeper level (I is true). A similar aid for memory is to use the method of loci, which involves imagining something (like your body) and leaving a visual representation of a word to be remembered at different parts of your body (II is true). Chunking involves organizing the items to be remembered into chunks or groups, which is not being described here (III is false).

When asked to name all of the U.S. presidents, 99% of people are able to name George Washington and whoever is the current president. What is this an example of? I. The primacy effect II. The recency effect III. Implicit memory

I and II only The primacy effect and the recency effect are serial position effects that describe why people are more likely to remember the first item or items on a list (primacy effect, which explains why people remember the first U.S. president, I is true) and/or the last item or items on a list (recency effect, which explains why people remember the last or current U.S. president, II is true). Implicit memory includes our memories for how to complete procedural or motor tasks and does not explain why we are more likely to remember the first or last items on a list (III Is false).