My EPPP Practice Questions: Learning and Memory

b. unconditioned stimulus
The technique described in the question is known as higher-order conditioning. When the
original CS (Variable B) is paired with a second CS (Variable C), the original CS is acting as a
US.

b. extinction
Although systematic desensitization is based on counterconditioning, research using a
dismantling strategy suggests that its effects are actually due to exposure to the CS without
the US (i.e., classical extinction).

a. pairing anxiety-inducing stimuli with relaxation
Reciprocal inhibition is used to reduce fear and anxiety responses and involves pairing
stimuli that evoke fear with stimuli that produce relaxation or another incompatible
response.

d. unconditioned stimulus.
In this situation, the shoe is the conditioned stimulus (CS) and will be paired with electric
shock or other stimulus that naturally produces an unpleasant reaction so that, eventually,
the shoe also produces the unpleasant reaction. The electric shock or other stimulus that
naturally produces an unpleasant reaction is the unconditioned stimulus (US).

b. the gradual removal of prompts
When teaching a new response, nonverbal and verbal prompts may be used to help elicit that
response. Because the ultimate goal is for the response to occur independently, prompts are
gradually removed once the response is well-established. This procedure is referred to as
fading. For the exam, you want to be sure not to confuse fading with thinning, which refers to
a reduction in reinforcement.

c. a college student cleans his dorm room to keep his roommate from nagging him about
how sloppy he is
Negative reinforcement is occurring when a behavior is performed (increases) to escape or
avoid a stimulus. In this case, the student cleans his room to avoid his roommate’s nagging.
Negative reinforcement, like positive reinforcement, results in an increase in a behavior. In
responses “a” and “d”, a behavior is not being performed (i.e., is decreasing) because of the
consequences. Both of these situations are examples of punishment. Response “b” is an
example of positive reinforcement: The boy’s whining is increasing because of the stimulus
that is applied following the whining.

c. accidental reinforcement
Skinner found that the odd behaviors exhibited by pigeons in his study were the result of
accidental pairing of reinforcers with those behaviors. For example, if a pigeon was
accidentally reinforced with food while it was pecking at the floor, it would continue pecking
at the floor even though it had never been deliberately reinforced for doing so. Skinner
concluded that the superstitious behaviors of humans can be attributed to accidental
reinforcement.

b. The child’s whining will first increase, then decrease.
Use of extinction to eliminate a previously reinforced response often results in a temporary
extinction (response) burst.

d. differential reinforcement
Differential reinforcement for other behaviors (D.R.O.) involves reinforcing a person when
he/she exhibits other, alternative behaviors to the target behavior during a prespecified period
of time (e.g., every 10 minutes).

a. backward chaining
Mrs. Ichthys’s son has been taught a complex behavior by teaching him the individual
responses in the “behavior chain.” Since Mrs. Ichthys has started with the last behavior and
“worked backward” from there, this is best described as an example of backward chaining.

c. feelings of hopelessness
In their version of the learned helplessness hypothesis, Abramson et al. de-emphasize the role
of attributions (emphasized in the previous version) and emphasize the role of hopelessness
in the development of depression.

b. Socratic questioning
An essential technique in Beck’s cognitive therapy is guided discovery, which makes use of
Socratic questioning that is designed to help the individual identify the impact of cognitions
on emotions and behavior.

a. interpreting experiences in patterned, reflexive ways
As the name implies, automatic thoughts are automatic or reflexive. They also have an
interpretive (evaluative) component – e.g., “this is awful.”

d. education, skills acquisition, and application.
Unfortunately, the names given to the three stages of stress inoculation vary somewhat in the
literature. The first stage is referred to as the education, conceptualization, or cognitive
phase; the second stage as the skills application or training phase or the skills acquisition
and rehearsal phase; and the third phase as the application or application and follow-through
phase.

b. Raynaud’s disease
Raynaud’s disease is a disorder of the blood vessels that limits circulation to certain areas of
the body (usually the fingers and toes). Thermal (temperature) biofeedback has been found to
be an effective treatment for this disorder.

b. proactive interference
Proactive interference occurs when previously acquired information (your friend’s old e-mail
address) interferes with the ability to learn or recall recently or newly acquired information
(your friend’s new e-mail address). Retroactive interference occurs when recently acquired
information interferes with your ability to recall previously acquired information. According
to decay theory, forgetting is due to the fading of memory traces over time. Cue-dependent
forgetting occurs when there are insufficient retrieval cues.

a. words in the beginning of the list
This question is asking about the serial position effect. Research on this phenomenon has
found that when there is a delay between learning and recall, words at the beginning of the
list are remembered best. (When there is no delay, words in the beginning and end of the list
are remembered best and to about the same degree.)

c. holds a large amount of sensory data for a brief period
Sensory memory seems to be able to store a large number of sensory events, but it does so
for only a very brief period of time (.5 to 1 second).

d. semantic
The levels of processing model distinguishes between three levels of information processing
which, from shallowest to deepest, are structural, phonemic, and semantic. Semantic
processing produces the best recall and involves processing terms, concepts, etc. in terms of
their meaning.