Deck 6: Basic Learning and Perception

Question 1

After repeated refusal to give her daughter a cookie so as not to spoil her dinner,Caitlin finally gives in and provides her daughter with a cookie to stop the crying.The child's crying behavior was

A) punished.
B) negatively reinforced.
C) positively reinforced.
D) classically conditioned.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Sasha was very ill as an infant and had to receive many injections in the hospital.Now that she is a toddler,Sasha still displays strong fear when she sees a doctor.

A) conditioned stimulus.
B) unconditioned response.
C) conditioned response.
D) unconditioned stimulus.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Rapid habituation and rapid recovery from habituation to novel stimuli are associated with

A) greater intelligence and cognitive capacities in children.
B) reduced intelligence and cognitive capacities in children.
C) greater physical and psychological stress in children.
D) attentional deficits in children.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

________ has become an increasingly important element in explaining learning throughout development.

A) Habituation
B) Classical conditioning
C) Operant conditioning
D) Imitation

Question 5

________ is the practice of withdrawing an aversive stimulus with the purpose of strengthening a preceding response.

A) Positive reinforcement
B) Positive punishment
C) Negative reinforcement
D) Negative punishment

Question 6

The ability to imitate a model's behavior hours,days,and even weeks after observation is called

A) amodal imitation.
B) time-course learning.
C) deferred imitation.
D) the learning curve.

Question 7

The ability to learn immediately after birth

A) has been demonstrated for classical conditioning but not for habituation.
B) is important because it keeps infants from getting bored.
C) respond to the demands of the physical and social world.
D) is limited to habituation and dishabituation types of learning.

Question 8

Touching John's cheek causes him to turn his head.Before Mother touches John's cheek,she speaks to him.John now turns whenever he hears his mother's voice.Mother's voice is a(n)

A) conditioned stimulus.
B) conditioned response.
C) unconditioned stimulus.
D) unconditioned response.

Question 9

Which of the following is an example of classical conditioning?

A) Decreased staring at a visual pattern that is repeatedly presented to an infant
B) Sucking in response to a touch on the forehead that was previously paired with the taste of a sugar solution
C) A child rewarded with a cookie for cleaning his room
D) An infant imitating a facial expression displayed by her mother

Question 10

When young infants modify their voluntary behaviors to see and hear things or to be touched,psychologists can conclude that

A) visual and auditory events serve as powerful reinforcers for young infants.
B) the young infant's behavior consists primarily of reflexive responses to sensory stimuli.
C) imitation and observational learning are important forms of learning in young infants.
D) young infants can undergo classical conditioning.

Question 11

Behaviors typically increase in frequency when which of the following occurs?

A) Negative punishment
B) Classical conditioning
C) Habituation
D) Positive reinforcement

Question 12

________ may be one of the earliest "games" that infants use to learn more about their surroundings.

A) Imitation of facial expressions
B) Babbling
C) Pretending to cry
D) Waving arms and legs

Question 13

Classical and operant conditioning in infants seem to work best with

A) behaviors that are important to infants.
B) behaviors that are important to the parents.
C) behaviors that are irrelevant to infants.
D) infants who cannot learn to habituate.

Question 14

Diana was sticking her tongue out at her little sister,Nicole,at the breakfast table.When baby Nicole saw her big sister later in the day,she began sticking out her tongue.Nicole is exhibiting

A) habituation.
B) scaffolding.
C) classical conditioning.
D) deferred imitation.

Question 15

Which of the following did Piaget believe provides the first major evidence for symbolic capacities in young children?

A) Facial imitation
B) Deferred imitation
C) Scaffolding
D) Habituation

Question 16

When her parents first hung the new mobile over her crib,Hannah paid a great deal of attention to it.But as time passed,Hannah paid less attention to the mobile,looking at it less often and for shorter periods of time.Hannah is exhibiting

A) habituation.
B) dishabituation.
C) recovery from habituation.
D) negative reinforcement.

Question 17

Fourteen- to eighteen-month-old children are more likely to imitate an action accompanied by the verbal expression "There!" than an action accompanied by the expression "Whoops!",suggesting that

A) children cannot tell the difference between a deliberate action and an accidental action.
B) adults need to be careful of the language they use when accomplishing a task.
C) adults do not serve as good models for imitative learning.
D) children can selectively imitate the deliberate actions of others.

Question 18

The gradual decline of a response to repetitious occurrences of the same stimulus is called

A) dishabituation.
B) habituation.
C) classical conditioning.
D) scaffolding.

Question 19

The reinstatement of the intensity,frequency,or duration of a response to a stimulus that has changed is called

A) habituation.
B) dishabituation.
C) negative reinforcement.
D) positive reinforcement.

Question 20

Recent research suggests that young infants may imitate the facial expressions of adults

A) because they have been classically conditioned to do so.
B) only as a result of being repeatedly reinforced for engaging in such behavior.
C) only when they are very hungry and highly aroused.
D) as a way to help them identify and communicate with the model.

Question 21

Rapid movements of the eye that allow the eye to inspect an object are called

A) saccades.
B) smooth visual pursuit.
C) vergence.
D) accommodation.

Question 22

Mervyn pulled out a red block from his pocket and showed it to his four-month-old daughter,Jennifer,a number of times.Jennifer looked at it less and less each time.Then Mervyn pulled out a blue block.If Jennifer showed recovery from habituation,we would expect that she

A) looked about the same length of time at the blue block as she looked at the red block the last time it was shown to her.
B) looked longer at the blue block than at the red block the last time it was shown to her.
C) smiled at the blue block more than at the red block because she recognized it as something new.
D) smiled at the blue block less than at the red block because she recognized it as something new.

Question 23

If a researcher were to observe the preferential-looking behavior of a three-month-old,she or he would most likely find that the infant looked at

A) a gray circular array the longest amount of time.
B) a simple rectangular bar the longest amount of time.
C) a facelike pattern the longest amount of time.
D) each of these for an equal length of time.

Question 24

Perceptual learning and statistical learning are both forms of

A) classical conditioning.
B) habituation.
C) implicit learning.
D) operant conditioning.

Question 25

The ________ controls the amount of light entering the eye and is sluggish during the first few months of life,reducing the ability to focus.

A) acuity reflex
B) pupillary reflex
C) accommodation reflex
D) visuomotor reflex

Question 26

Delores repeatedly showed Curtis,her two-month-old,a picture of his grandfather.She noticed that Curtis seemed to become less interested in looking at the picture each time she showed it to him.Then she showed Curtis a picture of his grandmother,and he looked at it as long as he had first looked at his grandfather's picture.Curtis's loss of interest in his grandfather's picture demonstrates

A) habituation of attention.
B) a conditioned response.
C) an operant response.
D) recovery from habituation.

Question 27

Professor Wrightway would like to learn about the perceptual capacities of four-month-old infants but is uncertain about which procedure is most useful.You would recommend that he not choose a procedure that involves

A) habituation.
B) deferred imitation.
C) preferential looking.
D) operant conditioning.

Question 28

Marasol was repeatedly presented with a picture of a large,blue butterfly.Although she looked at the picture when it was first presented,she tired of it and hardly looked at it when it was presented for the eighth time.When the stimulus was changed to a small,blue butterfly,Marasol again showed an interest by looking at the picture for a longer time.Marasol's renewed interest in the picture illustrates

A) recovery from habituation.
B) operant conditioning.
C) preferential looking.
D) habituation.

Question 29

Justine,a three-month-old,smiles when she sees her favorite mobile as she is put in her crib.Her ________ the mobile is an important process that allows her to interpret and enjoy this situation.

A) perception of
B) sensation of
C) habituation to
D) classical conditioning to

Question 30

________ are typically thought to be the building blocks;________ is thought to be the order and meaning imposed upon those basic elements.

A) Constructs;construction
B) Sensations;perception
C) Percepts;sensation
D) Percepts;attention

Question 31

________ procedures have figured prominently in research on auditory perception and infants' abilities to process sensory cues.

A) Classical conditioning
B) Operant conditioning
C) Deferred imitation
D) Habituation

Question 32

Professor Smart is interested in studying the auditory capacities of three-month-old infants.After reviewing the research literature,she is most likely to choose ________ as an appropriate means of investigating this sensory modality.

A) operant conditioning
B) discrimination learning
C) classical conditioning
D) deferred imitation

Question 33

When her parents present Allison with a brightly colored toy,she looks at it far longer than when they show her a plain block.Allison's greater alertness to the brightly colored toy is an indication of

A) attention.
B) learning.
C) conditioning.
D) reinforcement.

Question 34

________ may be responsible for acquiring knowledge about language,categories,and procedural routines.

A) Habituation
B) Classical conditioning
C) Operant conditioning
D) Implicit learning

Question 35

Studies of looking behavior designed to explore the perceptual capacities of infants are most informative when infants

A) look at two different stimuli for about equivalent amounts of time.
B) are over six months of age because it is difficult to determine where younger infants are looking.
C) are presented with objects about three feet away,since their visual acuity is best at that distance.
D) show a preference for attending to one stimulus more than another stimulus.

Question 36

Perceptual development is a _________ process,one of imposing sense and order on the multisensory external world.

A) constructive
B) static
C) stressful
D) unimodal

Question 37

The visuomotor process by which small involuntary muscles change the shape of the lens of the eye so that images of objects seen at different distances are brought into focus on the retina is called

A) smooth visual pursuit.
B) smooth visual focus.
C) visual acuity.
D) visual accommodation.

Question 38

The brain's ability to organize and interpret basic units of information from the environment is called

A) habituation.
B) perception.
C) attention.
D) sensation.

Question 39

________ is the basic information in the external world that is recorded by receptors in the brain.

A) Sensation
B) Perception
C) Attention
D) Organization

Question 40

________ is the state of alertness or arousal that allows the individual to focus on a selected aspect of the environment.

A) Sensation
B) Perception
C) Attention
D) Habituation

Question 41

________ is a complex measure of visual capacity that takes into consideration the ability to make visual discriminations when illumination,orientation,and other aspects of contour also vary.

A) Visual acuity
B) Vergence
C) Contrast sensitivity
D) Contour accommodation

Question 42

The biological motion phenomenon and the occluded rod experiments provide evidence for the

A) importance of kinetic cues for early infant perceptual development.
B) importance of pattern perception in one-month-old infants.
C) absence of depth perception in infants younger than two to four months of age.
D) absence of pattern perception in infants younger than two to four months of age.

Question 43

Research on biological motion indicates that infants

A) use the colors and brightness of surfaces to determine if an object is animate.
B) use the flow of information created by body-type movements to determine if an object is animate.
C) cannot use the flow of information created by body-type movements to determine if an object is animate.
D) do not process biological motion as a special cue until after about twelve months.

Question 44

If ________ does not occur when fixations shift between near and far objects,one sees double objects.

A) visual accommodation
B) smooth visual pursuit
C) vergence
D) visual acuity

Question 45

Carrie was slowly moving a little teddy bear back and forth across her son's visual field.Instead of following the bear with his eyes,he made several small,jerky movements to catch up to the bear as it moved.Carrie's son has not yet developed the ability

A) to saccade.
B) of visual accommodation.
C) of vergence.
D) of smooth visual pursuit.

Question 46

When shown a picture of a human face,Juan focuses on the chin and hairline,but Angelina focuses on the eyes.Based on their knowledge of the externality effect,researchers would probably assume that

A) Juan is older than Angelina.
B) Angelina is older than Juan.
C) Juan and Angelina are the same age because the externality effect does not follow a developmental pattern.
D) neither Juan nor Angelina has very good visual acuity since both failed to attend to all the different features of the face.

Question 47

Recent research suggests that infants

A) cannot see in any color.
B) see a full range of colors.
C) can detect some hues but not a full range of colors.
D) can only see black,white,and the primary colors.

Question 48

Two-month-old Manuel was placed face down on a glass coffee table.Manuel is likely to

A) show interest in the depth cues but not show any fear.
B) show fear and cry.
C) show no reaction to the depth cues.
D) begin to display avoidance-like behavior.

Question 49

The ability to perceive a single image of an object even though perceptual input is binocular and differs slightly for each eye is called

A) visual acuity.
B) vergence.
C) visual accommodation.
D) stereopsis.

Question 50

When presented with a picture of a woman's face,a two-month-old infant will likely fixate on the ________ while a four-month-old infant will likely fixate on the ________.

A) chin;hair
B) eyes;mouth
C) mouth;chin
D) hair;eyes

Question 51

When infants use the movement of objects to help them visually identify the object from the rest of the visual field,they are utilizing

A) stereopsis.
B) acuity cues.
C) biological perception.
D) kinetic cues.

Question 52

________ are useful for neonates,who must launch a sequence of them to "catch up" to a peripheral target.

A) Saccades
B) Pupillary reflexes
C) Visual accommodations
D) Vergences

Question 53

A very young infant who is unable to detect the contours in a finely patterned checkerboard array is most likely to attend to this stimulus

A) more than to a gray stimulus of equal intensity.
B) less than to a gray stimulus of equal intensity.
C) about the same as to a gray stimulus of equal intensity.
D) about the same as a colored stimulus of less intensity.

Question 54

Two-to-three-month-olds become quieter and exhibit a decreased heart rate over the deep end of the visual cliff,suggesting that

A) they have not yet developed a fear of depth.
B) they have developed a fear of depth.
C) they are less interested in the deep side.
D) they lack the visuomotor skills to respond appropriately.

Question 55

Young infants' tendency to look preferentially at the outer contours of complete visual stimuli is called the

A) Snellen effect.
B) perceptual differentiation effect.
C) externality effect.
D) selective attention effect.

Question 56

Two-month-old Timothy was presented with a picture of a rectangle until he showed habituation of attention.When the rectangle was rotated,the habituation continued.When the shape was changed to a square,however,Timothy showed recovery from habituation.These observations suggest that

A) Timothy appears to perceive the individual sides of the objects.
B) Timothy cannot discriminate between different objects.
C) Timothy's reliance on kinetic cues has matured.
D) Timothy appears to perceive the two objects as different from each other.

Question 57

________ is the consistent,unbroken tracking by the eyes that serves to maintain focus on a moving visual target.

A) Visual accommodation
B) Vergence
C) Smooth visual pursuit
D) Visual acuity

Question 58

One source of information that is very important for the development of depth perception is

A) the visual cliff.
B) experiencing fear of depth.
C) binocular vision.
D) amblyopia.

Question 59

The tendency for infants younger than two months to focus on the external features of a complex stimulus and explore the internal features less systematically is called

A) internal scanning.
B) external scanning.
C) the inside-out effect.
D) the externality effect.

Question 60

Infants too young to crawl will still

A) react to the shallow and deep ends of the visual cliff.
B) do not react to the shallow and deep ends of the visual cliff.
C) experience fear when placed at the edge of a visual cliff.
D) respond equally to the two sides of the visual cliff.

Question 61

Which of the following is not true regarding infants' auditory preferences?

A) Infants prefer to listen to a song sung by an adult to another infant over an adult singing a song alone.
B) Infants prefer passages of Mozart with pauses introduced in natural places over passages with pauses introduced in unnatural places.
C) Infants prefer intact passages of Mozart to the same passages with scrambled notes.
D) Infants prefer to listen to passages judged to be displeasing by adults as much as passages judged to be pleasing.

Question 62

Who is more likely to be able to distinguish between phonemes found in languages other than his own?

A) Joshua,a thirteen-month-old Israeli infant
B) Tom,an American adult
C) Kevin,a three-year-old Canadian child
D) Bret,a seven-month-old Russian infant

Question 63

Recent research suggests that

A) the ability to hear develops before birth,since newborns prefer to listen to sounds they heard in utero.
B) infants can discriminate among sounds as well as older children can.
C) babies are unable to hear human sounds but able to hear high-pitched noises.
D) the ability to hear develops shortly after birth.

Question 64

The ability to locate a sound in space by turning the head or eyes in the direction of the sound is called

A) intermodal perception.
B) sound localization.
C) perceptual differentiation.
D) phonemic analysis.

Question 65

Moderate to profound deafness is estimated to affect approximately ________ newborns in the United States each year.

A) 50
B) 500
C) 5,000
D) 50,000

Question 66

Research results suggest that within the first year of life infants fine tune both their auditory and visual systems to relevant information that occurs

A) in a novel situation
B) as part of a random pattern of stimuli
C) in a series of specific training scenarios.
D) as part of their day-to-day experience.

Question 67

________ signal depth in photos or two-dimensional arrays.

A) Pictorial cues
B) Visual cues
C) Kinetic cues
D) Relative cues

Question 68

Toward the end of the first year of exposure to speech,our auditory functioning undergoes a reorganization that reduces sensitivity to sounds not part of our native language.This is an example of

A) auditory awareness.
B) perceptual narrowing.
C) phonemic balancing.
D) sound destimulization.

Question 69

The discovery that other animals in addition to humans display categorical perception provides evidence that

A) with the right training,animals will someday be able to discriminate human speech.
B) animals can learn to make the same discriminations humans do among classes of objects,such as vehicles,foods,and clothing.
C) humans may not have an innate and specialized auditory capacity designed to process speech sounds.
D) the visual ability to distinguish different sets of objects in the environment is similar in animals to that in humans.

Question 70

Suze avoids reaching across a gap,but she readily attempts to crawl across it,indicating that she needs to relearn

A) sensory safety.
B) motor control.
C) depth perception.
D) kinetic cues.

Question 71

The smallest unit of sound that changes the meanings of words is called a

A) saccade.
B) phoneme.
C) category.
D) percept.

Question 72

Sopheap,a five-month-old born to parents in Cambodia who speak the Khmer language,

A) would have difficulty distinguishing some phonemes in English that are not part of the Khmer language.
B) would have no difficulty distinguishing phonemes in English,since they are the same as those found in his native Khmer language.
C) should be able to distinguish all the phonemes in English,including some that may not be part of the Khmer language.
D) would be unable to distinguish even the phonemes that are part of his native Khmer language because infants that young are still unable to distinguish speech sounds.

Question 73

________ is the classification of sounds as the same even when they differ on some continuous physical dimension,except when on opposite sides of a critical juncture.

A) Auditory discrimination
B) Auditory accommodation
C) Categorical perception
D) Phonemic discrimination

Question 74

Research suggests that visual perceptual processing of nine-month-olds has become

A) less finely tuned to relevant stimuli.
B) more finely tuned to relevant stimuli.
C) more finely tuned to irrelevant stimuli.
D) unable to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant stimuli.

Question 75

As we age,we lose our ability to distinguish between variations in meter in musical patterns,which differ across cultures.This is an example of

A) auditory awareness.
B) perceptual narrowing.
C) phonemic balancing.
D) sound destimulization.

Question 76

The ability to detect satisfying musical phrasings may be related to

A) detecting the phrasing and sound patterns that underlie speech.
B) auditory localization of moving objects.
C) increased and early mathematical functioning.
D) the ability to use categorical perception to identify the mother's voice.

Question 77

Infants need to learn to coordinate their perception of depth with safe actions for negotiating their surroundings as

A) they near one year of age.
B) each new postural and motor ability is learned.
C) their depth perception develops and matures.
D) each eye develops fully.

Question 78

Which of the following is not true regarding infants' perception of sound patterns?

A) Babies can recognize changes in tempo.
B) Babies cannot recognize rhythmic changes.
C) Babies younger than six months of age do not recognize musical key transpositions.
D) Babies recognize frequency shifts by the age of eight months.

Question 79

Jess is a few days old and already responds to his mother's voice and the book she read him in the last weeks of her pregnancy.This is an example of how in utero,the fetus acquires

A) visual information about the external environment through patterns of light and dark.
B) little auditory information beyond the mother's heartbeat.
C) auditory information about the mother's voice and the cadence of sound.
D) little sensory information and therefore does not learn until after birth.

Question 80

When Doreen was in her ninth month of pregnancy,she read nursery rhymes out loud every night for her unborn child to hear.Current research suggests that Doreen's baby

A) will not be affected by Doreen's reading routine because unborn babies cannot hear sounds.
B) will prefer to hear an unfamiliar voice over Doreen's voice.
C) will prefer to hear Doreen's voice over a stranger's voice.
D) will learn to read at a very early age.