Attention, Perception, Learning and Memory Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The item that is not a cause of forgetting is selective attention.

Interference between memories, decay of the memory trace over time and failure of retrieval through inhibition are all given as causes of forgetting. Selective attention is the process of filtering what is taken in, and it determines what gets encoded but is not by itself a reason that stored material is lost.

Answer: C

The key marks autoshaping as the result behind superstitions about lucky objects.

Autoshaping is the development of a response, such as pecking at a lit key, without any contingency being arranged, through the pairing of a signal with a reward. On the keyed reading, a belief that an object brings luck arises in the same way, from chance pairings of the object with success. Insight is a sudden grasp of a solution, and behaviour modification programmes and token economies are deliberately designed systems of reinforcement, so they are not accidental. Superstition is classically explained by accidental reinforcement, which sits close to the keyed option.

Answer: D

The principle that a more preferred activity can reinforce a less preferred one is the Premack principle.

David Premack proposed that behaviours that are more probable can be used to reinforce those that are less probable, as when a child may play after finishing homework. Trace conditioning is a classical conditioning arrangement with a gap between the stimuli, Hull's principle concerns drive reduction, and stimulus generalisation is the spread of a response to similar stimuli.

Answer: B

The correct sequence in the Atkinson and Shiffrin model is sensory memory, attention, short term memory, elaborative rehearsal, long term memory, which is option B.

Information first enters the sensory registers, and the part that is attended to passes into short term memory. It is then moved into long term memory through elaborative rehearsal. Options A and C put attention before sensory memory or short term memory before sensory memory, and option D places long term memory before rehearsal.

Answer: A

The deliberate application of strategies with planning, monitoring and evaluation is called self-regulated learning.

The learner plans how to use strategies, monitors them as they are used, evaluates the result and adjusts later behaviour. Implicit learning occurs without awareness, deductive reasoning is drawing conclusions from premises, and cognitive learning is a general term for learning that involves mental processes, so none gives this cycle of control.

Answer: B

The correct matching is p-2, q-3, r-1, s-4, which is option B.

Echoic memory is the brief auditory store (2) and iconic memory is the brief visual store (3). Autobiographical memory holds episodic information about one's own life (1), and implicit memory is shown through priming (4). Options A, C and D swap the echoic and iconic stores or the autobiographical and implicit memory descriptions.

Answer: D

The technique of shaping is based on successive approximation.

In shaping, behaviours that come closer and closer to the target response are reinforced in turn, until the target is reached. Reciprocal inhibition is the principle behind systematic desensitization, response inhibition means preventing a response, and stimulus discrimination is responding differently to different stimuli.

Answer: A

The two types of declarative memory given by Endel Tulving are episodic and semantic.

Episodic memory holds personally experienced events with their time and place, and semantic memory holds general knowledge and meanings. Procedural memory is non-declarative, the memory of skills, so it is not a type of declarative memory, and 'reconstructive' is not one of Tulving's types.

Answer: A

Both statements are true and the reason explains the assertion, so the answer is option A.

Illusions are instances in which perception gives a false interpretation of physical reality. The theory of misapplied constancy accounts for some of them, such as the Muller-Lyer illusion, by saying that depth cues make us treat some parts as farther away and so, through size constancy, as larger. The reason is therefore an account of how the false interpretation arises.

Answer: A

Both statements are true and the reason is the explanation of the assertion in the key, which is option A.

Working memory involves both storage and the processing of the information held. The serial position effect, in which the last items of a list are recalled from a short term store and the first from a long term store, is evidence for two distinct memory systems, which is the idea on which the working memory model rests. The key accepts the reason as supporting the assertion, so options B, C and D are not keyed.