Which one of the following best describes the growth of neurons during the prenatal period?
a. An overabundance of neurons emerges early in prenatal development, but about half of the neurons die before birth.
b. Neurons continue to be generated at a rapid rate throughout the last six months of the prenatal period.
c. Neurons begin to develop in the fifth month of pregnancy, and they proliferate rapidly during the third trimester.
d. Neurons that will support basic physiological functioning appear in the first two months after conception; those that will be responsible for higher-level thinking processes don't appear until two or three months before birth.
Ques. 2Which one of the following best exemplifies experience-dependent plasticity?
a. Hearing subtle differences in similar-sounding words
b. Learning how to pronounce words like a native speaker
c. Learning syntactical structures of one's native language
d. Learning how to read
Ques. 3Given the roles that the right hemisphere typically plays in language comprehension, which one of the following tasks would rely most heavily on the right hemisphere?
a. Hearing the rhyme in the words hypocrisy and democracy
b. Writing precise definitions of abstract words such as hypocrisy and democracy
c. Realizing that That blonde is really hot has as least two possible meanings
d. Translating Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace into English
Ques. 4During the elementary and secondary school years, much of the brain's development occurs in regions of the brain that are largely responsible for
a. thinking and reasoning
b. generation of emotional responses
c. muscular strength and coordination
d. making discriminations among highly similar stimuli
Ques. 5John is an adolescent who makes impulsive decisions (e.g., ditching school) and engages in risky behavior (e.g., driving well over the speed limit). His behavior can best be explained by which of the following?
a. Adolescents have limited concepts of consequences and punishment.
b. Adolescents' brain stems are still not fully developed, and will not be until middle adulthood.
c. Adolescents' pre-frontal cortices are still not fully developed and will not be until their late teens and early twenties.
d. During adolescence, synaptic pruning has stopped.
Ques. 6Six-year-old Jack has recently learned to appreciate the value of money, so his father assigns him some simple housekeeping chores to be performed throughout the week. He tells Jack that completion of these chores will earn him an allowance of one dollar every Saturday. Jack rarely completes his chores. From an operant conditioning perspective, which one of the following is most likely to be the reason why Jack is not doing his chores?
a. There is a delay in reinforcement.
b. Reinforcement is not contingent on the desired response.
c. Money is rarely an effective reinforcer for people.
d. The reinforcer is presented before the response.
Ques. 7In which one of the following situations should we be most concerned about missing a critical period in a person's development?
a. Rachel is born with a cataract in her left eye that is surgically removed when she is 8 years old.
b. Phoebe doesn't learn how to write until she is 12 years old.
c. Although Ross knows how to count, he gets no formal instruction in mathematics until he is 15.
d. Joey has his first tennis lesson when he is 25.
Ques. 8Which one of the following statements best describes the view of early behaviorists about how learning can best be studied?
a. Psychologists can determine how learning occurs only if they can identify its physiological basis.
b. Introspectionreporting what and how one is thinkingis likely to yield the most accurate results.
c. To study learning scientifically, researchers must confine their investigations to animal research in a laboratory setting.
d. The study of learning will be more objective and scientific if only observable events are considered.
Ques. 9Which one of the following best describes psychologists' current beliefs about the brain and learning?
a. Learning involves changes in synapses and possibly also involves the growth of new neurons and astrocytes.
b. Large doses of certain vitamins promote brain growth and lead to more rapid learning.
c. Left-hemisphere-dominant individuals are, on average, more effective learners than right-hemisphere-dominant individuals.
d. The brains of rapid learners are about 20 larger than the brains of slower learners.
Ques. 10Jacob is suffering from a mild case of flu and, as a result, is feeling a bit nauseous. He decides that he needs to eat something to keep up his strength, so he gets out of bed, puts on a heavy sweater to keep himself warm, heats up a bowl of leftover chili, and settles down in an easy chair to watch a television game show while he eats. A few days later, after Jacob has recovered from the flu, one of the stimuli in the situation just described elicits a feeling of nausea. With the phenomenon of associative bias in mind, choose the stimulus that is most likely to elicit nausea.
a. The sweater
b. The chili
c. The easy chair
d. The television game show
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