Essay Questions for Human Learning and Memory
Chapter 1: Some Basic Assumptions 1. What is neural determinism? What evidence supports it? 2. Discuss the arguments for and against determinism, citing evidence wherever possible. 3. What is introspection, and why did psychologists abandon it as a method for understanding people’s behavior? 4. Discuss the arguments for and against the use of animals in psychological research, citing evidence wherever possible.
Chapter 2: Classical Conditioning 1. How did Pavlov account for extinction? What evidence supports his acount? 2. Suppose you participated in an experiment in which you occasionally received a tone followed by a puff of air to your eye, and that after 20 pairings you began to blink as soon as the tone was presented. One possible explanation is classical conditioning. What other explanations are possible? What are unpaired and random control groups, and how do they allow us to decide whether your blinking was truly the result of conditioning? 3. Discuss the evidence that classical conditioning can play a role in the development of hunger, fear, sexual arousal and drug craving. 4. How have classical conditioning principles been used in the treatment of phobias? Can conditioning principles also account for the origin of phobias?
Chapter 3: Conditioning Principles and Theories 1. For more than 50 years, research on classical conditioning suggested that if a CS and a US were contiguous, then conditioning would occur. How did research on contingency and blocking challenge this assumption? 2. Why was blocking a challenge to contiguity theories of conditioning? How did Kamin account for it? What is the Rescorla-Wagner model and how does it provide an alternative explanation for blocking? 3. (a) What is the Rescorla-Wagner model? What is the model’s basic equation, and what do each of the terms mean?
(b) How does the model account for simple conditioning (repeated pairings of a CS with a US)? Include a mathematical account of what happens during the first two trials of conditioning, showing V3, and including a clear verbal explanation of what is happening. That is, don’t just present an equation and some numbers: At each point, explain why particular numbers have been used. The values to be used for c and Vmax will be provided at the time of the exam. 4. What are the three main criteria used in evaluating scientific theories? According to these criteria, how successful has the Rescorla-Wagner model been as a theory of conditioning? 5. What is learned during classical conditioning? Specifically, what were Pavlov’s and Tolman’s views? How does the two-systems hypothesis integrate these views, and what evidence supports it? 6. What is causal learning? To what extent does it involve the same processes as those found in classical conditioning?
Chapter 4: Reinforcement 1. The human capacity for language means that reinforcement can be effective even when there is a long delay between the occurrence of a response and the delivery of the reinforcer. Nevertheless, the text argues that it can still be important to present rewards as soon as possible: Discuss the relevant evidence. 2. On the surface, the concept of motivation is simple: The more we want a reinforcer, the harder we will work to obtain it. How has research on contrast effects and the Yerkes-Dodson law complicated this picture? 3. Thorndike, in the Law of Effect, proposed that the presentation of a reinforcer would strengthen the association between the response that had been made and the stimuli that were present. What has subsequent research taught us about which of the stimuli that are present will come to control the response?
Chapter 5: Reinforcement Applications 1. One objection to the use of reinforcement is that it can undermine intrinsic motivation. What is intrinsic motivation? What does research tell us about the likelihood of rewards undermining it? In practical terms, what is the best way to minimize this possibility? 2. What is the principle of minimal force? What evidence on the effects of reinforcement suggests the need for such a principle? 3. Traditional explanations of behaviors such as dieting attributed success to will-power. Why have some psychologists rejected this interpretation? How does Skinner’s concept of self-control provide an alternative account? How does the study by Drabman, Spitalnik and O’Leary (1973) offer a possible model for the development of self-control?
Chapter 6: Punishment 1. How do the effects of punishment on humans compare to the effects on animals? Citing relevant research, discuss in what respects they are the same and in what respects they are different. 2. Research has suggested that punishment can have undesirable side effects; discuss this research. 3. Should parents use punishment to suppress children’s undesirable behavior? In your answer, cite relevant research wherever possible.
Chapter 7: Theories of Reinforcement 1. The clash between S-R and cognitive theories of reinforcement illustrates several important principles about the nature of science. How did both Watson and Tolman invoke accepted principles of the scientific method to justify their approaches? What does the subsequent difficulty in testing their theories tell us about the necessary characteristics of theories in science? 2. When a response is reinforced, does this result in the formation of associations or expectations? Cite relevant research wherever possible. 3. Thorndike believed that a reinforcer will automatically strengthen whatever behavior happens to precedes it. What human research supports this view? What research challenges it? 4. What is a heuristic? What are the availability and representativeness heuristics, and what evidence suggests that we use them in estimating the probability of events? 5. What is the “hot hand,” and how do the availability and representativeness heuristics help to explain why many people mistakenly believe in it? 6. Discuss the role of reference points and temporal discounting in how people assign utility to outcomes. 7. Expected utility theory assumes that people essentially make decisions rationally. Discuss the evidence that intuition and emotion can also play a powerful role.
Chapter 8: Memory: An Introduction 1. How did Ebbinghaus use the concept of association to explain memory? What subsequent research led psychologists to the view that the formation of associations cannot fully explain memory? 2. What were the main assumptions of the Atkinson-Shiffrin model? How did they use their model to account for rapid forgetting and primacy and recency effects?
Chapter 9: Sensory and Working Memory 1. Discuss the role of bottom-up and top-down processes in assigning a sensory code. 2. What evidence suggests that memory involves separate short- and long-term stores? Why have some theorists suggested that the short-term store is best viewed as the items in the long-term store that are currently active? 3. According to Baddeley and Hitch (1974), what the three main components of working memory? What evidence led them to this view? 4. According to Atkinson and Shiffrin, the amount of time spent rehearsing an item was the main factor determining whether it was transferred from the short-term store to the long-term store. How did subsequent research on levels of processing and consolidation influence this view? 5. What was Broadbent’s filter theory of attention and what evidence challenged it? What was Kahneman’s pool-of-resources theory and what evidence supported it? 6. How did research by Sachs (1967) and Simons and Leven suggest that our memories are much more like rough sketches than detailed photographs?
Chapter 10: Long-term Memory 1. What are episodic and semantic memories? What evidence suggests that they are formed by different systems? 2. What are explicit and implicit memories? What evidence suggests that they are formed in different systems? 3. Research has suggested that past experiences can influence us even when have no conscious memory of them. How has research on prejudice and the mere exposure effect supported this claim? 4. What are prototype and exemplar theories of memory? What are the implications of research on the typicality effect for deciding which of these theories is correct? 5. One important question in cognitive psychology has been how concepts are represented or stored in memory. How did Collins and Quillian’s semantic network model account for this? How did research using sentence verification and lexical decision tasks support their model? 6. What evidence suggests that we store the essential meaning or gist of a sentence, rather than (or in addition to) the actual words? What evidence suggests that we use propositions to store this meaning? 7. The text suggests that stored memories are more like rough sketches of an experience than detailed photographs. How has research on change blindness, sentences, and graduate student offices supported this claim?
Chapter 11: Retrieval 1. Is forgetting due to the passage of time or to interference? Discuss the relevant experimental evidence. 2. What evidence suggests that material we can’t remember is often still present in our memories; the problem is that we can’t access it? 3. Discuss the role of retrieval cues in helping us to recall our experiences. 4. What evidence suggests that inhibition plays a role in retrieval? 5. Discuss the evidence that when we cannot fully remember an experience, we sometimes reconstruct what it must have been from fragmentary clues. 6. One reason we sometimes remember experiences erroneously is source confusion. What is source confusion, and how does research by Loftus and Roediger illustrate its role?
Chapter 12: Practical Applications 1. What is the method of loci and why is it effective? 2. Discuss the evidence that practice, deep processing, and retrieval practice can all make studying more effective. 3. We might expect powerful emotions to enhance memories—in effect, burning them in—or, conversely, to impair them, by interfering with our ability to focus on what is happening. Discuss the implications of research on eyewitness memory for this issue. 4. How has research by cognitive psychologists suggested ways in which the memories of eyewitnesses can be improved? 5. What has research told us about the reality of recovered memories?
Chapter 13: Neural Networks 1. What are neural network models? How does McClelland and Rumelhart’s neural network model account for the formation of concepts? 2. How successful have neural network models been in explaining learning and memory?