Sample Questions

 

 

1. Explain the process of transduction in the retina.

 

2. Compare anatomical and temporal coding of sensory stimuli.

 

3. Which if the following is a property of light?

a.     Hue

b.    Brightness

c.     Saturation

d.    all of the above

4. How does light gets to the photoreceptors?  How does visual information get out of the retina and into the cortex?

 

5. How is visual information analyzed in the cortex?

 

6. Explain dark adaptation.

 

7. Explain color vision.

 

8. Recognition of objects can be aided by

            a. increasing the number of items being viewed.

            b. adding distinctive features.

            c. increasing the speed of scanning the scene in which the object has been placed.

            d. all of the above

 

9. Explain laws of Gestalt.

 

10. Explain the various monocular cues of depth perception

 

11. Contrast top-down and bottom up processing

 

12. Compare and contrast: habituation, classical conditioning and operant conditioning

 

13. In classical conditioning, the extinction of a conditioned response can be obtained by.....

 

14. Bob likes to amuse his party guests and be the center of attention. Last week end, he learned not to tell sexist jokes in front of women, as they did not seem to appreciate his humor.

            a. A psychologist could explain his experience as negative reinforcement.

            b. A psychologist could explain his experience as positive reinforcement.

            c. A psychologist could explain his experience as defeat.

            d. A psychologist could explain his experience as response cost.

 

15. Compare and contrast positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, and response cost.

 

16. You want to design an experiment to test the negative effects of a drug on conditioning in rats. In your experimental protocol, you want to get the maximal and fastest learning effect of conditioning.

            a. The conditional stimulus should follow the unconditional stimulus.

            b. The conditional stimulus should coincide with the unconditional stimulus.

            c. The conditional stimulus should just precede the unconditional stimulus.

            d. You should introduce a long lapse of time between the conditional and unconditional stimuli.

 

17. Explain the lack of extinction in experimental design using intermittent reinforcement.

 

18. Compare and contrast CS, CR, UCS, and UCR.

 

19. Four stimuli are present in a room during a classical conditioning experiment: (1) a tone, which sounds sometimes before the UCS is presented; (2) a bell, which sounds regularly during the experiment; (3) a light, which flickers just before every presentation of the UCS; and (4) a beeper, which sounds just after each UCS presentation. Which of these stimuli will most likely come to reliably elicit the CR?

            a.         the tone

            b.         the bell

            c.         the light

            d.         the beeper

 

20. Explain frustration, effects of intermittent reinforcement, shaping, superstitious behavior

 

21. Explain biology of learning