PSYCHOLOGY 387 - LEARNING EXAM
STUDY GUIDE 2026/2027 ACCURATE
QUESTIONS WITH CORRECT DETAILED
ANSWERS || 100% GUARANTEED PASS
<NEWEST VERSION>
(ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY)
1. Aversion Therapy - ANSWER ✔ A form of counter conditioning where a
CS is paired with an aversive US
2. Backward Training - ANSWER ✔ A chaining procedure where training
begins with the last link in the chain and adds preceding links in reverse
order
3. The brown-headed cowbird deposits its eggs in the nests of other birds. This
is most likely a - ANSWER ✔ fixed action pattern
4. Natural selection is often - ANSWER ✔ behind the times
5. Balster and colleagues suggest that inhumane treatment of research animals
is - ANSWER ✔ bad science
6. Any variable an experimenter manipulates is a/an ________ variable. -
ANSWER ✔ independent
,7. In her study of baboons, Shirley Strum found that the most successful males
were - ANSWER ✔ less aggressive than other males.
8. Natural selection is illustrated by changes in the colouration of the Peppered
Moth resulting from - ANSWER ✔ industrial pollution
9. The kind of study that is most likely to involve a large number of subjects is
one with a/an - ANSWER ✔ between-subjects design
10.Jack is a homeless man who lives on the streets of Calgary. One cold,
January night, he takes up a position outside a fancy restaurant and starts
shouting, "God has ordered an equestrian invasion of Banff." The restaurant
owner calls the police and they take Jack to a hospital, where he spends a
quiet night. The next morning, a doctor examines Jack and tells him he is
well enough to be discharged. Jack immediately begins shouting about the
equestrian invasion of Banff. You tentatively conclude that - ANSWER ✔
Jack's hallucinations are products of reinforcement
11.Karen Pryor demonstrated that she could reinforce novel behavior. Her
subjects were - ANSWER ✔ porpoises
12.Coincidental reinforcement plays an important role in - ANSWER ✔
behavior
13.Five-year-old Rex had the bad habit of stealing candy at the grocery store.
One day when he had not stolen any candy, his mother told him that stealing
was wrong and that he was not to do it ever again. As a result, Rex stopped
stealing candy. - ANSWER ✔ not punishment.
,14.Alstair was a 4-year-old who pounced on the other children at his day care
center. This center used tokens as reinforcers for appropriate behavior, and
the children could accumulate and trade the tokens for special privileges.
Whenever Alstair pounced on another child, three of his tokens were taken
away from him. This procedure reduced the rate of Alstair's pouncing
behavior. - ANSWER ✔ response cost.
15.Response cost - ANSWER ✔ previously earned reinforcers are removed
dependent on instances of misbehavior.
16.exclusionary or isolation timeout - ANSWER ✔ temporarily removed from
the environment in which the undesirable behavior occurred
17.nonexclusionary timeout - ANSWER ✔ remains in the environment, but is
removed from ongoing activities
18.Which is a better way of reducing the frequency of misbehaviors in students,
time outs or differential reinforcement? - ANSWER ✔ Time-outs are
considered to be a form of punishment so differential reinforcement would
be better because then any form of punishment can be avoided. There are
also different options that can be utilized when using differential
reinforcement. DRA could be used to ignore the problem behaviour and
praise more positive behaviours. DRI can be used for a variety of behaviours
as well, when the student participates in a behaviour other then the problem
one they are praised. DRL can also be used, if a child wanders they can be
praised after 5 minutes of sitting then 10 and so on.
19.Mary-Lou, aged 3 years, still does not speak. Medical examinations reveal
she is in perfect health. Testing shows that she has normal intelligence. Her
parents do not abuse her, in fact they spoil her shamelessly. What is the most
likely explanation for Mary Lou's failure to speak? - ANSWER ✔ Most
, likely, Mary-Lou is not speaking because her parents are not using operant
application to help her speak. Generally speaking, a child's speaking ability
largely comes from their environment. When a baby first start babbling, the
parents provide reinforcement by smiling and talking back. When the
babbling stops producing reinforcement the baby will progress in their
language to more evolved sound, receiving reinforcement and this continues
until the child can speak in full words and sentences. Mary-Lou's parents are
likely not doing this.
20.Why has observational learning received less attention than other forms of
learning? - ANSWER ✔ Early research by Thorndike and Watson wasn't
able to prove that animals actually learned by observing. It wasn't until the
1930's when Warden and colleagues were able to produce results showing
that animals can learn from observing.
21.What did Harry Bahrick's study of Spanish reveal about the relationship
between learning and forgetting? - ANSWER ✔ It showed that the greater
the degree of original learning (e.g., the better Spanish was learned), the less
forgetting there was years later.
22.____ conditioning is when the CS follows the US.
a. trace conditioning
b. delayed conditioning
c. simultaneous conditioning
d. backwards conditioning - ANSWER ✔ backwards conditioning
23.When one event (x) is contingent on another event (y), to the extent that X
occurs if and only Y occurs, this is referred to as:
a. contingency
b. continuity
c. psuedoconditioning
d. none of the above - ANSWER ✔ contingency
STUDY GUIDE 2026/2027 ACCURATE
QUESTIONS WITH CORRECT DETAILED
ANSWERS || 100% GUARANTEED PASS
<NEWEST VERSION>
(ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY)
1. Aversion Therapy - ANSWER ✔ A form of counter conditioning where a
CS is paired with an aversive US
2. Backward Training - ANSWER ✔ A chaining procedure where training
begins with the last link in the chain and adds preceding links in reverse
order
3. The brown-headed cowbird deposits its eggs in the nests of other birds. This
is most likely a - ANSWER ✔ fixed action pattern
4. Natural selection is often - ANSWER ✔ behind the times
5. Balster and colleagues suggest that inhumane treatment of research animals
is - ANSWER ✔ bad science
6. Any variable an experimenter manipulates is a/an ________ variable. -
ANSWER ✔ independent
,7. In her study of baboons, Shirley Strum found that the most successful males
were - ANSWER ✔ less aggressive than other males.
8. Natural selection is illustrated by changes in the colouration of the Peppered
Moth resulting from - ANSWER ✔ industrial pollution
9. The kind of study that is most likely to involve a large number of subjects is
one with a/an - ANSWER ✔ between-subjects design
10.Jack is a homeless man who lives on the streets of Calgary. One cold,
January night, he takes up a position outside a fancy restaurant and starts
shouting, "God has ordered an equestrian invasion of Banff." The restaurant
owner calls the police and they take Jack to a hospital, where he spends a
quiet night. The next morning, a doctor examines Jack and tells him he is
well enough to be discharged. Jack immediately begins shouting about the
equestrian invasion of Banff. You tentatively conclude that - ANSWER ✔
Jack's hallucinations are products of reinforcement
11.Karen Pryor demonstrated that she could reinforce novel behavior. Her
subjects were - ANSWER ✔ porpoises
12.Coincidental reinforcement plays an important role in - ANSWER ✔
behavior
13.Five-year-old Rex had the bad habit of stealing candy at the grocery store.
One day when he had not stolen any candy, his mother told him that stealing
was wrong and that he was not to do it ever again. As a result, Rex stopped
stealing candy. - ANSWER ✔ not punishment.
,14.Alstair was a 4-year-old who pounced on the other children at his day care
center. This center used tokens as reinforcers for appropriate behavior, and
the children could accumulate and trade the tokens for special privileges.
Whenever Alstair pounced on another child, three of his tokens were taken
away from him. This procedure reduced the rate of Alstair's pouncing
behavior. - ANSWER ✔ response cost.
15.Response cost - ANSWER ✔ previously earned reinforcers are removed
dependent on instances of misbehavior.
16.exclusionary or isolation timeout - ANSWER ✔ temporarily removed from
the environment in which the undesirable behavior occurred
17.nonexclusionary timeout - ANSWER ✔ remains in the environment, but is
removed from ongoing activities
18.Which is a better way of reducing the frequency of misbehaviors in students,
time outs or differential reinforcement? - ANSWER ✔ Time-outs are
considered to be a form of punishment so differential reinforcement would
be better because then any form of punishment can be avoided. There are
also different options that can be utilized when using differential
reinforcement. DRA could be used to ignore the problem behaviour and
praise more positive behaviours. DRI can be used for a variety of behaviours
as well, when the student participates in a behaviour other then the problem
one they are praised. DRL can also be used, if a child wanders they can be
praised after 5 minutes of sitting then 10 and so on.
19.Mary-Lou, aged 3 years, still does not speak. Medical examinations reveal
she is in perfect health. Testing shows that she has normal intelligence. Her
parents do not abuse her, in fact they spoil her shamelessly. What is the most
likely explanation for Mary Lou's failure to speak? - ANSWER ✔ Most
, likely, Mary-Lou is not speaking because her parents are not using operant
application to help her speak. Generally speaking, a child's speaking ability
largely comes from their environment. When a baby first start babbling, the
parents provide reinforcement by smiling and talking back. When the
babbling stops producing reinforcement the baby will progress in their
language to more evolved sound, receiving reinforcement and this continues
until the child can speak in full words and sentences. Mary-Lou's parents are
likely not doing this.
20.Why has observational learning received less attention than other forms of
learning? - ANSWER ✔ Early research by Thorndike and Watson wasn't
able to prove that animals actually learned by observing. It wasn't until the
1930's when Warden and colleagues were able to produce results showing
that animals can learn from observing.
21.What did Harry Bahrick's study of Spanish reveal about the relationship
between learning and forgetting? - ANSWER ✔ It showed that the greater
the degree of original learning (e.g., the better Spanish was learned), the less
forgetting there was years later.
22.____ conditioning is when the CS follows the US.
a. trace conditioning
b. delayed conditioning
c. simultaneous conditioning
d. backwards conditioning - ANSWER ✔ backwards conditioning
23.When one event (x) is contingent on another event (y), to the extent that X
occurs if and only Y occurs, this is referred to as:
a. contingency
b. continuity
c. psuedoconditioning
d. none of the above - ANSWER ✔ contingency
