[To the online textbook Psychology: An Introduction (2017) by Russ Dewey]
Back to Psych Web
To Self-Quiz Index
Revised 11/23/2016. Welcome to the self-quiz on Animal Behavior and Cognition. These questions accompany Chapter 8 (Animal Behavior and Cognition) of the online textbook Psychology: An Introduction). They are general enough to be useful for students using other textbooks as well.
Read the question and click on an answer. You will jump to a correction or (if the answer is correct) a confirmation.
This page is from https://www.psywww.com/selfquiz/ch08mcq.html
To the Psych Web Home Page
Top of this file
To the Self-Quiz Home Page
[The remainder of the page is not meant to be read sequentially; it consists of answers and explanations separated by stretches of nothing. You will jump back and forth to these as you click on possible answers of the questions.]
You picked...
to act like an anthropologist instead of a psychologist
No, however the root "anthro" (referring to humans) is in both words...
You picked...
to do the "typical, stupid human thing" (with animals)
Anthropomorphizing may be typical of humans, and it may even be stupid on occasion. However, this is not a good definition of the word "anthropomorphize."
You picked...
to treat animals as if they were like humans
Yes. To anthropomorphize is to project human qualities onto animals, or to interpret their behavior as one would interpret human behavior.
You picked...
to think too much about a problem, until the simple answer is overlooked
No, that is not anthropomorphization.
You picked...
to influence an animal with human ways, so it is less like its relatives in the wild
No...that might be called "enculturation." Anthropomorphization is different from this.
You picked...
Hans's owner was cheating
No, there was never any evidence that Von Osten was cheating.
You picked...
Hans knew the answers ahead of time
No, Hans was not told the answers ahead of time, not that it would have mattered!
You picked...
Hans could not perform unless his owner was present
No, to the contrary, Hans could give correct answers even when Von Osten was absent.
You picked...
Hans had "only the intelligence of a four year old"
No, Hans was never to shown to have human-like intellectual abilities at all.
You picked...
Hans was responding to unintended signal from observers
Yes. Small reactions from onlookers served as a "stop" signal, similar to what some animal trainers call a "no-go" cue. When Hans sensed that it was time to stop tapping his foot, he stopped, and he was usually right. Initially he was reinforced for "correct answers" by Von Osten. Probably on other occasions a crowd of onlookers would respond quickly with amazed and approving vocalizations, which also maintained the response.
You picked...
laws of learning differed for different species
No, just the opposite...
You picked...
the human is unlike any other animal
No, one of the curves was from a human, and it resembled the curves produced by other species.
You picked...
the "Scala Naturae" was upheld
No. The Scala Naturae was Aritotle's idea of a great Scale of Nature, ordering animals from least to most advanced.
You picked...
species seemed to differ mainly in speed of learning
No, although this is consistent with Skinner's position, it is not the point he was making.
You picked...
it "didn't matter" which species produced the curve
Yes. The curves displayed by Skinner were produced by animals responding to a fixed ratio schedule, which produces a distinctive pattern of behavior (the scallop, on a cumulative record). Many different species respond to this schedule with the same pattern. This demonstrated, according to Skinner, that the environment was the primary determinant of behavior. If one was trying to predict this type of behavior, the species "didn't matter."
You picked...
they worked together before and after World War II
No, they did work together before and after the war.
You picked...
they both received Nobel Prizes
No, they both received Nobel Prizes.
You picked...
they died within a year of each other
No, this is true. In fact, they died within months of each other, Tinbergen in 1988, Lorenz in 1989.
You picked...
they gave many young scholars assistance
No, many of today's prominent ethologists were students of Lorenz or Tinbergen.
You picked...
they started as comparative psychologists
Yes, this is the false item. Comparative psychology was something totally different from ethology, before World War II. Comparative psychologists were primarily Americans using laboratory tasks to compare species. Ethologists were zoologists working primarily in Europe, trying to relate behavior to evolution.
You picked...
a list of species-characteristic behaviors
Yes. An ethogram is typically compiled by observation from a blind, in the natural environment.
You picked...
an analysis of functional relationships between behavior and evolution
No, it is simpler than that.
You picked...
a laboratory procedure for distinguishing between learned and innate behaviors
No, an ethogram is supposed to pick out "innate" or biologically prepared behaviors...those which normally emerge in any member of the species, without special training.
You picked...
a list of similarities between different species, based on evolution
No, however, early ethologists believed that their observations could contribute to the analysis of evolutionary relationships between different species. Emergence of techniques like DNA analysis has made that unnecessary, as there are now much more precise ways of determining common ancestry of different species.
You picked...
any distinctive genetic characteristics of a species
No, many genetic characteristics are unobservable or unexpressed in behavior or expressed in highly complex ways. Ethograms tend to concentrate on early-observable behavior patterns.
You picked...
how realistic they are
No, for example, Tinbergen found that male sticklebacks would ignore a realistic model while charging after a shapeless blob with a red underside.
You picked...
how colorful they are
No, color is sometimes involved in releasers, but not necessarily.
You picked...
a few isolated features of the stimulus
Yes. One of the striking characteristics of animal behavior, in many species, is the emergence of species-typical behaviors triggered by relatively simple stimuli such as the presence of a particular odor molecule or a particular visual pattern.
You picked...
whether all members of the species have them
No...releasers are not something animals "have." Animals respond to sign stimuli which may come from the environment or from animals of different species.
You picked...
whether the stimulus is adaptive
No, ordinarily one would not speak of a "stimulus being adaptive" because it is only behaviors (actions) which have consequences for reproductive success.
You picked...
they involve stimuli which can have many different meanings
No, that would not encourage an automatic, biological response.
You picked...
they involve hallucinations which come from inside the animal
No, hallucinations would not necessarily benefit the animal genetically or otherwise. However, you could make an interesting argument that Jungian archetypes, which he described as "projection making factors in the brain," are similar to action patterns and other forms of "innate behavior." They are pre-formed, stereotyped responses to specific stimuli.
You picked...
they aided survival and reproduction of ancestor animals
Yes...that is the underlying explanation of all "adaptive" behavior. Of course, it is genes, not the animals themselves, which must be reproduced. Instinctive fears are those which aid reproduction over the long run. Common sense suggests that fear of snakes and fear of spiders, for example, could be lifesavers.
You picked...
they are reinforced by early experience during the "imprinting" stage
No, imprinting is a special form of learning found mostly in ground-dwelling birds, in which the newly hatched bird treats the first large moving object it sees as a mother.
You picked...
so that animals can "unlearn" them, according to Thorndike, if the environment is safe
No, Thorndike never said this.
You picked...
any species-specific signalling system
No. Visual displays, for example, would not count as pheromones.
You picked...
a chemical used with members of the same species to communicate over a distance
Yes. Technically, a pheromone is an "intraspecific distance hormone." Intraspecific means "within the species." So a pheromone is a way of communicating over a distance with members of the same species, by chemical. The response may be to congregate, to flee in alarm, or some other response. Sexual responses are one major category of behavior which can be triggered by pheromones.
You picked...
by definition it is a sexual attractant
No, this is just one function served by pheromones, among many others.
You picked...
any chemical which causes strong attraction or repulsion
No, pheromones can also trigger other sorts of behavior.
You picked...
any behavior or stimulus which initiates reproductive activity, not just odor
No, pheromones are "distance hormones" which means they are chemicals acting at a distance. This distinguishes pheromones from stimuli such as visual displays, vocalizations, and touch stimuli.
You picked...
they showed apes could NOT recognize themselves in mirrors
No, this was not the point of the Skinner and Epstein research.
You picked...
they trained pigeons to use mirror images
Yes. Through a clever shaping procedure, and by fashioning little collars for the pigeons, they demonstrated that pigeons could use their mirror images to locate and peck spots of paper on their bodies which they could not otherwise see.
You picked...
they re-explained Gallup's results in terms of reinforcement theory
They explained Gallup's results in terms of operant conditioning, not classical conditioning. The main effort thrust of their research was to replicate the behavior pattern.
You picked...
they ignored Gallup's finding
No, they set out to provide an alternative explanation for it.
You picked...
they replicated Gallup's work
No, replication involves full repetition of a piece of research. What Epstein and Skinner did can be described as "analogue" research. In other words, they set up a situation analogous to (but not identical to) Gallup's mirror test.
You picked...
converse as well as the average 5 year old
No. Some experts compared Kanzi's ability to that of a 2 year old human.
You picked...
label or name objects
Yes, everybody on both sides of the ape/language debate seems to agree on this.
You picked...
consistently form grammatical, novel expressions
No, Kanzi mastered a "protogrammar" but did not form complex human-like sentences.
You picked...
express irony and metaphor
No, although video documentaries give a distinct impression that chimps sometimes use language to "tease" or draw a response from humans (for example, deliberately labeling an object with the wrong color, to get a reaction from a research assistant).
You picked...
describe absent people
No. This is not a talent displayed in any of the widely circulated videotape documentaries of ape language research.
Write to Dr. Dewey at psywww@gmail.com.
Back to Psych Web Home Page
...or.... 
Top of this file
Don't see what you need? Psych Web has over 1,000 pages, so it may be elsewhere on the site. Do a site-specific Google search using the box below.