CHAPTER 16 / PRACTICE TEST 2 675
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Questions 7–19 are based on the following passages.
The following two passages concern the use of
“reinforcers,” which are rewards or punish-
ments used to encourage desired behaviors, and
“contingencies,” which are the arrangements of
those reinforcers to shape behavior.PASSAGE 1
“Avoid compulsion,” said Plato in The Republic,
“and let your children’s lessons take the form
of play.” Horace, among others, recom-
mended rewarding a child with cakes. Eras-
mus tells of an English gentleman who tried
to teach his son Greek and Latin without pun-
ishment. He taught the boy to use a bow and
arrow and set up targets in the shape of Greek
and Latin letters, rewarding each hit with a
cherry. He also fed the boy letters cut from GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE
- The light from most stars takes millions of years
to reach us, so not only is the present existence
of these stars -------, but so are the very concepts
of “the present” and “existence.”
(A) debatable
(B) methodical
(C) indecorous
(D) imperious
(E) profuse - Although many parents prefer to be ------- when
their children broach sensitive personal sub-
jects, others resort instead to ------- so as to make
any potentially offensive matters seem less ob-
jectionable.
(A) honest.. anachronism
(B) intolerant.. laudation
(C) clandestine.. obligation
(D) candid.. euphemism
(E) forthright.. coercion
delicious biscuits. Privileges and favors are often
suggested, and the teacher may be personally
reinforcing as friend or entertainer. In indus-
trial education students are paid for learning.
Certain explicit contrived reinforcers, such as
marks, grades, and diplomas, are characteris-
tic of education as an institution. (These sug-
gest progress, but like progress they must be
made reinforcing for other reasons.) Prizes
are intrinsically reinforcing. Honors and
medals derive their power from prestige or
esteem. This varies between cultures and
epochs. In 1876 Oscar Wilde, then 22 years
old and halfway toward his B.A. at Oxford, got
a “first in Mods.” He wrote to a friend: “... I
did not know what I had got till the next
morning at 12 o’clock, breakfasting at the
Mitre, I read it in the Times.Altogether I
swaggered horribly but am really pleased with
myself. My poor mother is in great delight,
and I was overwhelmed with telegrams on
Thursday from everyone I knew.” The con-
temporary student graduating summa cum
laudeis less widely acclaimed.
Although free of some of the by-products of
aversive control, positive reinforcers of this
sort are not without their problems. Many are
effective only in certain states of deprivation
which are not always easily arranged. Making
a student hungry in order to reinforce him
with food would raise personal issues which
are not entirely avoided with other kinds of
reinforcers. We cannot all get prizes, and if
some students get high grades, others must
get low.
But the main problem again is the contin-
gencies. Much of what the child is to do in
school does not have the form of play, with its
naturally reinforcing consequences, nor is
there any natural connection with food or a
passing grade or a medal. Such contingencies
must be arranged by the teacher, and the
arrangement is often defective. The boy men-
tioned by Erasmus may have salivated slightlyFirst passage: B. F. Skinner, The Technology of Teaching,
© 1968 Prentice-Hall.
Second passage: © 2004 Christopher Black. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.Line510
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50
The passages below are followed by questions
based on their content; questions following a
pair of related passages may also be based on
the relationship between the paired passages.
Answer the questions on the basis of what is
statedor impliedin the passage and in any
introductory material that may be provided.