EPPP Cognitive-Affective Behavior Bases 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is best defined as the range of tasks that a learner:
- Can perform independently without any assistance
- Cannot perform regardless of the level of support provided
- Can perform with guidance but not yet independently (Correct answer)
- Has already mastered and no longer requires practice on
Correct answer: Can perform with guidance but not yet independently
The ZPD is the gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can achieve with skilled guidance or collaboration.
Question 2: Research on affective forecasting consistently shows that people tend to:
- Accurately predict the intensity and duration of future emotional states
- Underestimate the hedonic impact of future positive and negative events
- Overestimate the intensity but not the duration of future emotional reactions
- Overestimate both the intensity and the duration of future emotional reactions (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Overestimate both the intensity and the duration of future emotional reactions
People systematically overestimate how intensely and how long future events will affect their happiness, a bias partly due to impact bias and neglect of adaptation.
Question 3: The James-Lange theory of emotion differs from the Cannon-Bard theory primarily in that James-Lange holds that:
- Physiological arousal and emotional experience are simultaneous and independent
- Conscious emotion precedes and causes physiological changes
- Physiological responses precede and cause the subjective experience of emotion (Correct answer)
- The thalamus is the central coordinator of both emotion and physiology
Correct answer: Physiological responses precede and cause the subjective experience of emotion
James-Lange theory proposes that we feel emotion because we perceive our own bodily changes (e.g., we are sad because we cry), reversing the intuitive sequence.
Question 4: Emotion-focused coping, as defined by Lazarus and Folkman, is most adaptive when:
- The stressor is controllable and concrete action can change it
- The stressor is uncontrollable and reducing emotional distress is the primary goal (Correct answer)
- Cognitive reappraisal has already been attempted and failed
- The emotion is mild enough not to interfere with problem-solving
Correct answer: The stressor is uncontrollable and reducing emotional distress is the primary goal
Emotion-focused coping is most effective for uncontrollable stressors where managing one's emotional response, rather than changing the situation, is the realistic goal.
Question 5: Which concept describes the tendency for people to make riskier group decisions than they would make individually, a phenomenon observed in group dynamics research?
- Groupthink
- Risky shift (Correct answer)
- Social loafing
- Deindividuation
Correct answer: Risky shift
Risky shift refers to the finding that group discussion often leads to more extreme (typically riskier) decisions than the average of individuals' initial positions.
Question 6: In Ellis's Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), the primary target of intervention is the:
- Activating event (A) that triggers distress
- Irrational belief (B) that mediates between event and consequence (Correct answer)
- Emotional and behavioral consequence (C) of the event
- Disputation (D) technique itself as the mechanism of change
Correct answer: Irrational belief (B) that mediates between event and consequence
REBT targets irrational beliefs (B) because it is these beliefs — not the activating event — that cause disturbed emotional and behavioral consequences.
Question 7: Which regulatory process involves deliberately suppressing the outward expression of an ongoing emotion without changing the underlying emotional experience?
- Cognitive reappraisal
- Attentional deployment
- Expressive suppression (Correct answer)
- Situation modification
Correct answer: Expressive suppression
Expressive suppression is a response-focused regulation strategy that inhibits emotion-expressive behavior while the internal emotional state persists.
EPPP Cognitive-Affective Behavior Bases 5
Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is best defined as the range of tasks that a learner: