Cognitive Psychology

What is NOT necessary for breathing?

Cognitive processes

Genie wonders why she can never remember the names of new acquaintances. In search of an answer, she analyzes her mental behaviors and feelings about meeting new people. Genie is engaged in which process?

Introspection

Why is introspection is considered the first step toward cognitive psychology as a science?

It was the first systematic attempt to observe and record the content of mental processes.

What of the following statements provides the MOST serious obstacle to the use of introspection as a source of scientific evidence?

When facts are provided by introspection, we have no way to assess the facts themselves, independent of the reporter’s particular perspective on them.

One important difference between classical behaviorism and cognitive psychology is that cognitive psychology

argues that unobservable mental states can be scientifically studied.

What do behaviorists study?

Organism’s responses

The "cognitive revolution" is named as such because:

the focus changed from behaviors to the processes underlying those behaviors.

Which of the following kinds of evidence is least likely to be used in cognitive psychology?

Self-reported dreams

What is NOT central to research in neuropsychology?

The use of introspection

Which techniques are the central sources of data for cognitive neuroscience?

Recent developments in brain-imaging technology can help us in cognitive psychology. For example, we can now tell exactly which parts of the brain are especially engaged in working-memory rehearsal.

Cognitive psychology relies on evidence from multiple domains (behavioral, neuroscience, trauma, etc.) because

we cannot see the cognitive processes directly.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) uses a strong magnetic pulse to

produce a temporary disruption to the brain area, and thus brain function, where it is applied.

The importance of vision for humans is reflected in the

relative size of the visual cortex.

Researchers using fMRI find activity in the fusiform face area (FFA) when participants are viewing faces. This means that FFA

activity is correlated with recognizing faces.

What creates three-dimensional representations of the brain’s tissue.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

Imagine you are putting together a puzzle. The lid of the box comes with a picture of the completed puzzle, and you reference that while you are working. The lid is acting as a

top-down influence.

Kate has a split brain. Her doctor briefly presents the word "hammer" to only her left visual field and then asks her what she saw. Which set of responses is Kate most likely to give?

She will say she doesn’t know what word appeared but she will be able to identify the object with her left hand.

Olivia has sustained damage to the prefrontal area. As a result, she is most likely to have

a variety of problems, including problems planning and implementing strategies.

Cells detecting the boundary of a surface are subject to less lateral inhibition than cells detecting the center of the same surface. This leads to an effect called

edge enhancement.

The "word-superiority effect" refers to the fact that it is easier to recognize

a letter within the context of a word than it is to recognize a letter presented by itself.

Cells A and B receive the same high levels of stimulation, but cell A shows a lower level of activity relative to cell B. A likely explanation for this fact

is that cell A is being laterally inhibited by other nearby cells.

A researcher wishes to determine exactly when a particular neuron is firing. A technique well suited to this purpose is

single-cell recording.

A researcher has identified the receptive field for a neuron and has determined that the receptive field has a center-surround organization. If the researcher were to shine light into the entire receptive field, including both the center and the surrounding area, we would expect the neuron to

continue firing at its resting rate.

A researcher wishes to define the receptive field for a particular neuron in the visual cortex. To do this, the researcher will need to specify

an area within the visual field, wherein the cell will fire if the target appears.

Patients who have suffered damage to the occipital-parietal pathway (the "where" system) will have difficulties

with reaching in the correct direction to retrieve a toothbrush.

The specialization evident in visual processing shows that the visual system relies on

parallel processing.

To perceive the visual world, we have to reunite various elements of a scene together so that these elements are perceived in an integrated fashion. Which of the following is NOT likely to be involved in this task?

Memory

What is a phrase that best illustrates the effect that Gestalt principles have on perception?

"Going beyond the information given"

Which of the following statements is NOT true for feature-based models of pattern recognition?

The term "features" can also be used to describe a distinct object made up of several parts.

Imagine you are reading a puzzling email from a friend. You identify the words, but have a hard time "reading between the lines." In this example, word identification involves _______ processing while "reading between the lines" involves ________ processing.

bottom-up; top-down

Which processing is dependent on factors in the environment or in the stimulus?

Bottom-up processing

It is suggested that features have special status. Which of the following findings does NOT support this hypothesis?

Perception of features changes based on the perceiver’s expectations but perception of objects does not change.

A participant reads a list of words in which the word "elephant" appears several times. Later, the participant tachistoscopically views another list of words. When the word "elephant" appears in the second list, the participant’s response rate is faster than for other words not found on the previous list. This effect is called

repetition priming.

Participants are shown a visual stimulus for just 30 ms and are then asked, "Was there an E or a K in the stimulus?" We would expect the BEST performance if the stimulus is

BARK.

Biederman’s recognition by components (RBC) model

makes use of geon detectors, which in turn trigger detectors for geon assemblies.

According to the recognition by components (RBC) model, geons are NOT capable of identification if

they are partially obstructed.

One must match the current view of an object with a view of the object stored in memory, using the process of rotation is

a statement that describes viewpoint-dependent object recognition.

We can often recognize an object even if some of the object’s parts are hidden from view. Evidence indicates that this recognition from partial viewing will be easiest if

we can see enough of the object to identify some of its geons.

The form of brain damage identified as prosopagnosia is primarily characterized by

an inability to recognize faces.

Recognition of inverted faces is

harder than for upright faces.

The fusiform face area (FFA) is known to be an area that is specifically responsive to faces.

Tasks requiring other subtle distinctions within a category (e.g., identifying different birds or cars) also produce high levels of activation in this area.

The recognition of faces

is influenced by configurational factors, suggesting that a model based on feature detection will provide a poor explanation of face recognition.

Tasks involving dichotic listening are tasks in which

two different auditory messages are presented, one to each ear.

In dichotic listening tasks, MOST participants are able to

identify physical attributes of the message on the unattended channel.

An experiment participant is asked to shadow a message presented to the left ear while simultaneously ignoring a message presented to the right ear. During the experiment, participants are unlikely to detect the following change.

Initially, the right ear’s message contains a male voice reading a coherent passage, but this is then replaced by the same voice reading a sequence of random words.

In a study of visual selection, participants were shown a video of people throwing and catching a ball. Some of the people were wearing white shirts and some were wearing black shirts. Participants were asked to attend only to the group of people wearing white shirts and count the number of times they threw the ball.

In this study, participants easily completed the task, but in the process failed to notice some other peculiar events that occurred.

Attention is necessary for

conscious perception.

Which of the following statements is NOT true of executive control?

It encourages habitual responding over goal-directed behaviors.

A late selection view of attention suggests that all inputs are fully processed; however,

only the attended input reaches consciousness.

In which of the following situations would we expect the fastest response time?

The stimulus being presented to the participant is the stimulus the participant was expecting.

Early estimates of working-memory capacity relied on the digit-span task. The data indicate working memory capacity to be

around 7 items.

Participants are shown pictures of two alternating scenes that are separated by a brief blank interval. The scenes are identical except for one small detail. In this case participants find it hard to detect the change. Which of the following statements is MOST likely to be true?

A similar effect can also be found with movies and in actual live events (where participants fail to detect changes that have been made).

An example of the difference between perception and conscious perception is shown by Moore and Egeth (1997), who showed participants a display containing two horizontal lines and a series of surrounding dots. In one trial the lines and dots were arranged to produce the Müller-Lyer illusion (an illusion that causes two same-length lines to look different in length). In this experiment, MOST participants

were not consciously aware of the Müller-Lyer pattern and perceived the two lines to be of different lengths.

An experienced driver can drive while holding a relatively complex conversation. This combination of activities is difficult, however, for a novice driver. Which of the following explanations is MOST likely to explain the difference?

Practicing a task leads to a decline in the resource demands for that task.

Moore and Egeth (1997), asked participants to rate which of two lines was longer. Background dots were presented with the lines. On some trial, the dot pattern was a visual illusion, designed to manipulate the perceived length of the lines. Moore and Egeth found that

one can be influenced by events one is not conscious of.

Participants are instructed to fixate on a point on a computer screen and report on a "+" sign that appears off to one side. After several trials, the fixation point is replaced by a new shape, but the participants do not notice this change. This is a study of

inattentional blindness.

Change blindness demonstrates that attention

is not sufficient for perception.

Recordings from neurons in area V4 of the visual cortex are

more responsive to attended inputs than unattended inputs.

In a study of spatial attention, participants are shown a neutral cue, a high-validity prime (correctly predicting the location of the target 80% of the time), or a misleading cue to prime the location of an upcoming target.

Response times to a neutral cue are faster than response times to a misleading cue.

Some researchers have compared visual attention to a searchlight beam sweeping across the visual field. Which of the following claims about this beam is NOT currently supported by evidence?

It is possible to split the beam of visual attention, so that two nonadjacent positions are both within the beam.

Patients with unilateral neglect syndrome

do not start to ignore an object if the object previously attended to is moved into the ignored half of the world.

It has been hypothesized that some mental resources (e.g., the response selector) are unitary and therefore are not divisible. If two tasks both require one of these unitary resources, divided attention between these two tasks will be possible

only by means of sharing of the resource between the two tasks.

Attention is limited in several ways. Sometimes we can complete competing tasks at the same time, but sometimes we cannot because the tasks interfere with each other. Which combination of tasks is likely to cause the LEAST amount of interference?

two tasks that require different task-specific resources.

Participants with either high or low working-memory capacities (WMC) are asked to complete a Stroop task, where words are presented in different colors of ink and participants have to read the color of the word aloud instead of the word. How would you expect the high- and low-WMC groups to perform?

Low-WMC participants will make more errors than high-WMC participants.

There are several reasons why practice can improve performance. However,

practice does not mean that the response selector is no longer needed.

The modal model asserts that information processing involves at least two kinds of memory: working memory and long-term memory (LTM).

Working memory differs from LTM in how easily one can access the stored items.

The modal model has seen some revision in recent years, but a few key components remain. For example,

working memory is still considered to be important for temporary storage of information

What is the difference between short term memory and working memory?

Short term memory refers to input and maintenance, working memory relates to directing attention and reducing interference.

Which one of the following is a CORRECT statement about working memory limitations?

proactive interference causes task goals to be forgotten.

An individual suffering from anterograde amnesia has difficulty transferring information from STM to LTM. Based on this information how would this individual perform in the Brown-Peterson-Peterson experiment where he has to remember a trigram and count backwards by 3?

This individual would perform at about the same level as normals.

Which of the following abilities would MOSTLY be impaired for a patient who has frontal lobe damage?

Working memory

According to the modal model of memory, words presented early in a list are easier to remember than words presented later because

the early words receive more of the participants’ attention than the later words.

Results from the antisaccade experiments discussed in class found that participants with low WM spans had slower reaction times in finding targets, as compared to high WM span individuals. Why might this be?

People with high WM are able to reduce effects of interference and focus on the task.

Current theory suggests that the central executive may be

another name for various cognitive resources.

Which of the following does NOT correlate with working-memory capacity?

making an eye movement toward a cue

What is the BEST analogy for long-term memory storage?

a busy librarian

The operation span of working memory measures the

efficiency with which working memory operates when it is working.

Working memory (WM) has been likened to a desk space that holds the current information for a short period of time. This analogy is problematic in what way?

The desk analogy is too static: WM is capable of more than simply short-term storage.

Current evidence indicates that patients suffering from Korsakoff’s amnesia

have preserved implicit memory despite severe disruption in explicit memory.

Based on the composite depth of processing data presented in this book, how does the intention to memorize influence how well we learn?

The intention to memorize does not influence how well we learn.

Deep processing may lead to improved memory performance because it facilitates retrieval. How exactly does this happen?

Deep processing forms many connections between the current item and previous knowledge.

Although mnemonics can be helpful for remembering a small number of specific items (like a grocery list), they do have some drawbacks. One such problem is

using a mnemonic involves a trade-off of attention so that less attention is available for making the many memory connections that can help one understand the material.

Which of the following exemplifies the memory effects of repeated exposure without intention to remember?

Irv is unable to describe the appearance of his wristwatch even though he has owned it for years and looks at it many times each day.

As a general rule, the intention to learn

has an indirect effect on learning.

It is difficult to predict what an individual will remember for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:

It is difficult to test memory.

In an experiment by Jacoby, participants were presented with words to encode with the typical levels of processing manipulation. After encoding, participants were given a perceptual identification test. Participants demonstrated

no effect of encoding suggesting that encoding does not impact performance on certain tests of memory.

Within working memory, "helpers" like the visuospatial buffer and articulatory rehearsal loop

provide short-term storage of items likely to be needed soon by the central executive.

Trace theory of memory suggests that new information is encoded by forming memory traces. Which of the findings support the application of the theory to memory tests?

High frequency words are easier to recall than low frequency words

A participant is asked to memorize a series of word pairs, including the pair "heavy-light." The participant is asked later if any of the following words had been included in the list memorized earlier: "lamp," "candle," "spark," and "light." The participant denies having seen any of these words recently. This is probably because

what was memorized was the idea of "light" as a description of weight, not "light" as illumination.

In an experiment, participants learned materials in Room A and were tested in Room B. If they were asked to think about Room A just before taking the test, participants

performed as well as they would have done had there been no room change.

Which of the following observations is MOST likely is an illustration of context-dependent learning?

"Last month I went to my 20th high school reunion. I saw people I hadn’t thought about for years, but the moment I saw them, I was reminded of the things we’d done together 20 years earlier."

A participant is asked, "In the list of words I showed you earlier, was there a word that rhymed with ‘lake’?" The participant is likely to be well prepared for this sort of memory test if he or she

paid attention to the sounds of the words when trying to memorize them.

18. Two groups of participants were asked to learn a series of word pairs and were then given a memory test. Both groups were told to remember the second word in each pair and use the first word as an aid to remember the targets. For Group A, the first word was semantically associated with the target word (e.g., dark-light). For Group B, the first word rhymed with the target word (e.g., sight-light). Each group was given hints during the memory test. These hints could be related to meaning (e.g., "Was there a word associated with ‘dark’?") or sound (e.g., "Was there a word associated with ‘sight’?"). Which of the following statements is NOT true?

Participants in Group B performed better when given a meaning hint than when given a sound hint.

Participants are asked to memorize a list of words. In addition to the words themselves, participants will remember some aspects of the context in which the words appeared. This tendency to remember a stimulus within its context is referred to as

encoding specificity.

Which of the following statements seems to be the BEST illustration of encoding specificity?

Susan has learned the principles covered in her psychology class, but she has difficulty remembering the principles in the context of her day-to-day life.

A researcher is doing a study of memory. When it comes time for assessing what has been remembered, the researcher should keep in mind that:

the method of testing may affect what is concluded about memory.

Double dissociations in memory are important because they

provide strong evidence for separate memory systems.

Retrieval practice (the testing effect) seems to be highly beneficial for memory. However, the greatest effects on memory retention occur when:

initial testing occurs soon after learning (same session).

Theories of spreading activation assume that activating one node will lead to

all connected nodes being activated.

You are reading The Onion (a satirical news magazine) and see a headline that states "FDA Approves Napalm as Medication," which you find interesting. Later on you are talking to several friends. One suggests that napalm is very dangerous and the other says it is not all that bad. You have a feeling that you read something about napalm lately and decide to chime in. Given what you know about familiarity, how would you likely respond to your friend’s debate?

You are more likely to think that your pro-napalm friend is correct but be unsure as to why you agree with him.

What is the level at which a node in a spreading activation model will fire?

response threshold

The hypothesis that the positive effects of repeated testing arises because the processes engaged by the initial test result in positive transfer to the same type of test falls within which theoretical framework?

Transfer appropriate processing

Practice spread over time may result in better long term memory as compared to massed practice because

spacing practice may force the desirably difficult procedure of retrieval

Which of the following statements is an example of a recognition test?

"Which one of these individuals is the person you saw at the party?"

28. In the "Remember/Know" paradigm, "Know" responses are NOT

given when the participant knows he or she saw the stimulus before, because he or she can recall details about the context in which it was encountered.

An investigator asks, "Can you remember what happened last Tuesday at noon while you were sitting in the back room of Jane’s Restaurant?" This is an example of a question relying on

recall.

1. Group 1 is shown the following series of words ("down," "right," and "sad") and is then asked to read the words aloud. Group 2 is shown the following series of words ("up," "left," and "happy") and is then asked to say aloud their antonyms (opposites). If we later test participants’ memories for the words, we will expect better performance for Group 1 if the test involves

identification of the words.

When a person experiences familiarity but no accompanying source memory, the effect can be far-reaching but is unlikely to include

explicit recollection of a person’s name or profession.

Which of the following is MOST like an example of the influence of implicit memory?

Marcus was taking a multiple-choice test. He was having a hard time with Question 17, but Option d for that question seemed familiar, so he decided that d must be the correct answer.

Participants listen to a series of sentences played against a background of noise. Some of the sentences are identical to sentences heard earlier (without the noise), but other sentences heard in the noise are new. In this setting, participants will perceive

the noise as being less loud when it accompanies the familiar sentences.

In many circumstances, participants correctly recognize that a stimulus is familiar but they are mistaken in their beliefs about where and when they encountered the stimulus. This error is referred to as

source confusion.

Week after week, Solomon watched his favorite TV show. He never planned to memorize the characters’ names and he never took any steps to memorize them. Nonetheless, he soon knew them all. This sort of learning is called

incidental.

Cindy and Linda are both eyewitnesses to a bank robbery. At the police station, they each select Mike from a police lineup and say, "He’s the thief!" It turns out, though, that Mike has been a customer at the store at which Cindy works and Linda has never seen Mike before. With this background,

Linda’s identification is more valuable to the police because Cindy may have been misled by the fact that Mike seemed familiar because of her other encounters with him.

If you perceive a stimulus and then later perceive the same stimulus again, you are likely to perceive the stimulus more quickly and more easily the second time. This benefit can be described as an

increase in processing fluency.

Group 1 is shown the following series of words ("down," "right," and "sad") and is then asked to read the words aloud. Group 2 is shown the following series of words ("up," "left," and "happy") and is then asked to say aloud their antonyms (opposites). If we later test participants’ memories for the words, we will expect better performance for Group 1 if the test involves

identification of the words.

In a study by Brewer and Treyens (1981), participants waited in an experimenter’s office for the experiment to begin. After they left the room, they learned that the study was about their memory of that office. This study demonstrated that

people make assumptions using prior knowledge about what an academic office typically contains.

Which of the following is a potential problem for memory retrieval in relation to memory connections?

If two memories become linked, bits of information from one memory can be remembered as part of a different memory.

Connections among our various memories do all of the following EXCEPT

help us to resist source confusion.

Will has been to the zoo many times, usually with his family but also once on a school field trip. When Will tries to remember the field trip, his recollection is

likely to include elements imported from memories of other zoo trips.

Liz is trying to remember what she read in a text chapter, but she inadvertently mixes into her recall her own assumptions about the material covered in the chapter. This is an example of

intrusion errors.

Which of the following is LEAST likely to be included within a kitchen schema?

My mother’s kitchen contains a microwave oven.

Repeated exposure to a person or situation will cause memory for specific instances to fade, making it difficult to recall details of any one episode. This can be problematic, but it can also be seen as a good thing. In what way does this process benefit us?

It leads to the creation of general knowledge.

Bartlett presented stories from Native American folklore to British participants to read and later asked them to recall details of the story. His findings reveal which important idea about memory?

Memory errors are often derived from attempts to understand.

Which of the following would be considered the most significant "cost" of memory errors?

inaccurate eyewitness testimony

Participants viewed a series of slides depicting an automobile accident. Immediately afterward, half of the participants were asked, "How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" The other participants were asked, "How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" One week later, all participants were asked more questions about the slides, including whether they had seen any broken glass in the slides. A comparison of the two groups of participants is likely to show that

participants who were asked the "smashed" question gave higher estimates of speed and were more likely to remember seeing broken glass.

Misleading questions asked after participants have witnessed an event influence their

immediate reports of the event, as well as their recall of the event if they try to remember it sometime later.

What are the necessary circumstances to produce false memories in research participants?

It would require a few brief interviews.

An expert is asked to comment on the confidence-accuracy relationship of an eyewitness’s report. The expert will state that

confidence levels are a poor indicator of the accuracy of recall.

Our "self-schema" is NOT likely to include

accurate memories about poor grades.

Flashbulb memories are extremely detailed, vivid memories usually associated with highly emotional events. The accuracy of these memories seems

best predicted by the consequentiality of the event to participants’ lives.

Some researchers have suggested that highly painful memories can be repressed. This theory

is controversial and the evidence is ambiguous at best.

The memory that contains the full recollection of our lives is referred to as _______ memory.

autobiograpical

Evidence suggests that decay

probably explains far less forgetting than interference or retrieval failure.

Dmitri witnessed a bank robbery but now seems unable to remember what he saw. To improve Dmitri’s recall, a friend hypnotizes him and asks him, while he is hypnotized, to recall the crime. Research indicates that if questioned while under hypnosis

Dmitri will give a more elaborate account (but not more accurate) of the crime than he has on other occasions.

It seems unlikely that our conceptual knowledge is represented by mental definitions because

it is easy to find exceptions to any proposed definition.

When we say, "There is a family resemblance among all the members of the Martinez family," we mean that

any pair of family members will have certain traits in common even though there may be no traits shared by all of the family members.

It has been suggested that a rigid definition for a category is not possible and that resemblance (much like a family resemblance) may be more appropriate. Why is this the case?

Categorization is very often a matter of degree, not an all-or-none process.

The claim that mental categories have graded membership is the claim that

some category members are better suited than others as category members.

If asked to name as many birds as they can, participants are MOST likely to name

birds resembling the prototype (e.g., robin, sparrow).

The term "basic-level category" refers to the

most natural level of categorization, which is neither too specific nor too general.

According to exemplar-based theories of mental categories, participants identify an object by comparing it to a

single remembered instance of the category.

An important difference between categorization via exemplars and categorization via prototypes is that according to exemplar theory,

the standard used in a particular category can vary from one occasion to the next.

Reuben is visiting the aquarium and has just seen an octopus for the very first time. Reuben is therefore likely to have

only exemplar-based knowledge for the concept of octopus.

According to exemplar theory, typicality effects

reflect the fact that typical category members are probably frequent in our environment and are therefore frequently represented in memory.

Judgments about which category members are typical

are typical are easily shifted by changes in context or changes in perspective.

Which of the following is NOT implied by the textbook’s discussion of mutilated lemons and perfect counterfeits?

Participants are unable to separate their judgments about category membership from their judgments about typicality.

Which of the following benefits does a hierarchical network provide?

It is efficient because information is stored only once.

The misinformation effect is an example of

source confusion.

When compared to the question, "A canary is an animal," the reaction time for, "A cat is an animal" will be

faster.

In order to differentiate between concepts like "Sam has a dog" and "Sam is a dog," information is stored

with propositions.

A proposition is defined as

a unit of knowledge that can be true or false.

The Feature-Overlap Model contrasts other network models in that is proposes

a two stage process of feature comparison

The smallest units of language that carry meaning are called

morphemes.

We cannot prevent memory errors, but can they be detected?

Currently, there is no reliable detector.

Which of these is NOT true about a heuristic strategy?

We can use it when we are particularly concerned about accuracy.

In the process of memory consolidation, memories are

biologically "cemented into place".

According to a PDP model, how is the fact, "Neil Armstrong was an astronaut," represented in the mind?

A pattern of connections among many nodes represent Neil Armstrong and astronaut separately, and through learning, these patterns begin to co-occur.

An important theme emerging from memory research is that memory connections

make memories easier to locate but can lead to intrusion errors.

In ordinary speech production, the boundaries between syllables or between words are usually not marked

so they must be determined by the perceiver.

Speech in a foreign language sounds very fast to a listener who is not familiar with the language. Which of the following statements does NOT accurately explain this fact?

Coarticulation makes speech seem slower in our own language, but not in a foreign language.

Often extraneous noise interferes with our ability to hear all speech sounds. If a brief burst of noise prevents a phoneme from being heard (e. g., "His *ame is Barry"), likely, the listener will

be able to understand the sentence and will realize that a burst of noise occurred but will not know where the burst occurred.

For fluent speakers of a language, rules of the language such as how to create new words are often

unconscious yet are reliably followed by speakers of the language.

The claim that language is generative is the claim that

the units of language can be combined and recombined to create vast numbers of new linguistic entities.

Which of the following claims about phrase-structure rules is NOT true?

The rules determine whether the sentence is true or false.

Garden-path sentences illustrate that

interpreting a sentence as each word arrives may lead to errors.

Research into whether personality traits can be diagnosed by descriptions of ink blots has shown that

the pattern of observations that both experts and novices see is often not real but rather based on illusory covariation.

In an experiment, participants were told of a previously unknown tribe living on Pacific island. Only one member of this tribe had been observed so far, and he was found to be obese. When asked how likely it was that all members of the tribe were obese, participants were unwilling to extrapolate this information. This shows that participants

are sometimes sensitive to the sample size and can take this into account when making a judgement.

Gertrude is shown a picture of a backyard and later asked to replicate the image by drawing it. When compared to the original, her drawing had a "zoomed out" perspective. This tendency is called

boundary extension.

You are flipping through channels when you come upon a French-speaking station. You do not speak French and you are amazed at how quickly it is spoken. Which of the following factors is most important to your perception?

You are not able to segment the speech sounds into phonemes, making it sound faster.

Homer, Lisa, and Moe are asked to remember pairs or words, and Homer tries to accomplish this task by rehearsing the words over and over again. Lisa decides to create a narrative combining the words together. Finally, Moe decides to imagine the objects interacting in some way. Who is likely to remember the items best?

Moe

Stephen and Stephanie both have problems with speech. Stephen’s disorder is characterized with speech such as, "Um . . . the . . . ahhh . . . I want . . . green . . . it’s green. . . ." Stephanie’s disorder is characterized with speech such as, "It is easy because . . . boys are looking but they look . . . see the cat is with the boys and machines and purple." Stephen is most likely suffering from _______ while Stephanie is suffering from _________.

Broca’s aphasia; Wernicke’s aphasia.

Linguistic rules seem to be the source of children’s overregularization errors. This sort of error is visible, for example, whenever

a child says, "I goed," or, "He runned."

In the 1950s, the anthropologist Benjamin Whorf argued that our language determines the possible range of our thoughts. In subsequent decades, Whorf’s theories

have found little specific support, with the implication that language may guide our thoughts and memories but does not influence what it is possible for us to think.

Knowing about how language is ordinarily used is technically called

pragmatics.

Participants are given a task that requires them to zoom in on a mental image in order to inspect a detail. Evidence indicates that

the greater the distance to be zoomed, the more time is required.

If participants are asked to imagine an object, such as a dog, information that will be prominent in the mental image

corresponds well with the information that is prominent in an actual picture.

One group of participants is instructed to imagine a cat, and the participants are then asked several yes/no questions about their image. A second group of participants is instructed simply to think about cats, with no mention of imagery, and the participants are then asked the same yes/no questions. We expect that

participants responding on the basis of the image will respond more quickly to "Does the cat have a head?"

Matt is shown two complex three-dimensional images (A and B) and asked to determine if the images are identical. The images are aligned in different planes, so answering the question requires mentally rotating one of the images.

There is a systematic correlation between the required rotation and reaction time.

Hank is an eidetic imager. This means that after viewing an image for a very short amount of time, he will

draw the image in amazing detail, as if it were a photograph.

If you are asked to imagine a three-dimensional cube, like a Necker cube, that is ambiguous with respect to depth, your mental image will

be based on one configuration or the other.

Studies of moment-by-moment brain activity indicate that when participants are visualizing,

activity levels are high in brain regions also crucial for visual perception.

When asked to determine which city is farther south, Seattle or Montreal, people are likely to mistakenly say "Seattle."

This is probably because some spatial information is stored in memory in a propositional form rather than an image form.

In a memory experiment, participants were shown a form that could be interpreted in more than one way. Half the participants were told, "Here is a picture of the sun." The other participants were told, "Here is a picture of a ship’s steering wheel." Some time later, participants were asked to draw the exact form they had seen earlier.

The data indicates that participants’ drawings were biased in a fashion that reflected the labels that they had been given earlier.

Lisa and Katie are both using imagery mnemonics to try to remember the words "dog" and "Ferris wheel." Lisa imagines a dog riding a Ferris wheel, while Katie remembers a person at a theme park walking her dog. Lisa’s strategy will

improve her memory for both words because the mnemonic is bizarre.

According to Paivio, a word like "chair" is ___________ than a word like "faith."

easier to memorize

In one study on picture memory, researchers showed participants pictures of typical scenes, such as a bedroom. In each typical scene there were some unexpected objects (e.g., a washing machine). During the test, participants were shown the same scene with a few changes. Results from this study indicate that

changes to the unexpected objects were often noticed.

The expected value of an option is

dependent on the product of the probability of an outcome and the utility of the outcome.

Which of the following is correct regarding dual-process models?

System 2 is more likely to be used if people are given training or cued by the situation.

Utility is the subjective element of a decision that is indicated by our consumer behavior. What is the rule for expected utility in good decision making?

Action with the highest expected utility should be taken.

In Tversky and Kahneman’s hit and run eyewitness experiment with blue and green taxi cabs, probability of the cab being blue given the base rates of the cab distribution and the eyewitness’s ability was estimated to be much higher (80%) than what it actually was (41%). What is the most reasonable explanation for this outcome?

Base rates are often overlooked in estimating probability is a reasonable explanation for this outcome.

In signal detection theory, the assumption is that responding accuracy will depend on the overlap between two distributions and the criterion set for responding.

With that information in mind, it is true that if the subject chooses a low criterion, the false alarm rate is going to be high.

Human judgment is bound to be

subjective and contain at least a few errors because decisions are often based on memories and memory is sensitive to manipulations and errors.

In some studies, participants have been asked to visualize a particular stimulus (e.g., the letter "A"). If the same stimulus is then presented at low contrast, visualization

serves to prime perception of the stimulus.

Reasoning from "man who" arguments is usually

inappropriate because generalizing from a single case is justified only for truly homogeneous categories.

Nisbett has argued that participants do understand the basic principles of statistics but often fail to use their knowledge. Which of the following situations does NOT contain one of the triggers that leads to the use of statistical knowledge?

The participant is scrutinizing a problem that is of great personal importance, so he or she is highly motivated to reason carefully and well.

Marcus is talking on the phone to his mother when a garbage truck drives by. As a result, he is unable to hear what his mom is saying for a few seconds. Which of the following is LEAST likely to help him figure out what his mother said?

The fact that our minds fill in missing words, which is called the phonemic restoration effect.

A researcher asks a participant to memorize a city map. On the map, the library and the school are 2 inches apart; the school and the hospital are 4 inches apart. The researcher now instructs the participant to form an image of the map and to scan from the library to the school. The researcher then asks the participant to scan from the school to the hospital. Which of the following is MOST likely to be true?

The scanning time from the school to the hospital is double the scanning time between the library and the school.

Many of us overestimate our own popularity. This could be because we surround ourselves with people who like us, rather than with people who do not. Therefore, it is easier for us to think of the names of people who like us than it is to think of the names of our enemies. This overestimation of popularity seems to derive from using

the availability heuristic.

In several studies, participants have been asked to estimate the frequency of occurrence for various causes of death. The evidence suggests that participants’ frequency estimates are strongly influenced by

how often the cause of death is discussed in the news media.

When we encounter a highly unusual event, we are particularly likely to notice and consider the event. As a consequence,

the event will be easy to recall, leading us to overestimate the likelihood of this type of event.

Megan cannot sleep at night because she is terribly worried about being robbed, which is highly unlikely. As her friend, you want to help her by describing judgment errors and why she should not lose any more sleep. Which of the following is NOT contributing to her irrational fear?

Underestimating sample size for the number of robbers out there

Research into whether personality traits can be diagnosed by descriptions of ink blots has shown that the pattern of observations that both experts and novices see is

often not real but rather based on illusory covariations.

Dual-process models state that people

have two ways of thinking: one is a fast and automatic process, whereas the other is slower but more accurate.

Before reading about a depressed individual, participants are told that the case is not at all typical. This instruction will

not affect participants’ spontaneous use of the representativeness heuristic.

Solomon remembers how Jacob acted last weekend and the weekend before that. On the basis of this, Solomon is trying to figure out whether there is a pattern to Jacob’s actions. Solomon is working on a problem of

induction.

Marissa believes that clowns are evil. She meets two men who are very nice and then learns that they are clowns. Despite this, she does not adjust her belief and continues to think clowns are evil. This is called

belief perseverance.

"All rectangles have four sides. All squares have four sides. Therefore all rectangles are squares." This incorrect statement is an example of

categorical syllogism.

Evidence from the four-card task DOES NOT suggest

that problem solving about conditional statements is difficult to improve.

An inductive judgment is one in which

a person begins with specific facts or observations and seeks to draw a general conclusion from them.

One plan for solving a problem would be to consider every possible option, searching for the best solution. This broad plan is usually

ruled out by the sheer number of possible states within the problem space.

Which of the following is NOT a benefit received from using a means-end analysis to solve a problem?

It encourages the person to move away from the goal initially so as to get to the goal faster.

A group of participants has just completed a series of problems involving water jars. In each problem, the participants needed to fill the largest jar, pour from it once into the middle-sized jar, and then pour from the largest jar twice into the smallest jar. The participants are now given a new problem, which cannot be solved via this procedure. We would expect

that the participants would have difficulty with the new problem because they are now locked into the procedure that they used successfully.

It was starting to rain and Marcus did not have an umbrella or a hat. To keep dry, he held his psychology textbook over his head. In this case, Marcus

has managed to overcome functional fixedness.

Which of the following problems is ill-defined?

Sarah is trying to think of a way to impress her boss.

Dell is trying to solve the "hobbits and orcs" problem, so she must determine how to move the creatures across a river. Dell is most likely to be helped if

she has had earlier experience with a problem with a similar deep structure that also involved hobbits and orcs.

In many studies, participants fail to use analogies as an aid to problem solving. Of the following, which is the MOST plausible explanation of this fact?

Participants may search their memories based on the surface structure of the problem and thus fail to think of many useful analogies.

Experts have an advantage in problem solving and remembering certain information (like the position of chess pieces). This advantage does not

help experts break down chunks to create subgoals.

Bob works in marketing and wants to be creative at his work. Which of these is LEAST likely to be a prerequisite for his creativity?

Being strongly motivated by external rewards rather than taking pleasure in his work

Researchers have tried to study the moment of illumination in the laboratory. The evidence indicates that

when participants report an illumination, they are at least as likely to be moving toward a dead end as they are to be moving toward the problem’s solution.

According to the text, current research indicates that creative problem solving

draws on heuristics and analogies in the same way as does ordinary problem solving.

Mark scored very well on a verbal intelligence test. He will likely

score above average on the visuospatial test.

_______ intelligence refers to a general flexibility of thought, while ________ intelligence refers to acquired knowledge and skills.

Fluid; crystallized

Which of the following statements does NOT support the notion that the environment influences intelligence?

IQs are more similar among MZ twins than among DZ twins.

Genetic factors DO NOT

cause whites to be more intelligent than blacks. Genetic factors are NOT an explanation for the IQ discrepancies between blacks and whites.

The fact that a participant may not have taken an intelligence test before is NOT

a reason to use Ravens Progressive Matrices instead of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale to measure the intelligence of an individual.

In one study, participants in Group 1 were given a pill and told, "This pill will make you a bit jumpy, will make your palms sweat, and may give you butterflies in your stomach." Participants in Group 2 were given the same pill, but they were told, "This pill may make you a little sleepy." In both cases, the pill was a placebo. All participants were then exposed to electric shocks and were asked to rate how painful each shock had seemed. Given other evidence, we would expect

that the participants in Group 1 would rate the shocks as less painful than the participants in Group 2.

Lisa rides the train to work and always gets off at stop A. One Saturday she has to go into town, and she rides the same train she takes to work. She is supposed to get off at Stop F, but she starts talking to her mother on the phone and then gets off at stop A. What does this tells us about unconscious processing?

If not consciously attending to what we are doing, we will rely on habit.

Feedback can lead participants to be more confident of their memories, even if they are wrong. This does NOT mean

that memories are strengthened when people are told they are right.

Which of these is MOST likely to be true about the process of introspection?

Introspection often produces mistaken beliefs that arise from plausible after-the-fact inferences.

Our thoughts seem to be embedded in a context that is usually not noticed yet serves to define and guide the thoughts. Which of the following is NOT an example of this sort of context?

Perception of a word or object that is strongly shaped by the other words and objects that surround the target

Patients who have experienced damage to the striate cortex sometimes show a phenomenon known as blind sight. In this case,

MOST patients often guess correctly in response to what they have seen or where an object is located even though they report that they cannot see it.

The phrase "memory without awareness" is another way of describing a pattern in which

implicit memory tests indicate that participants remember an event but explicit memory tests indicate that they do not remember.

The term "action slip" refers to

mistakenly relying on a habitual response when a novel response was needed.

Anita has been driving a car with a stick shift for five years. What effect does her years of practice have on the consciousness?

Practice reduces the need for executive control over shifting gears.

The term "neural correlates of consciousness" refers MOST accurately

to the changes in the brain that occur when we become conscious of a stimulus.

In order to detect that a red shape was moving, it is likely that

the neural system detecting motion and the neural system detecting the color red were both firing in synchrony.

The fact that we are unaware of most of our mental processing is generally a good thing EXCEPT

that the inferred processes that we are consciously aware of DO NOT accurately reflect the unconscious processes that occur behind the scenes.

In order to solve a problem, people make use of operators. These are

actions or tools used to help change a person’s current state in relation to the problem.

Expert problem solvers

tend to categorize problems in terms of their deep structure.

Is it possible that perceptual information has to be conscious before a person will put that information to use?

Yes; as in blind-sight patients who think they cannot see.

Which of the following is NOT true of the nine-dot problem?

People perform much better when given a hint.

Which of the following is unlikely to be the result of fluency effects?

stereotype threat.

Studies of analogy use indicate that participants

are more likely to use analogies if there is a superficial resemblance between the problem being solves and the problem serving as the base for the analogy.

Several authors have proposed that we are generally aware of the ______ of our own thoughts even though we are usually unaware of the _____ of thought.

product; processes