Psyc 230 Test 1

Bert has sustained damage to a part of his left temporal lobe, which is important for language production. Which of the following problems would we expect to see if Bert were given a WM test?

He would have difficulty rehearsing items with verbal labels.

The multicomponent model of working memory shows that

theories are built around testable predictions.

Alyssa wants to be a psychologist but is unsure which topic within psychology most interests her. Which of the following topics would be least likely to lead her into cognitive psychology?

depression

Which of the following topics is NOT commonly studied within cognitive psychology?

dreaming

Which of the following statements about introspection is NOT true?

It provides a testable hypothesis.

Within the working-memory system, mental "assistants" are available to allow the storage of information soon to be needed but not currently in use. A crucial "scratch pad" is the

articulatory rehearsal loop.

Working memory provides one example of how

cognitive processes are essential to most daily tasks

If Sheila says, "Pass the salt, please," you are likely to pass her the salt. You’ll probably respond in the same way if Sheila (a chemistry major) instead asks, "Could you please hand me the sodium chloride crystals?" This observation seems to indicate that our behavior is

governed by what the stimuli we encounter mean to us

The process of taking observable information and inferring a cause is known as

the transcendental method

Cognitive processes are NOT necessary for which daily activity?

breathing

Modern psychology turned away from behaviorism in its classic form because

human behavior is routinely determined by our understanding of stimuli.

Patients suffering from clinical amnesia are characterized by a disorder in their

memory.

A participant hears the sequence "F, D, P, U, G, Q, R," and then, a moment later, must repeat the sequence aloud. If errors occur in this procedure, they are likely to involve

sound-alike confusions; for example, "T " instead of "D."

Cognitive psychologists try to make inferences about causes, based on the observed effects. In this way, cognitive psychologists are most like

crime scene investigators.

In cognition, as in other sciences, we first develop _____ and then _____ them.

hypotheses; test

Evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests that subvocalization is MOST closely related to

planning to speak, because some of the same brain regions are active, as in normal speech planning.

Which 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.

The term "introspection" refers to the

process of each person looking within, to observe his or her own thoughts and ideas.

In using the articulatory rehearsal loop, the central executive temporarily relies on storage in

a phonological buffer.

You want to order a pizza and need to pay with a credit card. You glance at your credit card number and then put the card back into your wallet. When it comes time to pay, you can only remember the first four numbers. Which of the following provides the BEST explanation as to why?

The pizza delivery guy keeps talking while you are rehearsing the digits.

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

argues that unobservable mental states can be scientifically studied.

Theorists have proposed that working memory is best understood as a system involving multiple components. The activities of this system are controlled by a resource called the

central executive.

In an experimental procedure, participants hear a sequence of letters and then, a moment later, are required to repeat back the sequence. The longest sequence for which participants can easily do this is likely to contain approximately _____ letters.

7

Introspection CANNOT be used to study

mental events that are unconscious.

Behaviorists argued that _____ were most important in analyzing behavior.

learning histories

Span tests measure

working-memory capacity.

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

The technical term for talking to yourself when rehearsing verbal material is

subvocalization.

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

Introspection is considered the first step toward cognitive psychology as a science because

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

Which of the following would a classical behaviorist be LEAST likely to study?

a participant’s beliefs

Subvocalization is also known as

the inner voice.

Which of the following is NOT central to research in neuropsychology?

the use of introspection

Participants are shown a series of complex shapes (that are not easily named) and asked to draw them from memory after they have been taken away. Which of the following statements about this exercise is TRUE?

Saying, "tah, tah, tah," out loud while doing this task should not affect performance.

An elderly woman has suffered a stroke in her left temporal lobe and consequently can no longer name common nouns. This provides evidence that language is located in the left hemisphere for most people. What kind of evidence is this?

neuroscience

Participants in an experiment are shown a series of digits and then asked to repeat them back a moment later. While being shown the sequence, the participants are required to say, "tah, tah, tah," out loud, over and over again. The evidence indicates that the recitation of "tah, tah, tah" will

block participants from using their inner voice to rehearse the digits, thereby interfering with the memory task.

The task of saying, "tah, tah, tah," while taking a span test to assess working memory is known as

concurrent articulation.

Which of the following statements is NOT a concern about the use of introspection as a research tool?

At present, there is enormous uncertainty about the relationship between the activity in the brain and the ideas and thoughts available to introspection.

You give your friend a series of lists of letters to remember. With each perfectly recalled list, you increase the list length by one or two items, until he begins to make errors. This sort of test examines

working-memory span.

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.

If visual information conflicts with other information, we usually

trust the visual input.

Facial recognition depends on recognition of

the configuration of the parts.

If instructed to identify the briefly presented word "PORK," which of the following hints will provide the greatest benefit for identification?

The word is something you can eat.

The importance of vision for humans is reflected in the

relative size of the visual cortex.

This chapter describes in detail one way a feature net can be designed, but other designs may turn out to be preferable. For example, more recent hypotheses, including McClelland and Rumelhart’s model, make use of all of the following statements EXCEPT

the elimination of feature detectors, relying instead on geon detectors.

Which of the following statements BEST describe viewpoint-dependent object recognition?

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

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. ANS: A DIF: Medium REF: Recognition: Some Early Considerations OBJ: Applied TOP: IIA

bottom-up; top-down

Facial recognition differs from recognition of other objects in all of the following ways EXCEPT:

The component parts of a face have no influence on perception.

Participants’ recognition thresholds are

lower for frequently seen words

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.

Researchers have used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to disrupt portions of the healthy brain. When asking participants to search for a target, we expect TMS applied to the parietal lobe to

disrupt the search for a target defined by a conjunction of features (e.g., "Find the shape that is red and round").

In tachistoscopic studies, a poststimulus mask is usually employed to

disrupt sensory processing of the stimulus.

Participants are shown the letter-string TPUM for 30 ms and asked to identify what they saw. If they are going to answer incorrectly, which response are they most likely to give?

TRUM

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.

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.

One might propose that pattern recognition begins with the identification of simple elements; these are then added together, like tiles within a mosaic, to allow recognition of the large-scale pattern. Which of the following statements is MOST problematic for this proposal?

The elements identified within a pattern can be changed dramatically by a change in context.

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.

Which of the following statements is NOT true about a feature-net model?

It can be applied to recognition of faces.

When identifying nonword letter-strings that are presented very briefly, participants tend to make specific kinds of errors. How would these errors be best described?

They tend to misidentify strange letter combinations as more common letter combinations.

Which of the following statements is TRUE about the recognition of inverted faces?

Recognition of inverted faces is harder than for upright faces.

A feature net is a

network of cognitive "detectors" organized in hierarchical layers.

The term "top-down processing" can be interchanged with the term

"concept-driven processing."

Biederman’s recognition by components (RBC) model

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

Compared to detectors that have not fired recently, a detector that HAS fired recently is likely to

have a higher activation level.

In tachistoscopic recognition, participants often make overregularization errors. These are errors in which participants

are shown a pattern such as MJLK but perceive it as MILK.

Which of the following sentences best illustrates the effect that Gestalt principles have on perception?

"Go beyond the information given."

In a tachistoscopic procedure, participants are shown the sequence NACL. Evidence indicates that

participants are likely to misperceive the sequence, reading it as if it were a common letter pattern, such as NAIL.

What sort of processing is dependent on factors in the environment or in the stimulus?

top-down

In a tachistoscopic procedure, a word is likely to be more difficult to recognize if it

has an unusual spelling pattern.

In a feature-net model, knowledge of spelling patterns

is distributed across the model, and therefore the knowledge is only detectable in the overall functioning of the network.

English nonwords (e.g., "HICE") are easier to perceive than strings of letters not resembling English words (e.g., "RSFK") because

bigram detectors for more common letter combinations fire more readily.

On one trial of an experiment, a participant is shown the sequence GWXT. On a different trial, the participant is shown the sequence PAFE. On the basis of prior research, we should expect that

PAFE will be easier to perceive than GWXT because detectors for PA and FE are likely to be well primed.

A response threshold is the

activation level at which a response occurs.

Recognition errors (like mistaking CQRN for CORN ) lead us to what conclusion about feature nets?

The interactive nature of feature nets usually allows us to identify stimuli, but can also lead to errors.

One type of error that can result from feature nets is overregularization. Is overregularization a significant problem?

No; these errors are infrequent and usually not problematic.

The bigram CO is more common in English than CQ, which makes identifying CORN more likely than identifying CQRN. According to feature nets, how is knowledge of bigram frequency stored?

It is not explicitly stored anywhere.

Mistakes in word reading occur under a feature-net model of recognition. This results because the feature net encourages _____ over _____.

efficiency; accuracy

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.

Participants in a tachistoscopic procedure are shown the sequence CQRN. Participants misperceive this string as CORN. In a feature-net account, which of the following statements probably does NOT contribute to this effect?

Feature nets are generally unable to identify nonwords.

There are several reasons why practice can improve performance. Which of the following statements is NOT a good reason?

Practice means that the response selector is no longer needed.

A late selection view of attention suggests that

all inputs are fully processed; however, only the attended input reaches consciousness.

Which of the following statements about working-memory capacity (WMC) is TRUE?

People with higher WMC perform better when the task requires a novel response to override a habitual response.

The existence of task-general resources is indicated by the fact that

interference between two tasks can sometimes be observed even if the two tasks have no elements in common.

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.

If attention is like a spotlight, then feature search is a(n) _____ spotlight, while a search for a combination of features is a _____ spotlight.

broad; focused

Priming based on specific expectations about the identity of the upcoming stimulus produces

a benefit for processing if the expectations are correct but slows processing if the expectations are incorrect.

The task of shadowing involves

immediately repeating, word for word, the contents of a message.

Stroop interference demonstrates that

word reading is automatized.

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.

Attention is BEST characterized as a(n)

achievement.

If we overload attention by giving someone too much to do, we would expect to see what change in feature-binding abilities?

errors in feature binding

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 are asked to listen to a tape-recorded message and to shadow the message as they hear it. Which of the following tasks will be easiest to combine with this shadowing task?

viewing a series of pictures, followed by a test measuring memory for the pictures

Posner, Snyder, and Davidson (1980) examined spatial attention using arrows as a prime. Most of the time the arrow pointed to the area where the stimulus would appear, but 20% of the time it did not. They compared reaction times (RTs) when the cue was valid, when it was invalid, and when a neutral cue was presented. Which of the following statements was NOT supported by their findings?

We can attend to two different locations without a reduction in performance.

There is a cost to expectation-based priming, revealed by the fact that priming the wrong detector leads to slower responding. That is, getting prepared for one target seems to hinder performance for other targets. What does this finding reveal about selective attention?

Selective attention is a limited-capacity system.

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.

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, which of the following statements reflects what the participant is LEAST likely to detect?

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.

The different forms of priming can be distinguished in several ways. For example, the effects of _____ can be observed almost immediately after the relevant cue is provided; in contrast, the effects of _____ require a half second or so to appear after the relevant cue.

stimulus-based priming; expectation-based priming

A participant who has just participated in an experiment involving dichotic listening is LEAST likely to remember

the meaning of the words presented on the unattended channel.

A patient has suffered brain damage and, as a result, now seems to ignore all information on the left side of her world. If shown words, she reads only the right half of the word; if asked to copy a picture, she copies only the right half. This patient seems to be suffering from

unilateral neglect syndrome

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.

Participants are shown two rectangles. A target appears in one of the rectangles. Prior to the appearance of the target, a cue appears signaling the target’s location. In the majority of the trials the cue is correct; however, sometimes the cue is misleading. In the latter case the target could appear in the same rectangle but at a different location or in the other rectangle. Which of the following statements is MOST likely to be true when the cue is misleading?

Participants respond to the target faster if the cue appears in the same rectangle rather than in the other rectangle.

Marcus is searching for a red square among an array of red and blue squares. Marcus is easily (and quickly) able to identify the red square because he is engaged in a _____ search.

feature

Moore and Egeth (1997) asked participants to rate which of two lines was longer. Background dots were presented with the lines. On some trials, 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.

A participant is shown a series of stimuli and is asked to name the color of the ink in which the stimuli are printed. The eighth stimulus happens to be printed in green ink. We should expect a relatively slow response if the stimulus happens to be

the word "RED" printed in green.

Patients with unilateral neglect ignore one side of their visual field. This problem illustrates the importance of

space-based perception.

When engaged in a _____ search, set size does not matter. However, when engaged in a _____ search, set size has an impact on performance.

feature; combination

Participants are shown a pair of similar pictures separated by a blank interval. The pictures are identical except for a single aspect (e.g., a man is wearing a hat in one scene but not in the other). In these kinds of tasks, participants often find it hard to detect the change. This phenomenon is known as change

blindness.

Change blindness demonstrates that

attention is not sufficient for perception.

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).

Patty is asked to find a red square among a display that also contains blue squares and red circles. This task requires what kind of search process?

combination

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.

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. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

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

The idea of a "cognitive budget" is used several times in this chapter. Which of the following statements is NOT true of the "cognitive budget"?

The budget can increase through practice.

The evidence from unilateral neglect patients and patients with normal attentional abilities suggests that

both space- and object-based attention are important in attention.

In each trial of an experiment, participants see a warning signal and then, a half second later, see a pair of letters. The participants press one button if the letters are the same (e.g., W W ) and a different button if the letters are different (e.g., P X ). In 80% of the trials, the warning signal is identical to the letters that will be shown on that trial. The following are the warning signals and the test stimuli presented on Trial 97 of the procedure. Group 1: warning signal = L; test pair = L L Group 2: warning signal = U; test pair = L L Group 3: warning signal = +; test pair = L L In this setup we should expect the fastest responses from

Group 1 and slowest responses from Group 2.

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

It encourages habitual responding over goal-directed behaviors.

If a participant is asked to perform two activities at the same time, performance will be improved if

the two activities are highly dissimilar, drawing on different task-specific resources.

Which situation is the MOST difficult (and most dangerous)?

a novice driver talking on a cell phone