Cognitive Psychology
Evidence for the role of top-down processing in perception is shown by which of the following examples?
When someone accurately identifies a word in a song on a radio broadcast despite static interfering with reception
As a result of gaps in the behaviorist paradigm, the new cognitive paradigm began to emerge in which decade?
a) 1950s
Which of the following methods, often associated with structuralism, was used in the psychology laboratory established by Wilhelm Wundt?
a) Analytic introspection
What does the principal of neural representation state?
a) Everything a person experiences is based on representations in the person's nervous system.
Consider the following definition of the mind: The mind is a system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals. Which element of the mind does this definition emphasize?
a) Functioning and survival
Which of the following is NOT true of positron emission tomography (PET)?
a) It replaced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) because it was less expensive.
Endel Tulving, one of the most prominent early memory researchers, proposed that long-term memory is subdivided into all of the following components EXCEPT
a) Short-term memory.
Regarding children's language development, Noam Chomsky noted that children generate many sentences they have never heard before. From this, he concluded that language development is driven largely by
a) an inborn biological program.
A mental conception of the layout of a physical space is known as a(n)
a) cognitive map.
The branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind is called
a) cognitive psychology.
Early studies of brain tissue that used staining techniques and microscopes from the 19th century described the "nerve net." These early understandings were in error in the sense that the nerve net was believed to be
a) continuous.
Brain imaging has made it possible to
a) determine which areas of the brain are involved in different cognitive processes.
Paul Broca's and Carl Wernicke's research provided early evidence for
a) distributed processing.
John Watson believed that psychology should focus on the study of
a) observable behavior.
If the intensity of a stimulus that is presented to a touch receptor is increased, this tends to increase the ____ in the receptor's axon.
a) rate of nerve firing
Watson became dissatisfied with the method of analytic introspection in which context?
b) Results were interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes
In Donders's experiment on decision making, when participants were asked to press one button if the light on the left was illuminated and another button if the light on the right was illuminated, they
c) choice reaction time task.
The technique where the participant's task is to focus on the message in one ear, called the attended ear, and to repeat what he or she is hearing out loud is known as
c) dichotic listening.
You are walking down the street and see a nice car drive by. You notice its color, movement, and shape. All of these features are processed
c) in different parts of the brain
Groups of interconnected neurons are referred to as
c) neural circuits.
When the axon is at rest, the inside of the neuron has a charge that is 70 millivolts more negative than the outside. This difference will continue as long as
d) the neuron is at rest.
Which of the following is NOT considered a starting point for perception?
d) thinking
In the mid-20th century, the study of the mind began using which technique or model inspired by digital computers?
information process model
The Stroop effect demonstrates people's inability to ignore the ____ of words.
meaning
For Isabel Gauthier's greeble experiment, Nancy Kanwisher would predict greebles would elicit FFA activation on ____ .
neither Monday nor Friday
Suppose that you sneaked up behind a split-brain and tapped him once on his left shoulder and twice on his right shoulder. If you then stood with your back to him and asked him to do the same thing you had done to him, he would probably
not tap you at all
A 10-month-old baby is interested in discovering different textures, comparing the touch sensations between a soft blanket and a hard wooden block. Tactile signals such as these are received by the ____ lobe
parietal
The data sketched above suggests that conjunction search relies on what kind of processing?
with target defined by a combination of color and orientation, serial
The data sketched above suggests that feature search relies on what kind of processing?
with target defined by color, Parallel
Which of the following attention model components produces two levels of output?
treismans attenuator
Which of the following are all associated with a single kind of visual search?
unique conjunction of features; steep RT functions of display items; serial processing; comparing across two cortical maps
1) (3 points) Sketch the first two lines of the 7-factor model for John Garcia's experiment with radiation. What are the ucs, ucr, and neutral stimulus?
(1) radiation (ucs) - > (1) nausea (ucr) (1) sour blue water (neutral s) - > radiation (ucs) -> nausea (ucr)
What differentiates bottom-up processing from top-down processing?
Bottom-up refers to the way it is built up from the smallest pieces of sensory information. Top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to perception that is driven by cognition.
Which stage in Treisman's attenuation model has a threshold component?
Dictionary unit
The results of Gauthier's "Greeble" experiment illustrate
c) an effect of experience-dependent plasticity
Sketch the data from conjunction search experiments, with number of display items as the IV and RT as the DV.
Lower is lower and higher is higher
Sketch the data from feature search experiments, with number of display items as the IV and RT as the DV.
Lower is lower and higher is higher
Reaction time refers to the time between the ____ of a stimulus and a person's response to it.
d) presentation
Which of the following is an example of unconscious inference?
Perceiving that a partially covered automobile continues beneath the cover
2) (4 points) Now sketch two versions of the third line of the 7-factor model, one that includes 'blue water' and the other that includes 'sour water'. What are the cs and cr? Which animal (rat or quail) does each third line represent?
Rat: sour water (cs) -> nausea (cr) (1 point for associating rats with sour water as the cs, 1 point for nausea as cr) Quail: blue water (cs) - > nausea (cr) (1 for quail/blue, 1 for nausea)
A synapse is
d) the gap that separates two different neurons.
(3 points) In the modularity debate, what is the antithesis and its supporting evidence?
antithesis: each kind of mental processing has its own brain module (1) evidence: when people use particular muscles, they bulge (1), and skull bumps indicate the brain tissue underneath is well used (1)
Which of the following statements best describes how neurons communicate with one another?
b) A chemical process takes place in the synapse.
Which of the following could be considered as always taking a "working vacation"?
b) Default mode network
Which of the following does NOT characterize the information processing (IP) approach to the study of cognition?
b) IP emphasizes stimulus-response relationships in cognitive processes.
Sarah has experienced brain damage making it difficult for her to understand spatial layout. Which area of her brain has most likely sustained damage?
b) Parahippocampal place area (PPA)
Which memory is used for physical actions?
b) Procedural memory
Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin's (1968) model of memory, which was introduced a year after the publication of Neisser's book, described the flow of information in the memory system as progressing through three stages. Which memory holds incoming information for a fraction of a second and then passes most of this information to short-term memory?
b) Sensory memory
What is the gap between the end of a neuron's axon and the dendrites or cell body of another neuron known as?
b) Synapse
How is the term mind used in this statement: "If you put your mind to it, I'm sure you can solve that math problem"?
b) The mind as problem solver
Wundt's procedure in which trained participants describe their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli presented under controlled conditions is known as
b) analytic introspection.
Neurons that respond to specific qualities of objects, such as orientation, movement, and length, are called
b) feature detectors.
The first experiments in cognitive psychology were based on the idea that mental responses can be
b) inferred from the participant's behavior
The main point of the Donders's reaction time experiments was to
b) measure the amount of time it takes to make a decision
Ebbinghaus's "memory" experiments were important because they
b) plotted functions that described the operation of the mind.
In Donders's experiment on decision making, when participants were asked to press a button upon presentation of a light, they were engaged in a
b) simple reaction time task.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Symposium on Information Theory, George Miller presented a paper suggesting that
b) there are limits to the human ability to process information
The Stroop effect occurs when participants
b.) try to name colors and ignore words
What is an example of a target and distractors in a feature search experiment?
blue horizonal lines with red vertical lines vs blue horizontal with blue vertical
What is an example of a target and distractors in a conjunction search experiment?
blue horizonal lines with red vertical lines vs blue horizontal with blue vertical + red horizontal with blue vertical
Which parts of neurons are also known as a "nerve fiber"?
c) Axons
The "Little Albert" experiment involving the rat and the loud noise is an example of which of the following types of experiments?
c) Classical conditioning
Taking clay and sand to create bricks, which are then used to build modular wall panels, which are then assembled to construct tall buildings, is similar to which of the following neural concepts?
c) Hierarchical processing
Which of the following is a criticism of analytic introspection?
c) It produces variable results from person to person.
What is a key difference between dendrites and axons?
c) One sends information and the other receives information.
Edgar Adrian studied the relationship between nerve firing and sensory experience by measuring how the firing of a neuron from a receptor in the skin changed as he applied more pressure to the skin. He found that
c) the rate of nerve firing increased as he increased the pressure.
The "cognitive revolution"
c) was a gradual process that occurred over a few decades
Which of the following psychologists is known for research on operant conditioning?
d) B. F. Skinner
Who proposed that children's language development was caused by imitation and reinforcement?
d) B. F. Skinner
Verbal Behavior was written by
d) B. F. Skinner.
What is the metabolic center of an individual neuron?
d) Cell body
Action potentials occur in the
d) axon.
When recording from a single neuron, stimulus intensity is represented by the
d) firing rate of the action potentials.
Scene schema is
d) knowledge about what is contained in a typical scene.
By comparing reaction times across different tasks, Donders was able to conclude how long the mind needs to perform a certain cognitive task. Donders interpreted the difference in reaction time between the simple and choice conditions of his experiment as indicating how long it took to
d) make a decision about the stimulus.
The investigation of how behavior is strengthened by presentation of positive reinforcers (e.g., food) or withdrawal of negative reinforcers (e.g., shock) is best known as
d) operant conditioning.
If kittens are raised in an environment that contains only verticals, you would predict that most of the neurons in their visual cortex would respond best to the visual presentation of a
d) picket fence.
Evidence for the role of top-down processing in perception is shown by which of the following examples?
d.) When someone accurately identifies a word in a song on a radio broadcast despite static interfering with reception
Because the ____ side of the brain is more holistic than the other side, when split brains were presented with an Arcimboldo painting and told to point to a matching object, that side of the brain commanded the hand it controlled to point at a ____ .
right; face
In my description of Nancy Kanwisher's fMRI experiments, Kanwisher observed that the activity in the PPA ____ ____ an image depicting a landscape was presented to the experimental participant.
rose; a moment after
5) (4 points) In the modularity debate, what is the synthesis and its supporting evidence?
synthesis: some mental processes are distributed across the brain and some are modular (1) evidence: memory: Lashley found that rats' maze memory declined with the size of brain injury (1) but not the location of brain injury (1) language: people with injury to Broca's area lose the ability to process word order (1) and injuries to Wernicke's area reduce the ability to process word meanings (1)
The ____ lobe of the cortex receives information from all of the senses and is responsible for coordination of the senses, as well as higher cognitive functions such as thinking and problem solving.
temporal
(3 points) If we think about the debate over whether mind is modular or distributed, what is the thesis, and the evidence supporting the thesis? (btw, a thesis is a declarative statement, so, for example, the philosophical thesis described in class is the statement 'senses are unreliable, so the mind comes to know things primarily through the exercise of logic').
thesis: the mind is distributed across the brain (1) evidence: for other organs, function is spread across the organ (1) and the brain is an organ like the others (1)
