Cognitive Psychology Final Exam

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

picket fence.

Behaviorists believe that the presentation of ____________ increases the frequency of behavior.

positive reinforcers

Reaction time refers to the time between the _______ of a stimulus and a person's response to it.

presentation

Treatment of PTSD has benefitted from recent research on

reconsolidation

Digit span is one measure of capacity of

short-term memory.

Observations that people may actually process and manipulate information rather than simply store it for brief periods of time challenged the conceptualization of

short-term memory.

The propaganda effect demonstrates that we evaluate familiar statements as being true

simply because we have been exposed to them before.

In Schneider and Shiffrin's experiment, in which participants were asked to indicate whether a target stimulus was present in a series of rapidly presented "frames," divided attention was easier

once processing had become automatic.

Chantal has frontal lobe damage. She is doing a problem-solving task in which she has to choose the red object out of many choices. She can easily complete this repeatedly, but when the experimenter asks her to choose the blue object on a new trial of the task, she continues to choose the red one, even when the experimenter gives her feedback that she is incorrect. Chantal is displaying

perseveration.

When light from a flashlight is moved quickly back and forth on a wall in a darkened room, it can appear to observers that there is a trail of light moving across the wall, even though physically the light is only in one place at any given time. This experience is an effect of memory that occurs because of

persistence of vision.

The "filter model" proposes that the filter identifies the attended message based on

physical characteristics.

The maintenance rehearsal task of learning a word by repeating it over and over again is most likely to

produce some short-term remembering, but fail to produce longer-term memories.

Believing that a particular statement is true simply because you have seen the statement in previous instances is known as the ________ effect.

propaganda

A patient with impaired episodic memory would most likely have the greatest difficulty in

remembering graduating from college.

Retrograde amnesia is usually less severe for ______ memories.

remote

Elaborative rehearsal of a word will LEAST likely be accomplished by

repeating it over and over.

As the ________ of a stimulus increases, ________ tends to ________.

salience; fixation; increase

Your friend has been sick for several days, so you go over to her home to make her some chicken soup. Searching for a spoon, you first reach in a top drawer beside the dishwasher. Then, you turn to the big cupboard beside the stove to search for a pan. In your search, you have relied on a kitchen

schema

Wundt's approach, which dominated psychology in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was known as ____________. (Please only write the key term and make sure to spell it correctly).

structuralism analytic introspection introspection

Placing tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, garlic, cilantro, and lime juice into a blender and turning it on to produce salsa is similar to which of the following?

the focused attention stage of feature integration theory

The dramatic case of patient H.M. clearly illustrates that ___________ is crucial for the formation of long-term memories.

the hippocampus

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

the neuron is at rest.

Memory enhancement due to repetition priming is a result of the test stimulus being

the same as or resembling the priming stimulus.

Which of the following is NOT considered a starting point for perception?

thinking

Driving in a new city, seeing a restaurant that is missing several letters, and still know the name of the restaurant.

top-down

Recognizing a friend even though you have not seen them in a while and they have changed their hair color.

top-down

Memory performance is enhanced if the type of task at encoding matches the type of task at retrieval. This is called

transfer-appropriate processing.

Anne Treisman's attenuator analyzes the incoming message in terms of all of the following EXCEPT

whether the perceptual load is low or high.

If working memory were an actual workplace, which of the following best describes the members of Baddeley's model?

workers and manager

The ability to manipulate information in memory temporarily while remembering something else is called

working memory.

Select whether the sentences below are an example of explicit memory or implicit memory. 1. Driving your car. 2. Conversation with a friend about last week's party. 3. Seeing an ad for an alcoholic beverage and then going to a bar. 4. Feeling nervous on a road where you had an accident. 5. Knowing all the state capitals.

1. Implicit 2. Explicit 3. Implicit 4. Explicit 5. Explicit

Select whether the scenarios below are encoding specificity, state-dependent learning, or transfer-appropriate processing. 1. Ned drinks coffee while studying for his math test, which makes him feel more energized and so he also brings coffee to drink during his math exam. 2. Anya uses practices her Spanish vocab words by creating songs with those words and her exam requires her to write a story in Spanish using the correct conjugations. 3. Marley is participating in a study where they are asked to memorize a list of words while they are at a concert and then they are asked to recall the words while they are at a library.

1. State-dependent learning 2. Transfer-appropriate processing 3. Encoding specificity

The effective duration of short-term memory, when rehearsal is prevented, is

15-20 seconds or less.

___________ memories are to experiences as ___________ memories are to facts.

Episodic; semantic

Ramon is looking at photos of athletes in a sports magazine. He is focusing on their body parts, particularly their chest and legs. Which part of Ramon's brain is activated by this viewing?

Extrastriate body area (EBA)

The coding of a stimulus into memory refers to which of the following?

Form

Before going to the grocery store, Jamal quickly made a list in his head of the few items he needed to cook dinner. Driving to the store, he repeated the list over and over to himself so that he wouldn't forget anything. How would Broadbent describe Jamal's actions in the car?

Rehearsal in short-term memory

Models designed to explain mental functioning are constantly refined and modified to explain new results. Which of the following exemplifies this concept based on the results presented in your text?

Replacing the short-term memory component of the modal model with working memory

Watson became dissatisfied with the method of analytic introspection in which context?

Results were interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes

___________ cues help us remember information that has been stored in memory.

Retrieval

What is the key difference between synaptic consolidation and systems consolidation?

Scale

The predominant type of coding in long-term memory is

Semantic

Which of the following statements best describes how neurons communicate with one another?

A chemical process takes place in the synapse.

Which of the following is similar to early ideas scientists had about the brain's physical properties?

A web

Which of the following psychologists is known for research on operant conditioning?

B. F. Skinner

Why can we consider Tolman one of the early cognitive psychologists?

Because he used behavior to infer mental processes

Why is classical conditioning considered a form of implicit memory?

Because it involves learning an association without being aware of the reasons behind it.

What does the field of neuropsychology study?

Behavior of people with brain damage

Trent is trying to speak to his wife, but his speech is very slow and labored, often with jumbled sentence structure. Trent may have damage to which area of the brain? (Only include the name of the brain region and make sure to spell it correctly).

Broca's Area

What is the metabolic center of an individual neuron? (Only include the key term and make sure you spell it correctly)

Cell Body

The "Little Albert" experiment involving the rat and the loud noise is an example of which of the following types of experiments?

Classical conditioning

Which of the following terms is correct in context with "conception within the rat's mind of the maze's layout"?

Cognitive mapping

Which of the following has been shown to play a role in the strength of memories that are associated with emotion?

Cortisol

Which statement below is most closely associated with levels of processing theory?

Deep processing involves paying closer attention to a stimulus than shallow processing and results in better processing.

Which of the following is an experimental procedure used to study how attention affects the processing of competing stimuli?

Dichotic listening

What contains the words, stored in memory, each of which has a threshold for being activated?

Dictionary unit

Who introduced the flow diagram to represent what is happening in the mind?

Donald Broadbent

Which of the following is not a stage in the information processing model of memory?

Episodic memory

Lamar has just gotten a new job and is attending a company party where he will meet his colleagues for the first time. His boss escorts him around to small groups to introduce him. At the first group, Lamar meets four people and is told only their first names. The same thing happens with a second group and a third group. At the fourth group, Lamar is told their names and that one of the women in the group is the company accountant. A little while later, Lamar realizes that he only remembers the names of the people in the first group, though he also remembers the profession of the last woman he met (the accountant). Lamar's experience demonstrates

a build-up and release of proactive interference.

Jason quickly scanned the map on his phone to get to his job interview, then took a left and ran down the block so he wouldn't be late. According to Stokes, Jason's ability to recall the directions as he's running is the result of ________.

an activity state followed by a synaptic state

Ming is taking a memory test. She is more likely to recall the name of a popular singer if she had

attended the singer's concert last year with her boyfriend.

From a cognitive psychology perspective, memories from specific experiences in our life are defined as being ________.

autobiographical

Action potentials occur in the

axon

The research by Ericsson and colleagues (1980) examined the ability of a college student to achieve amazing feats of memory by having him remember strings of random digits that were recited to him. They found that this student used his experience with running times to help him retain these strings of numbers. The significance of this finding was that

chunking requires knowledge of familiar patterns or concepts.

Brain imaging has made it possible to

determine which areas of the brain are involved in different cognitive processes.

Which of the following word strings all refer to the same pathway?

dorsal, where, action

When recording from a single neuron, stimulus intensity is represented by the

firing rate of the action potentials.

Much research has been dedicated to improving the reliability of eyewitness testimony. One finding reveals that when constructing a lineup,

increasing similarity between "fillers" and a suspect leads to an increased level of missed identification of some guilty suspects.

The first experiments in cognitive psychology were based on the idea that mental responses can be

inferred from the participant's behavior.

K.C., who was injured in a motorcycle accident, remembers facts like the difference between a strike and a spare in bowling, but he is unaware of experiencing things like hearing about the circumstances of his brother's death, which occurred two years before the accident. His memory behavior suggests

intact semantic memory but defective episodic memory.

The experiment in which participants first read sentences about a baseball game and were then asked to identify sentences they had seen before, illustrated that memory

involves making inferences.

Semantic memory is to ________ as episodic memory is to ________.

knowing; remembering

Paul Broca's and Carl Wernicke's research provided early evidence for

localization of function.

The observation that older adults often become nostalgic for the "good old days" reflects the self-image hypothesis, which states that

memory for life events is enhanced during the time we assume our life identities.

The experiment for which people were asked to make fame judgments for both famous and non-famous names (and for which Sebastian Weissdorf was one of the names to be remembered) illustrated the effect of __________ on memory.

source misattributions

The idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object is called _____________.

specificity coding

If a Gestalt psychologist was baking a cake for an event, what would they be most focused on?

the cake

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?

Hierarchical processing

Which of the following does NOT characterize the information processing (IP) approach to the study of cognition?

IP emphasizes stimulus-response relationships in cognitive processes.

___________ memories are those that we are not aware of.

Implicit

Which of the following illustrates how we can miss things even if they are clearly visible?

Inattentional blindness

Which of the following is true about perception?

It involves rapid processes.

Why is it easier to study brain tissue from newborn animals than brain tissue from adults?

The density of cells in a newborn brain is small compared with the density in an adult brain.

Which of the following statements is the most accurate with regard to specificity coding?

It is unlikely to be correct because there are too many stimuli in the world to have a separate neuron for each.

Which of the following is a criticism of analytic introspection?

It produces variable results from person to person.

Which of the following is NOT true of positron emission tomography (PET)?

It replaced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) because it was less expensive.

What is a scene schema?

Knowledge of what a scene typically contains

Given what we know about the operation of the phonological loop, which of the following word lists would be most difficult for people to retain for 15 seconds?

MAC, CAN, CAP, MAN, MAP

Amhad is doing an experiment in which he has to choose between the object he has been shown previously (the target object) and another object. Choosing the target object will result in a reward. What sort of task is Amhad doing?

Object discrimination problem

Which of the following is an example of unconscious inference?

Perceiving that a partially covered automobile continues beneath the cover

How does perceptual load differ from processing capacity?

Perceptual load is individual and processing capacity is universal.

During a visit to the local museum, you appreciate the incredible beauty of the paintings displayed. Your ability to see the paintings as complete pictures rather than individual, disconnected dots of color, texture, and location occurs through a process called __________.

binding

A chef is baking a loaf of bread, he suddenly smells charcoal, so he opens the oven and assesses the bread he was baking, and realizes the bread is blackened. He realizes from the smell and by looking at the loaf of bread that the bread is burnt. bottom-up

borrom-up

Illusory conjunctions are

combinations of features from different stimuli.

Which of the following stimulus characteristics most challenges the processing capacity of short-term memory?

complexity

According to the ______ approach to memory, what people report as memories is based on what actually happened plus additional factors such as other knowledge, experiences, and expectations.

constructive

Research shows that ___________ does not improve reading comprehension because it does not encourage elaborative processing of the material.

highlighting

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

in different parts of the brain.

The primary effect of chunking is to

increase the efficiency of short-term memory.

Groups of neurons or structures that are connected within the nervous system are called__________.

neural networks

Jackie went to the grocery store to pick up yogurt, bread, and apples. First, she picked up a hand basket for carrying her groceries, and then she searched the store. After finding what she needed, she stood in a check-out line. Then, the cashier put her items in a plastic bag, and soon after, Jackie left the store. As readers of this event, we understand that Jackie paid for the groceries, even though it wasn't mentioned, because we are relying on a grocery store _____.

script

Information remains in sensory memory for

seconds or a fraction of a second.

The demonstration in your text that asks you to visualize scenes such as an office, a department store clothing section, a lion, and a microscope often results in more details in the scene of the office or department store than the scene with the lion or microscope. The latter two tend to have fewer details because most individuals from modern society have less knowledge of _____ in those scenes.

semantic regularities

When conducting an experiment on how stimuli are represented by the firing of neurons, you notice that neurons respond differently to different faces. For example, Arthur's face causes three neurons to fire, with neuron 1 responding the most and neuron 3 responding the least. Roger's face causes three different neurons to fire, with neuron 7 responding the least and neuron 9 responding the most. Your results support __________ coding.

sparse

Which of the following is a basic principle of Gestalt psychology?

The whole is different from the sum of its parts.

Physiological studies indicate that damage to the brain's___________can disrupt behaviors that depend on working memory.

Prefrontal cortex

The fusiform face area (FFA) in the brain is often damaged in patients with ____________. (Do not write full sentences. Only write the term and make sure the spelling is correct)

Prosopagnosia

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?

Sensory memory

In the text's use of the Olympic Rings example, which Gestalt law contributes to the correct perception of five interlocking circles rather than nine separate segments?

Simplicity

Wei has allergy symptoms. He has gone to his regular doctor and an allergy specialist, but he wasn't given a prescription by either doctor. Instead, he was advised to buy an over-the-counter medicine. While he was in the specialist's waiting area, he read a magazine where he saw three ads for an allergy medicine called SneezeLess. A week later, in a drug store, Wei says to his brother, "My doctor says SneezeLess works great. I'll buy that one." Wei and his doctor never discussed SneezeLess. Wei has fallen victim to which of the following errors?

Source monitoring

Ariel and Tanya have been studying for two hours for their physics exam. Both girls are tired of studying. Ariel decides to watch a two-hour movie on DVD, while Tanya decides to go to bed. Who is most likely going to perform better on the exam based on the consolidation process?

Tanya

Dr. Leung is leading a research team to explore the retrieval practice effect. Which of the following will likely be a key component of her team's research protocol?

Testing

The episodic buffer directly connects to which two components in Baddeley's model of memory?

The central executive and long-term memory

How does the phenomenon of apparent movement work?

The perceptual system creates the perception of movement from stationary images.

Who founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany?

Wilhelm Wundt

Ellen is 52 years old. Which of the following experiences has most likely faded from her memory?

Winning the first grade spelling bee

The misinformation effect occurs when a person's memory for an event is modified by misleading information presented

after the event.

Experimental evidence suggesting that the standard model of consolidation needs to be revised are data that show that the hippocampus was activated during retrieval of ___________ memories.

recent and remote episodic

According to Tulving, an episodic memory is distinguished by the process of ________ it.

reliving

The standard model of consolidation proposes that the hippocampus is

strongly active when memories are first formed and being consolidated but becomes less active when retrieving older memories that are already consolidated.