Cognitive Psych Quiz One: Chapter 1

37. Donald Broadbent was the first person to develop which of the following?

A. A diagram depicting the mind as processing information in a sequence of stages

19. Which of the following methods, often associated with structuralism, was used in the psychology laboratory established by Wilhelm Wundt?

A. Analytic introspection

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

A. Donald Broadbent

24. Which of the following was considered positive by the behaviorists?

A. Observable behavior

30. A mental conception of the layout of a physical space is known as a(n)

A. cognitive map.

2. The branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind is called

A. cognitive psychology.

31. 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. inborn programming.

36. The scene of a human sitting at a computer terminal, responding to stimuli flashed on the computer screen, would most likely be described as depicting a(n) _________ experiment.

A. information processing

40. Broadbent's notion that the mind could be represented as operating in a sequence of stages, often represented by boxes, allows cognitive psychologists to develop _____that can be tested by further experiments.

A. models

23. John Watson believed that psychology should focus on the study of

A. observable behavior.

26. Behaviorists believe that the presentation of_______ increases the frequency of behavior.

A. positive reinforcers

12. Donders' measurement of reaction time is particularly important because it demonstrated the "time course" on which the mind operates. Donders found that it took ______ to decide which of two buttons to push in response to a stimulus.

B. 1/10 second

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

B. IP supports the principle of behaviorism that behavior is a stimulus-response relationship.

33. Which of the following events is most closely associated with the decline of behaviorism as an approach to psychology?

B. Skinner's publication of the book, Verbal Behavior

20. The 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.

3. Attention, perception, memory, and decision making are all different types of mental processes in which the mind engages. These are known as different types of

B. cognition.

The example at the beginning of the book, in which Raphael talks to his friend on a cell phone on his way to class, was used to illustrate how

B. complex but seemingly effortless human cognition is.

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

B. inferred from the participant's behavior.

6. The main point of the Donders' reaction time experiments was to

B. measure the amount of time it takes to make a decision

49. The process during which information is strengthened and transformed into a strong memory that is resistant to interference is known as

B. memory consolidation.

17. Ebbinghaus' "memory" experiments were important because they

B. plotted functions that described the operation of the mind.

7. In Donders' 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.

43. Newell and Simon were among the first to use computers in cognitive psychology. Their computer program

B. solved logic problems

11. A common feature of both a reaction time experiment and an operant conditioning experiment is

B. the measurement of behavior.

44. At the MIT Symposium on Information Theory, George Miller presented a paper suggesting that

B. there are limits to the human ability to process information

45. What year is usually cited as the "birthday" of cognitive science (pick the closest year)?

C. 1956

25. 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

22. Which of the following is a criticism of analytic introspection?

C. It produces variable results from person to person.

50. Gais et al.'s research on the impact of sleep on memory consolidation illustrates which type of approach to the study of the operations of the mind?

C. Physiological

18. The founder of the first laboratory of scientific psychology was

C. Wilhelm Wundt.

41. The field that studies how to make machines behave in ways that are intelligent if a human were so behaving is known as

C. artificial intelligence.

8. In Donders' 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 were engaged in a

C. choice reaction time task.

47. Using behavior to infer mental processes is the basic principle of

C. cognitive psychology.

4. Donders' main reason for doing his choice reaction time experiment was to study

C. decision making.

48. According to your text, the behavioral approach to the study of the mind involves

C. measuring the relation between stimuli and behavior.

21. An important contribution to the field of psychology resulting from Wilhelm Wundt founding his laboratory at the University of Leipzig in 1879 was

C. producing Ph.D.s who later established psychology departments at many U.S. universities.

16. According to Ebbinghaus' savings curve, savings is a function of

C. retention interval.

46. The "cognitive revolution"

C. was a gradual process that occurred over a few decades.

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

D. B.F. Skinner

32. Who proposed that children's language development was caused by imitation and reinforcement?

D. B.F. Skinner

42. The use of the term "artificial intelligence" was coined by

D. John McCarthy.

15. Which of the following stimuli were used in Ebbinghaus' "memory" experiment discussed in your text?

D. Three-letter nonsense words

29. Who developed the concept of the cognitive map?

D. Tolman

10. Donders' reaction time experiment was performed using stimuli in which of the following sensory modalities?

D. Vision

39. Colin Cherry's experiment in which participants listen to two messages simultaneously, one in each ear, found that

D. all of these A. people can focus on one message and ignore the other one. B. people can focus on the message they were repeating. C. people take in very little information about the ignored message.

14. The relationship between the _____ is NOT measured directly by cognitive psychologists.

D. cognitive task and the mental response

35. Your text describes the occurrence of a cognitive revolution" during which dramatic changes took place in the way psychology was studied. This so-called "revolution" occurred parallel to (and, in part, because of) the introduction of

D. computers.

5. 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.

28. 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.

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

D. presentation