Unit 1-5 Cognitive Psychology

(Q004) Which of the following statements is true regarding the perception of briefly presented words?

Participants are better at recognizing words that were recently seen.

(Q008) Which of the following is a problem with the recognition by components model?

Memory for upside-down houses is a bit worse than memory for upright houses.

(Q016) What causes the primacy effect?

Words that get more attention are better encoded into long-term memory.

(Q019) Which of the following drivers is most likely to get into an accident?

a novice driver engaged in an important phone interview

(Q025) Which of the illustrations represents the Gestalt phenomenon of good continuation?

C

(Q010) All of the following are components of the limbic system EXCEPT the

Cerebellum.

(Q006) Which of the following is true with respect to neurons in the visual regions of the brain?

Certain cells are specialized for detecting dots, edges, and specific line orientations.

(Q010) Which of the following regions in visual cortex is most likely to show abnormalities in a patient with akinetopsia?

MT

(Q023) Which of the following is true of gender differences in memory?

Many gender differences can be explained by differences in attention priorities.

(Q008) In one experiment, participants were repeatedly shown two lines and asked to judge which line was longer. Meanwhile, black dots appeared randomly on the other parts of the screen during each trial. For some trials, the dots moved to create "fins," as shown in Figure 5.5 in the textbook. Which of the following results were found?

Most of the participants reported the top line as longer, even though the lines are equal in length.

(Q001) Patient L.M. was diagnosed with akinetopsia. This means that she is unable to perceive

Motion

(Q015) Which of the following is NOT part of the way in which the binding problem is solved?

Much of the information is combined in a separate area of the brain.

(Q018) The primary visual cortex is located in the __________ lobe.

Occipital

(Q015) __________ measures how much glucose is being used at specific locations in the brain, whereas __________ measures how much oxygen is being consumed at specific locations in the brain.

PET; fMRI

(Q012) Which condition would produce the most accurate response?

Participants are asked whether they were shown a "d" or "b" when presented with the word "LARD."

(Q002) Which group would perform the best on a memory test?

Participants engaged in deep processing without the previous warning of a memory test.

(Q010) In one experiment, participants were shown a stimulus preceded by a neutral cue, a correct prime, or a misleading prime. For some participants, the primes were usually correct (high validity), and for others they were usually misleading (low validity). Which of the following was NOT a result of this experiment?

Participants in the high-validity condition showed no difference between neutral and mislead trials, demonstrating that there is no cost of priming.

(Q004) Participants are asked to report the shape of a visual stimulus that appears on the left side of a screen. Simultaneous with the presentation of this target stimulus, a second visual stimulus is flashed on the screen. Based on our understanding of inattentional blindness, which of the following is NOT sufficient to make the participants notice the second stimulus?

Participants' eyes are oriented toward the place where the second stimulus will appear.

(Q018) Which of the following statements about coding is FALSE?

Patterns of activity of neurons do not overlap.

(Q013) The existence of bigram detectors (detectors of letter pairs) helps to explain which of the following?

People are more likely to recognize the letters "TICE" when they are briefly presented than the letters "EITC."

(Q015) What do patients suffering from unilateral neglect syndrome demonstrate about visual attention?

People have both space-based and object-based attention.

(Q019) Which of the following statements is FALSE?

People with prosopagnosia cannot perceive faces.

(Q024) Which of the following would be LEAST likely to serve as an effective prime for the word "bread"?

Pie.

(Q001) Which of the following is a failure of selective attention?

While you are working on your problem set in the living room, you are thrown off track when your sister changes the TV channel.

(Q020) Which of the following is NOT a reason why performance might improve with practice?

With practice, individual elements of a task draw more on our resources.

(Q008) Long-term memory is to working memory as __________ is to __________.

a file stored on a hard drive; an open document you are working on

(Q019) If stimulating an area of the brain does not cause a behavior but disabling the same area with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) prevents the behavior, then that area is __________ for that behavior.

necessary but not sufficient

(Q013) With current neuroimaging techniques, all the following things can be measured without in any way disturbing the participant EXCEPT

neuronal firing rates.

(Q012) Damage to a specific area of the brain is called a(n)

Lesion

(Q024) In the figure, the first two images represent which of the following Gestalt phenomena?

similarity; proximity

(Q019) Which event will improve long-term memory performance during a free-recall task?

slowing down the presentation of the list

(Q009) In the absence of attention,

stimuli may not be consciously perceived but can still have an influence on the perceiver.

(Q008) In an experiment designed to test the receptive field of a center-surround cell, a stimulus was placed in several locations. In one instance the firing rate of the cell decreased below its normal (base-rate) rate. This most likely occurred because the

stimulus was in the part of the cell's receptive field that causes inhibition of firing rather than excitation.

(Q018) Divided attention requires enough mental resources to attend to both tasks. These limited mental resources include all of the following EXCEPT

task-general storage space like long-term memory.

(Q016) Evidence suggests that

unattended stimuli are more fully processed if the attended input is particularly simple.

These illustrations are best described as

bistable figures.

(Q023) Some resources are task-specific and others are task-general. Which of the following is a task-specific resource?

verbal resources for tasks involving words

(Q016) Electroencephalography (EEG) measures which of the following?

voltage changes occurring at the scalp

(Q014) The pathway leading from occipital cortex to parietal cortex is called the

"where" system.

(Q009) Many subcortical structures, such as the hippocampus and amygdala, come in groups of

2

(Q001) The holding capacity of working memory is often said to be

7 plus-or-minus 2 chunks.

(Q003) Which statement about visual attention is most accurate?

By priming our detectors, we make expected stimuli more likely to be noticed and remembered.

(Q021) Which of the following is the clinical term we use to describe a disturbance in the initiation or organization of voluntary action?

Apraxia

(Q015) If the word "trum" is presented, people are most likely to recognize it as

Drum

(Q006) Intellectual functions like making judgments, retrieving memories, and paying attention depend primarily on tissues specialized for these purposes, which are located in the

Forebrain.

(Q014) __________ is a brain-imaging technique that shows us precisely which areas of the brain are active at a particular moment in time; __________ is a technique that shows us the exact structure of each of the brain's parts.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

(Q007) Basic life functions, such as the breathing and basic cardiac functions, depend primarily on activity in the

Hindbrain.

(Q020) Which of the following statements is FALSE?

In the primary somatosensory projection area, the larger the physical size of a body area is, the more cortical area is devoted to it.

(Q011) Which of the following are most crucial for the perception of movement?

M cells in the optic nerve and magnocellular cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN)

(Q015) What is an advantage of trying to learn something using deep (meaning-related) processing rather than strategies like mnemonics?

It creates more retrieval paths for the memory.

(Q006) Which statement about working memory is FALSE?

It functions mainly as a storage container.

(Q007) Which of the following statements applies to expectation-based priming but not to stimulus-based priming?

It has a cost attached.

(Q018) Which of the following is FALSE with respect to sensory memory?

It has a very small capacity, storing only the equivalent of a letter or two at a time.

(Q022) Which of the following is true of ADHD?

It involves multiple attentional systems, including "alerting," "orienting," and "executive" systems.

(Q024) Why does elaborative encoding facilitate recall?

It provides many potential retrieval paths.

(Q010) What is the purpose of using a mask in word recognition tasks?

It serves to stop participants from continuing to process the stimulus.

(Q009) What prediction could you make on the basis of the recognition via multiple views approach to object recognition?

It will be harder to recognize an object from some vantage points than from others.

(Q020) Which of the following is a FALSE statement about the memory strategy of "chunking"?

Practice with chunking can greatly increase the actual size of an individual's working memory.

(Q020) Donovan looks in a mirror and perceives his own face, but he thinks he is seeing a stranger. Donovan most likely has

Prosopagnosia

(Q022) Which of the following pieces of evidence would NOT be consistent with claims about the articulatory rehearsal loop?

Repeating a nonsense syllable over and over interferes with the ability to hold a sequence of abstract shapes in working memory.

(Q019) Which of the following is NOT supportive of the claim that perception is in the "eye of the beholder" and not in the stimulus itself?

Some cells are specialized to detect only horizontal bars in the environment.

(Q011) If the corpus callosum is cut, what will happen to the two hemispheres of the brain?

Some information will be exchanged by other commissures.

(Q025) What is the main reason why both late and early selection models can be true?

Some tasks require lots of resources, while other tasks require fewer.

(Q025) Which of the following statements about speed reading is FALSE?

Speed reading is a good choice if you want to appreciate an author's style.

(Q002) A stimulus that is displayed for a very brief duration (perhaps 20 or 30 milliseconds) is said to be shown

Tachistoscopically

(Q005) Individuals with a lesion to the parietal lobe perform normally when asked to search for an item with a single feature (e.g., "find the round shape") but have trouble when asked to search for an item with multiple features (e.g., "find the blue, round shape" among other shapes that are blue but not round or round but not blue). What conclusion do these findings support?

The detection of features is separate from the association of those features.

(Q018) Which statement about feature nets is FALSE?

The input layer is particularly sensitive to the overall configuration of a pattern.

(Q016) Which of the following statements is inaccurate?

The primary projection areas for vision are in the parietal cortex.

(Q022) Which of the following conclusions can be drawn from the existing data on face recognition?

The recognition of faces is heavily dependent on orientation.

(Q011) In a word recognition study, participants were briefly shown words that differed in frequency and familiarity. After each word was shown, participants were asked to report aloud what word they had seen. Their accuracy recognizing these words is represented in the graph. Which of the following is the best interpretation of the data?

The results demonstrate both a priming effect and an effect of frequency.

(Q022) Which of the following best summarizes the perspective of Gestalt psychologists?

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

(Q013) Which of the following statements on how people direct the "beam" of attention is FALSE?

There are cultural differences in how people direct attention, such that East Asians spend more time looking at individual people than Americans do.

(Q016) Which of the following offers the most support for the idea that object recognition is viewpoint-dependent?

There are neurons in the "what" pathway that respond most to a certain type of object in a certain position relative to the eyes.

(Q021) Which of the following is most accurate with respect to our knowledge about the fusiform face area (FFA)?

There is an ongoing debate about the specificity of the FFA to processing faces.

(Q012) In a study of spatial attention, participants were given a neutral, correct, or misleading cue about where on the screen a stimulus would appear. What is the best explanation for what happened on trials with misleading cues?

There were costs because the spotlight of attention had moved to the misled location and had to move back.

(Q012) Which is true of P cells but not of M cells?

These cells are specialized for spatial analysis and form.

(Q021) Which of the following findings does NOT support the existence of task-specific mental resources?

Two simple tasks are easy to do simultaneously, while two hard tasks are not.

(Q023) What is the best example of top-down processing?

We recognize the word "aardvark" more quickly if we were expecting to see an animal word.

(Q007) What was the crucial innovation that defined the recognition by components (RBC) model?

a hierarchy of detectors

(Q009) Which of the following is NOT an advantage of parallel processing in the visual system?

a simple solution to the binding problem

(Q017) The Rumelhart and McClelland model is different from the simple feature model in all the following ways EXCEPT that it includes

activation from the feature level to the letter level.

(Q003) Madison has difficulty perceiving fine details. This means she has trouble with __________, which is a function of the __________.

acuity; cones

(Q024) Reading simple words is an example of a(n) __________ task, and saying the color of the ink in which that word is printed is an example of a(n) __________ task.

automatic; controlled

(Q021) Suppose you are walking progressively closer to a tree. The image the tree casts on your retina will __________, while your perception of the size of the tree will __________.

become larger; remain unchanged

(Q020) Suppose you are viewing a car that is moving progressively closer toward you. The image of the car that is cast on your retina will

become progressively larger.

(Q017) In EEG recordings, alert wakefulness is indicated by __________ waves, while deep sleep is indicated by __________ waves.

beta; delta

(Q002) The photoreceptors that allow you to perceive colors are called __________, and the receptors that distinguish between intensities of light are called

cones; rods

(Q003) A "well-formed" letter string is one that

conforms to the usual spelling patterns of English.

(Q003) An individual suffering from Capgras syndrome would most likely show an inability to

detect the familiarity of an often-viewed face.

(Q001) Which of the following tasks has NOT been connected with the amygdala?

discriminating between internal and external events

(Q003) Someone with a larger working-memory capacity is likely to perform better than someone with a smaller working-memory capacity on all of the following tasks EXCEPT

discriminating shapes.

(Q004) You decide to order pizza and look up the number for a local pizza place. You repeat the number to yourself, but just before you dial the number, you are interrupted by a text from your friend. You quickly read the text, but then realize you have forgotten the number. The text led you to forget the number because the number was

displaced from working memory.

(Q014) Which is of the following is most effective for long-term retention?

elaborative rehearsal

(Q014) Fire alarms are designed to control attention __________, but outside such demanding stimuli, one can often control his or her own attention __________.

exogenously; endogenously

(Q007) All of the following statements accurately describe the effects of mnemonics EXCEPT that they

facilitate multiple connections between new material and prior knowledge.

(Q017) Which of the following types of processing for a target word will probably lead to the best memory performance?

generating a sentence that uses the target word

(Q012) On her way home, Veronica decided to go to the grocery store but couldn't write a shopping list because she was driving. She came up with several possible ways to remember what she needed to buy (listed in the answer choices). Which of her ideas is NOT a simple mnemonic strategy?

imagining what she can cook with all of the items on the list and imagining what all the food would taste like

(Q001) John has apperceptive agnosia. This means that he cannot

integrate perceptual information to perceive intact objects.

(Q006) When listening intently to one message, you are likely to detect your name if it is spoken in a different message. This is likely to be because your name

is a stimulus for which you are well primed.

(Q005) What is the process that leads to a stronger response from cells that detect the edge of a surface than from cells that detect the middle of a surface?

lateral inhibition

(Q013) A patient with visual agnosia is most likely to show abnormalities in the pathway leading from the __________ to the __________.

occipital lobe; temporal lobe

(Q006) When Betty, an English speaker, is shown a nonsense string of letters tachistoscopically, she misreads it in a way that follows the rules of common English spelling. This is because

of a lifetime of strengthening of the bigram detectors for common English letter pairs.

(Q002) Most participants in a dichotic listening task are

often able to notice personally relevant words like their names in the unattended channel.

(Q004) The photoreceptors called rods are good for navigating in what kind of environment?

one that is dimly lit

(Q017) Research about the what and where pathways suggests that the __________ lobe is important for determining the __________ of an object, whereas the __________ lobe is important for determining the __________ of the object.

parietal, location; temporal, identity

(Q011) Expectation-based priming suggests that

perception works within a limited-capacity system.

(Q005) In using the rehearsal loop, the central executive is directly involved in the step of

planning the end-goal of the rehearsal.

(Q013) Maintenance rehearsal is

poorly suited for delayed recall, even if you knew you would be tested.

(Q025) What factor about a person will best predict the long-term recall of newly learned complex information about biology?

previous related biology knowledge

(Q017) Patients with unilateral neglect resulting from damage to the right hemisphere will

read only the right half of words shown to them.

(Q009) Which of the following would be the least helpful in improving recall of a difficult-to-understand paragraph?

repeating the paragraph aloud many times

(Q022) The left cerebral hemisphere receives its main input for vision from the

right half of the visual field in both eyes.

(Q007) The response of a center-surround cell

tends to be in one direction (e.g., increased firing) if the stimulation is in the center of the cell's receptive field and in the opposite direction (e.g., decreased firing) if the stimulation is in the periphery of the receptive field.

(Q014) Which effect can NOT be explained by feature nets?

the effects of sentence context

(Q002) A central problem in Capgras syndrome seems to be difficulty with

the emotional analysis of faces.

(Q023) A synapse is usually composed of

the end of an axon, a space, and the receiving membrane on another neuron's dendrites.

(Q005) Suppose you are at a cocktail party conversing with a friend. In this situation, you are LEAST likely to hear whether

the person behind you is speaking intelligently or foolishly.

(Q010) Marla is given the following list of words: "giraffe, bird, alligator, lion, eagle, gorilla." She is likely to remember the word "giraffe" because of

the primacy effect.

(Q025) The all-or-none law states that

the signal traveling down a neuron's axon does not vary in size or strength.

(Q021) According to the modal model, all of the following are true EXCEPT that

the size of short-term memory can be expanded with sufficient practice.

(Q005) The existence of functional localization is supported in part by the fact that

the symptoms produced by brain damage depend on exactly where in the brain the damage is located.

(Q011) The short-term storage of verbal materials is often supported by the rehearsal loop. The short-term storage of mental images is accomplished by

the visuospatial buffer.

(Q024) Which is NOT a factor in explaining why the postsynaptic neuron's initial response may vary in size?

the width of the gap between the presynaptic and postsynaptic cells