Chapter 7 Practice Questions - Mental Imagery & Cognitive Maps

How does mental imagery compare with perception? (a) Perception relies exclusively on bottom-up processing. (b) Perception relies exclusively on top-down processing. (c) Mental imagery relies exclusively on bottom-up processing. (d) Mental imagery relies exclusively on top-down processing.

d

T or F: An analog code means that we construct a representation from a verbal description.

False

T or F: Shepherd and Metzler's (1971) results - which showed that it takes people more time to perform large mental rotations than small ones - provide strong evidence that our mental images are stored in terms of an analog code.

True

T or F: Suppose that you are drawing a map, from memory, of the streets and buildings in a city you know well. If you were to show a bias in your recall of the buildings, you would be likely to place buildings with similar functions near each other.

True

Cognitive neuroscience research on mental rotation suggests that the motor cortex is active when people mentally rotate objects: (a) after having physically rotated objects with their hands. (b) after standard instructions to rotate the figure in their mind. (c) after watching a motor rotate objects. (d) in three dimensions, but not in two dimensions.

a

Suppose that you are driving to an unfamiliar city. To reach your destination with the smallest number of navigational errors, how should your map be oriented? (a) The map should be oriented so that the top is in the same direction that you are traveling. (b) Surprisingly, the research shows that the orientation of the map has little influence on navigation accuracy. (c) "South" should be at the top. (d) "North" should be at the top.

a

Which of the following students provides the most accurate general summary of the research on cognitive maps? (a) Francine: "When people store spatial information, they tend to represent their cognitive maps as being more regular and orderly than they really are." (b) Justin: "Unfortunately, people seem to have difficulty retaining visual information, and so our cognitive maps are highly inaccurate." (c) Ana Maria: "People are actually much more accurate in creating cognitive maps than they are recalling a story." (d) Oskar: "People's mental maps for large geographic regions are fairly accurate, but their mental maps for small geographic regions are likely to reveal many errors."

a

In the Shepherd and Metzler study, people judged whether two figures that were in different orientations were the same or different. What did this study demonstrate? (a) It takes much longer to rotate pairs in depths (e.g. by turning a figure away from you) than to rotate pairs in the picture plane (e.g. by turning a figure clockwise) (b) The amount of rotation necessary before making "same-different" judgements influences decision speed. (c) There were no consistent relationships between the variables examined in this study. (d) The propositional-storage interpretation of imagery is correct.

b

One of the most difficult problems in conducting research on imagery is that: (a) the individual differences are so large that it's virtually impossible to find any consistent results. (b) it is difficult to examine such an inaccessible mental process. (c) people's introspections about imagery are so vivid that they prevent researchers from manipulating most variables. (d) only a relatively small proportion of people seem to use imagery on a regular basis.

b

Psychologists have studied how deaf individuals perform on mental rotation tasks when they are fluent in American Sigh Language. The research shows that these individuals: (a) make more errors than people who use spoken communication. (b) make fewer errors than other people, because they are accustomed to viewing a scene from a different perspective. (c) make fewer errors than other people, because they are not distracted by various sounds in the surrounding area. (d) make the same number of errors as other people

b

Suppose you draw a map of a familiar street in your neighborhood. You draw all the houses an equal distance from the street, even though some houses are clearly closer to the street than others. Your error is an example of: (a) the 90 degree angle heuristic (b) the alignment heuristics (c) the symmetry heuristic (d) the spatial framework model

b

Which of the following students' statements best describes the spatial framework model proposed by Franklin and Tversky? (a) Susan: "The mental maps we create do not have a built-in bias; we attach the same significance to left-right distinctions as to up-down distinctions." (b) Nadia: "The vertical dimension seems to have special significance when we try to create representations of our environment." (c) Stanley: "When we hear a story, we automatically assume the perspective of someone looking down on the scene from above, because of the up-down heuristic." (d) Igor: "People vary greatly in the way they construct mental maps when they hear a narrative; some rotate the scene to match the perspective of the main character, but most look at the scene as if they were outside the scene, looking in."

b

According to the rotation heuristic, (a) people line up two or more geographic areas so that they form a straight row with one another. (b) people tend to align angles so that the lines are perpendicular to each other. (c) people tend to remember figures as being more vertical or horizontal than they really are. (d) people tend to rotate their cognitive maps in a random pattern.

c

If you were to draw a map of the town or city in which your college is located, (a) you would make the streets intersect at sharp angles, rather than right angles. (b) you would make the streets more curved than they really are. (c) you would tend to make the streets intersect at 90 degree angles. (d) you would show a blending of your college building and the surrounding region, even if the boundary is really quite clear-cut.

c

Those who argue that we store mental imagery information in terms of propositions would claim that: (a) storage is most like vision. (b) storage is most like an abstract spatial representation (c) storage is most like language (d) representation closely resembles the physical object.

c

Those who argue that we store mental imagery information in terms of propositions would claim that: (a) storage is most like vision. (b) storage is most like an abstract spatial representation. (c) storage is most like language. (d) representation closely resembles the physical object.

c

When people look at a 3D figure and mentally rotate this figure, (a) they mentally rotate this figure much more quickly in a counter-clockwise direction, compared to a clockwise direction. (b) individual differences are not very strong on this task. (c) they make judgements more quickly when rotating the mental image only a small distance, rather than a large distance. (d) people can actually identify a figure much more quickly if it is upside down, rather than in the normal upright orientation.

c

Suppose that you draw a sketch of your college campus. In reality, one particular road on campus is vaguely U-shaped, but the right-hand portion of the curve is steeper than the left-hand portion. According to your drawer, however, the two portions, have the same degree of curvature. This example illustrates: (a) the 90 degree heuristic. (b) the alignment heuristic. (c) the rotation heuristic. (d) the symmetry heuristic.

d

Suppose that you have just studied a map of a region, and you have formed a cognitive map for it. Based on what you know from Ch. 7, we could predict that; (a) the number of cities on the route between two cities has little effect on distance estimates. (b) the number of intervening cities only influences distance estimates when people are very familiar with the route. (c) you would estimate that two cities are close if there are many cities in between. (d) you would estimate that two cities are far apart if there are many other cities in between.

d