Cognitive Psychology Exam I

Structuralism and cognitive psychology are similar in that they both study (a)__________, but an important difference between the two is that only cognitive psychology (b)__________.

(a) mental processes; (b) examines unconscious processes

According to the metacognition research covered during the 01/24 (TH) lecture, people commonly (a)__________ the strength of their memory/learning. This tendency is particularly strong when they make their metacognitive judgments (b)__________ their learning.

(a) overestimate; (b) immediately after

Psychologists who adopted an approach known as (a) __________ tried to study conscious mental events using (b) __________ as their research method.

(a) structuralism; (b) introspection

Which of the following stages of memory processes are MOST directly relevant to the memory principles of (a) deep processing and (b) focused learning, respectively?

(a) the encoding stage; (b) the encoding stage

Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A. Frequent media multitasking during lectures is associated with lower academic performance B. Even though frequent multitaskers may be confident about their multitasking ability, their ability to filter out irrelevant information may actually be poor C. Music with lyrics does not have any negative effect on learning, even for verbally oriented tasks D. Both the second and the third statements above (i.e., only the first statement is true)

According to the results of the Karpicke & Blunt (2011) study, which of the following groups performed BEST on the comprehension questions administered a week later?

The retrieval practice (test) group

Cognitive psychology uses which of the following?

a diverse set of methodologies for collecting data

Forgetting:

can occur at any of the three stages noted above

Note-taking research has shown that, when students take notes with a computer, they are more likely to __________ than when they take notes with paper and pencil.

copy the lecture content verbatim

The strategy of answering some comprehension questions about some topic before you start learning that topic is

effective as a learning strategy by making it easier for students to connect new information to what they already know while reading the text.

Suppose you want to remember the name of a restaurant called "Prego." You therefore think about how "prego" means "please" in Italian, and you also think about the brand name of a popular spaghetti sauce. This kind of mental activity is called:

elaborative rehearsal

Massed learning likely promotes (a)__________, whereas spaced learning likely promotes (b)__________.

encoding specificity; (b) encoding variability

If, at the time of encoding, you are NOT sure exactly what the retrieval context would be like, which of the following concepts is most likely helpful to maximize your later recall performance?

encoding variability

In this class, you answer some in-class quiz questions, take a post-lecture online quiz (like this), a mid-term exam after 5 lectures, and then a cumulative final exam at the end. This schedule requires you to review what you learned multiple times by steadily increasing the time intervals between your successive review sessions. In other words, this schedule takes advantage of __________.

expanding retrieval practice

Suppose you discover that, if you make up a list of important concepts in social psychology yourself, then you recall those concepts better than if someone else constructs the same list for you. This finding is an example of:

generation effect

The tendency of students to be ineffective in knowing when to drop learned flash cards can be considered an issue of __________ .

inaccurate metacognition

When Jane was attending a lecture on "encoding specificity" (something you will learn later in Module 1), she spent a lot of time doing some media multitasking (e.g., sending texts to friends, checking emails). When she had to take an in-class quiz administered at the end of that lecture, she was not able to recall lecture information well, although she thought she was processing some lecture-related information. This example BEST illustrates forgetting that occurs due to

insufficient initial encoding

The famous psychologist Edward Titchener claimed to have identified and catalogued nearly 10,000 sensations that he observed within himself. What method best describes his approach?

introspection

According to the Five Popular Study Strategies article, marking (i.e., underlining and highlighting) is a highly popular study strategy that:

is not particularly effective without some training

Existing research on the effect of marking (i.e., underlining and highlighting) on learning and later retention has compellingly demonstrated that:

learners can indeed recall marked information better than unmarked information.

Which of the following is NOT among the seven principles of effective learning covered in class?

massed learning

Which of the following popular study strategies covered in the Five Popular Study Strategies article require the most extensive amount of training before students can effectively implement that strategy and fully benefit from it?

outlining

If a patient were to suffer amnesia similar to the amnesia suffered by H.M., which of the following would pose a particular problem?

remembering his or her divorce, which occurred after brain surgery

You have to take two exams on the same day, one in sociology and one in anthropology. You first study for your sociology exam. After a few hours of review, you study for your anthropology exam. On the next morning, you first take the sociology exam, but you are dismayed to discover that the appropriate sociology terms/concepts keep eluding you while various anthropology terms pop into your head. In this case, you are experiencing _________.

retroactive interference

You studied a list of Spanish words. After resting for about an hour, you studied a list of French words. When you tried to recall the Spanish words you memorized earlier, you had difficulty because the French words kept popping up in your mind. This example provides a nice illustration of __________.

retroactive interference

During the first half of the 20th century, behaviorism was the most dominant approach to psychology (at least in the United States). Strict behaviorists:

said that psychology should focus only on objective reactions to environmental stimuli

You met an attractive person at a party last Friday, when you were a bit tipsy from too many beers. The next morning, you could no longer remember that person's name. Saturday night, you went to another party and drank a few more beers, and suddenly you were able to remember the name again. This example BEST illustrates which of the following effects or concepts?

state-dependent learning

If you compare students' metacognitive judgments about their exam performance and their actual exam scores, you will most likely find that:

students with high exam scores can make more accurate metacognitive judgments than those with low exam scores

Although (a)__________ is a well known and robust phenomenon, its applicability to various testing situations is quite limited to cases in which students know exactly how their knowledge will be tested later. In most other cases (including studying for exams for this course), students are better off relying on the notion of (b)__________ instead, because they cannot be sure how they will be asked to retrieve the information learned later.

(a) encoding specificity; (b) encoding variability

The transition from behaviorism to cognitive psychology is often called the cognitive revolution. What specific change was considered so "revolutionary"?

A new focus on directly unobservable mental processes

When you use flashcards to study for an exam (with the goal of achieving long-term retention), which of the following should you AVOID doing?

A. Dropping, from further study, items you were able to recall correctly once or twice B. Flipping each card over and over again and read both sides as many times as possible C. Relying exclusively on the flashcard method D.All of the above (i.e., all three things listed above should be avoided)

Researchers in cognitive psychology rely on all of the following forms of data EXCEPT

A. measurements of how long someone needs to make a response. B. the exact types of errors people make. C. which conditions lead to greater accuracy and which lead to poor accuracy. D. anecdotes and testimonials.

The SQ3R method of studying a text takes advantage of all of the following memory effects or principles, EXCEPT:

Encoding specificity

Which of the following study strategies/habits is actually helpful in terms of maximizing the effectiveness of your learning?

Engaging in elaborative rehearsal while learning new concepts

A good sign that your learning is effective and long-lasting is that you find your learning experience quite easy and going very smoothly.

False

Although the evidence suggests that engaging in media multitasking negatively effects learning and academic performance, this negative impact is limited to those individuals who actually multitask during learning. Therefore, students who can see their peers multitask in a classroom but are not multitasking themselves do NOT experience the same negative impact of multitasking on their learning.

False

Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve suggests that forgetting is very slow at first (e.g., within the first 2 or 3 days) but then rapidly accelerates as time goes by.

False

The Karpicke & Blunt (2011) study clearly demonstrated that subjects' intuition about how much they learned (= judgments of learning) is quite accurate.

False

Which of the following is NOT associated with good academic performance?

Frequent media multitasking during learning

How do cognitive psychologists use speed to assess behavior?

How do cognitive psychologists use speed to assess behavior?

Which of the following types of practice or learning is NOT effective, according to the authors of the Optimizing Learning in College article?

Massed practice

According to the Five Popular Study Strategies article, which of the following practices may NOT be harmful when using flash cards for studying?

Mixing flash cards from two different topics

According to the Five Popular Study Strategies article, which two strategies covered in this article are BETTER suited than the other three when a later test focuses on application/inference (as opposed to factual) questions (especially if you are properly trained before studying)?

Note-Taking and outlining

Which of the following statements about metacognition is NOT true?

One effective way to minimize the inaccuracy of our metacognition is to read the study material over and over so that we become familiar with the material

Which of the following study strategies is likely to be the MOST helpful in preparing for an exam that prompts students to synthesize essay-form arguments around material learned in the course?

Outlining

Which is NOT a studying pitfall discussed in this article?

Over-testing learned flash cards at the expense of unlearned material

What is the most precise explanation for why many aspects of psychology (and most of cognitive psychology) rely on inferential methods?

Psychology often demands hypotheses about processes that cannot be observed directly in order to explain the capacities and the behaviors that we can observe.

Which of the following levels of difficulty is considered DESIRABLE in terms of promoting focused learning and active, deeper processing?

Quite challenging (but still manageable with some effort)

Which of the following stages of the SQ3R method BEST reflects the idea behind the testing effect (or test-enhanced learning)?

Recite

When you use flashcards for studying for exams, which of the following should you try to AVOID?

Removing a card after recalling it correctly once

According to the levels of processing theory, which of the following types of processing is considered the DEEPEST?

Semantic (meaning-based) processing

Which of the following activities can be considered EFFECTIVE in terms of learning and long-term retention?

Studying a book chapter with the SQ3R method

Which of the following is the MOST fundamental to the concept of transfer-appropriate processing?

The match between encoding and retrieval contexts

According to the Karpicke & Blunt (2011) study discussed in class, which of the following groups was MOST confident about their learning right after the learning session was over?

The restudy group

According to the Five Popular Study Strategies article, which of the following statements is TRUE about the successful and effective training procedures developed and tested so far for the outlining strategy?

The training emphasizes the importance of correctly identifying the main points

Recent research has shown that taking notes on computers tends to be less effective than taking notes using pen and paper primarily because computer note-takers tend to copy words/sentences verbatim and hence might not engage in deep processing.

True

According to the Five Popular Study Strategies article, massed rereading (as opposed to spaced rereading) is particularly INEFFECTIVE under which of the following situations?

When long-term retention of the text content is required or desirable

Research has shown that LATER REVIEWING of the material learners produced yields substantial benefits for:

note-taking, but not for highlighting and underlining (marking)

The "3Rs" in the SQ3R method refer to __________:

read --> recite --> review

One important overarching theme of the Five Popular Study Strategies article is that:

students are often unaware of the pitfalls associated with each of the five commonly used study strategies covered in this article

According to the Karpicke and Blunt (2011) study presented during the 01/17 (TH) class, which of the following study conditions led to the BEST long-term retention?

the retrieval practice (testing) group

The results of the "diver" study described in the 01/22 (T) class are MOST closely related to which of the following memory principles?

transfer-appropriate processing

Cognitive psychology is primarily concerned with which of the following?

what we know, what we remember, and how we think