Cognition and Thinking Practice
A normally functioning 65-year-old who cannot solve abstract logic puzzles as quickly as he did when he was younger is experiencing a
decrease in his fluid intelligence
Which of the following scenarios best exemplifies practical intelligence as suggested by Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory?
A club president devises a way to publicize important upcoming events.
Denny does not have wrapping paper to use to wrap a birthday present, and so he decides to use colorful newspaper comics instead. Denny's solution demonstrates that he has overcome
A functional fixedness
Raj, a four-year-old child, learned to open the door to a classroom by pulling on the handle. Now whenever he approaches any door he pulls on the handle and is confused when that does not work. This is best explained by Raj's having developed which of the following for door opening?
A mental set
Which of the following types of test is designed to measure an individual's knowledge of a subject?
Achievement
Kathy is learning how to cook. She follows every direction on each recipe step by step to make sure her food tastes good. Which of the following describes the problem-solving approach that Kathy is using?
Algorithm
According to Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory, which of the following types of intelligence would be most useful in solving a mathematics problem that requires one numerical answer?
Analytic
Which of the following refers to the potential of an individual to perform an as-yet-unlearned task?
Aptitude
Which of the following is the best example of a homeostatic process?
Cathy drinks a large amount of water to reduce thirst after a long race.
Which of the following psychometric properties is used to assess the extent to which the items on an intelligence test measure a person's intelligence?
Construct validity
Which of the following types of intelligence would be most important in answering trivia questions?
Crystallized
Creativity is most closely associated with which of the following?
Divergent thinking
Marie has to assemble a shelf but cannot find her screwdriver. Which of the following would help her complete this task?
Divergent thought
After school, George and his friends complain of intense hunger. They go to George's home and immediately open his refrigerator to look for a snack. Which of the following is a theory of motivation that best explains their behavior?
Drive reduction
Erik studied Italian in college. After he graduated, he went backpacking in Europe, where he realized he had forgotten a lot of Italian. Years later, he went on another trip to Italy and was surprised to discover that he remembered about the same amount of Italian as during his first trip.
Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve?
Which of the following methods is used in studies designed to determine the primary components of intelligence?
Factor analysis
The component of intelligence described by Raymond Cattell as involving the ability to understand logical relationships, reason abstractly, and learn quickly is related to which of the following?
Fluid intelligence
During a quiz, a student is asked, "Which is more common in the English language, the letter "k" as the first letter in a word or the letter "k" as the third letter in a word?" Which of the following would be the student's likely response if he relied on the availability heuristic to answer the question?
He would say that "k" is more likely as the first letter of words because those are the first words that come to his mind.
Which of the multiple intelligences posited by Howard Gardner is most closely related to the concept of emotional intelligence?
Intrapersonal
Janie is successful with word games that require her to create words out of a series of letters. Which of the following combinations most likely contributes to her success?
Linguistic intelligence and heuristics
Which of the following correctly lists Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs from bottom to top?
Physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, self-actualization
According to cognitive dissonance theory, human beings are motivated to
Reduced tensions produced by inconsistent thoughts
A test author most interested in ensuring that individuals receive similar scores on a personality test every time they take it is attempting to increase which of the following?
Reliability
Hearing the word "ocean" makes Alice think of waves, surfboards, bathing suits, sharks, swimmers, boats, and the beach. The associations she has to the word "ocean" represent which of the following concepts?
Schema
Alicia has started a new and very different job but believes in her skills and ability to carry out the tasks required of her. Albert Bandura would refer to Alicia's sense of confidence as which of the following?
Self-efficacy
Mary is introduced to three new people at a party. Later, however, she cannot remember the names of any of her new acquaintances, even though she remembers what she ate, her old friends who were there, and the address of the host. What may account for Mary's inability to remember these individuals' names?
She never encoded the names into long-term memory
Barbara is a talented architect. On which type of intelligence will she most heavily rely to complete her next building design?
Spatial
Achariya is lost. She quickly scans the crowd and decides to ask an elderly woman for directions because she believes the woman will be kind. Which method of problem solving did Achariya most likely use?
The representativeness heuristic
When confronted with the sequence "__N __" at the end of a word in a crossword puzzle, Tony inserts the letters "I" and "G" in the two blanks because that procedure has often led to the correct answer in previous puzzles. This example illustrates the use of
a heuristic
Charles Spearman's concept of g is most accurately defined as
a single, underlying intellectual capacity measured by intelligence tests
Processing every possible combination of the letters DBRI to arrive at the word BIRD is an example of the use of
an algorithm
A test measures student's potential ability
an aptitude test
The intelligence quotient (IQ) has traditionally been based on the relationship between an individual's mental age and his or her
chronological age
Shaniqua is a fourth grader who loves to read whenever she has free time. To encourage Shaniqua to continue to read, her parents would best be advised to
do nothing additional
Incentive theories of motivation explain the desire of people to achieve goals in terms of
external stimuli that have the capacity to affect behavior
The overjustification effect has led some psychologists to question the value of
extrinsic motivation
A researcher shows the same video of an automobile accident to two different groups of participants. Participants in group one are asked: "Did you see a broken headlight?" Participants in group two are asked: "Did you see the broken headlight?" The researcher finds that participants in group two are much more likely to recall having seen a broken headlight, even though there actually was no broken headlight in the video. The researcher is investigating the effects of which of the following on recall?
framing
Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that help solve problems and reduce mental effort are called
heuristics
To score high on a test of creativity, a person's answers should be
original and valuable
Alfred Binet's efforts to measure intelligence were directed at
predicting children's success in school
The Psychology Aptitude Test (PAT) was administered to incoming college psychology majors. Their scores were later compared to their performance in the introductory psychology course, and high scores on the PAT were related to high grades in the course. Therefore, the PAT has
predictive validity
Henry took an intelligence test and scored lower than he thought he should. He kept retaking the test, but he kept getting about the same score each time. This series of events indicates that the test was
reliable
A teacher has to learn 170 new student names every year and finds it difficult to remember the names of former students. The teacher's memory problem most likely results from
retroactive interference
Jim has seen reports of a number of cases of Ebola on the news. He is more afraid of contracting Ebola than tuberculosis, even though the risk of infection of tuberculosis is greater than that of Ebola. Jim's fear would most likely be attributed to
the availability heuristic
A prototype is best defined as
the hypothetical "most typical" instance of a category
