PSY 211 Exam 1

Which of the following terms does NOT reflect functional network activity in the brain?

Consistent

What does the principal of neural representation state?

Everything a person experiences is based on representations in the person's nervous system

In the text's use of the Olympic Rings example, which Gestalt law contributes to the correct perception of five interlocking circles rather than nine separate segments?

Simplicity

How is the term mind used in this statement: "If you put your mind to it, I'm sure you can solve that math problem"?

The mind as problem solver

Which of the following is true about Bayesian inference?

The probability of an outcome is determined by the prior probability and the likelihood of the outcome

Action potentials occur in the

axon

Groups of interconnected neurons are referred to as

neural circuits

People perceive vertical and horizontal orientations more easily than other orientations according to the

oblique effect

John Watson believed that psychology should focus on the study of

observable behavior

The process by which small objects become perceptually grouped to form larger objects is the principle of perceptual

organization

The landmark discrimination problem is more difficult to do if you have damage to your _____ lobe.

parietal

If kittens are raised in an environment that contains only verticals, you would predict that most of the neurons in their visual cortex would respond best to the visual presentation of a

picket fence

Behaviorists believe that the presentation of ____________ increases the frequency of behavior

positive reinforcers

The notion that every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible is called the law of

pragnanz

The fusiform face area (FFA) in the brain is often damaged in patients with

prosopagnosia

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

operant conditioning

The study of the physiological basis of cognition is known as

cognitive neuroscience

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

cognitive psychology

Which of the following statements best describes how neurons communicate with one another

A chemical process takes place in the synapse

Which of the following is NOT an example of a physical regularity in your text?

Angled orientation

In which of the following body parts are neurons NOT present?

Arteries

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

B. F. Skinner

Ramon is looking at photos of athletes in a sports magazine. He is focusing on their body parts, particularly their chest and legs. Which part of Ramon's brain is activated by this viewing?

Extrastriate body area (EBA)

Consider the following definition of the mind: The mind is a system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals. Which element of the mind does this definition emphasize?

Functioning and survival

Which of the following is a criticism of analytic introspection?

It produces variable results from person to person

What is a scene schema?

Knowledge of what a scene typically contains

Which substance is released when signals reach the synapse at the end of the axon?

Neurotransmitters

Which of the following is an example of an effect of top-down processing?

Recognizing a crying friend's sounds as words in a sentence

Who developed the concept of the cognitive map

Tolman

What is the process of unconscious inference?

When our perceptions are the result of inferences that we make about the environment

Evidence for the role of top-down processing in perception is shown by which of the following examples?

When someone accurately identifies a word in a song on a radio broadcast despite static interfering with reception

The results of Gauthier's "Greeble" experiment illustrate

an effect of experience-dependent plasticity

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

an inborn biological program

Wundt's procedure in which trained participants describe their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli presented under controlled conditions is known as

analytic introspection

Brain imaging has made it possible to

determine which areas of the brain are involved in different cognitive processes

According to Ebbinghaus's research on memory, savings is a function of

elapsed time

Neurons that respond to specific qualities of objects, such as orientation, movement, and length, are called

feature detectors

You look at a rope coiled on a beach and are able to perceive it as a single strand because of the law of

good continuation

You are walking down the street and see a nice car drive by. You notice its color, movement, and shape. All of these features are processed

in different parts of the brain

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

inferred from the participant's behavior

The theory of unconscious inference includes the

likelihood principle

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

make a decision about the stimulus

The term semantics, when applied to perception, means the

meaning of a scene, often related to what is happening within the scene

The demonstration in your text that asks you to visualize scenes such as an office, a department store clothing section, a lion, and a microscope often results in more details in the scene of the office or department store than the scene with the lion or microscope. The latter two tend to have fewer details because most individuals from modern society have less knowledge of _____ in those scenes.

semantic regularities

When conducting an experiment on how stimuli are represented by the firing of neurons, you notice that neurons respond differently to different faces. For example, Arthur's face causes three neurons to fire, with neuron 1 responding the most and neuron 3 responding the least. Roger's face causes three different neurons to fire, with neuron 7 responding the least and neuron 9 responding the most. Your results support __________ coding.

sparse

The idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object is called _____________.

specificity coding

When Carlos moved to the United States, he did not understand any English. Phrases like "Anna Mary Can Pi and I Scream Class Hick" didn't make any sense to him. Now that Carlos has been learning English, he recognizes this phrase as "An American Pie and Ice Cream Classic." This example illustrates that Carlos was not capable of ____ in English.

speech segmentation

If a Gestalt psychologist was baking a cake for an event, what would they be most focused on?

the cake

A synapse is

the gap that separates two different neurons

What differentiates bottom-up processing from top-down processing?

the source of information

Which of the following is NOT considered a starting point for perception?

thinking

If a word is identified more easily when it is in a sentence than when it is presented alone, this would be an example of _____ processing.

top-down

Maria took a drink from a container marked "milk." Surprised, she quickly spit out the liquid because it turned out that the container was filled with orange juice instead. Maria likes orange juice, so why did she have such a negative reaction to it? Her response was most affected by

top-down processing

The likelihood principle states that

we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received

Which of the following is consistent with the idea of localization of function?

* Brain areas are specialized for specific functions * Neurons in different areas of the brain respond best to different stimuli * Specific areas of the brain serve different functions

How is the term mind used in this statement: "When he talks about his encounter with aliens, it sounds like he is out of his mind"?

The mind as a healthy mind being associated with normal functioning, a nonfunctioning mind with abnormal functioning

The sequence of steps that includes the image on the retina, changing the image into electrical signals, and neural processing is an example of _____ processing.

bottom-up

Ebbinghaus's "memory" experiments were important because they

plotted functions that described the operation of the mind

The "Little Albert" experiment involving the rat and the loud noise is an example of which of the following types of experiments?

Classical conditioning

When does bottom-up processing start?

When environmental energy stimulates the receptors

The key structural components of neurons are the

cell body, dendrites, and axons

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

cognition

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

cognitive map

The idea that specific cognitive functions activate many areas of the brain is known as

distributed representation