Unit 5: Cognitive Psychology

semantic encoding

Dr. Roberts conducts a study in which one group of participants counts the number of syllables in each member of a list of twenty words, and the second group creates stories from the same set of words. When later asked to write down as many of the previously seen words as possible, the second group of participants recalls more words than the first group. This study shows the importance of

Elizabeth studies for a half hour before she goes to bed each night the week before the exam.

Dr. Rudolph's class has a big test coming up next week. Which of the following students is using a studying strategy that is most likely to lead to memory consolidation?

encoding failure

During English class, Caleb is worried about an unfinished history project he needs to turn in later in the day. While the English teacher and other students discuss a short story the class just read, Caleb's attention is focused on how to finish the history project. The next day he is unable to recall the short story details presented in English class. The recall problem is most likely due to

have more difficulty learning to produce phonemes that do not exist in his native language

A 40-year-old man and his 7-year-old son move to a country where they have to learn a new language. Compared with his son, the 40-year-old man will

limited in capacity

A basic assumption underlying short-term memory is that it is

episodic memory

A childhood friend asked Jeffrey whether he remembered where they went on summer vacation when they were eight years old. Jeffrey's ability to recall correctly will rely on which of the following?

the misinformation effect

A few people witness an assault. Before the police arrive, one witness confidently tells the others that the assailant was wearing a green shirt, though in fact the shirt was blue. Later, when the police interview each witness individually, almost all of them state that they remember a green shirt. The memory error is referred to as

an algorithm

A logical, systematic procedure for solving a problem is known as

procedural and semantic

A man sustains a head injury. After the injury, he is able to tie his shoes, but he does not recall where he lives. Which aspect of the man's memory is intact and which aspect is dysfunctional, respectively?

an established way of thinking about or perceiving something

A mental set is

make a decision quickly by using the first information that comes to mind

A person uses the availability heuristic to

the hypothetical "most typical" instance of a category

A prototype is best defined as

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.

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?

created in the hippocampus

Explicit memories are

Because Tahani speaks more than one language, her proficiency in each language may come later than for her monolingual peers.

Five-year-old Tahani is entering a school where English is the only language spoken, but in her home, her family uses a combination of both English and her family's native language. When she starts school, she takes a test measuring her English language development. Her score is well below that of the other children in her class, most of whom live in homes where only one language is spoken. Which of the following is the most likely explanation for Tahani's test scores?

believing that nice weather is due this year because it rained a lot the last three years

For a person planning to hold a party outside, an example of the predictable-world bias would be

iconic

Hillary glances at a graph and then turns her head away less than a second later. When she tries to immediately remember what she saw, which of the following types of memory does Hillary use?

The arm position to throw the ball

If Jess has a type of amnesia that affects the formation of explicit memories but not implicit ones, which of the following will she be most likely to remember?

appeared in the middle of the list

If Juan tried to learn a long list of words, he would be most likely to forget words that?

levels of processing

In a memory study, the experimenter reads the same list of words to two groups. She asks group A to count the letters in each word, and she asks group B to focus on the meaning of each word for a later memory quiz. During a recall test, participants in group B recall significantly more words than participants in group A. Memory researchers attribute this effect to differences in

state-dependent memory

In an experiment, either a sad video or a happy video was shown to participants to influence their moods. The participants were then asked to memorize a list of words. Later, the participants were again shown either the same video they had seen before memorizing the words or they were shown the other video, and they were then asked to recall the words they had memorized previously. The results of the experiment, summarized in the chart above, best illustrate which psychological concept?

the memory of eyewitnesses

In legal cases, Elizabeth Loftus' research on the misinformation effect is most often used to cast doubt on which of the following?

linguistic intelligence and heuristic

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?

Seven

Jeanette is curious to see how many numbers she can hold in her mind at once. She asks her friend to test her on lists of random digits to see how many she can remember. Based on what is known about the average limits of short-term memory capacity, what is the most likely number of digits Jeanette will be able to remember?

the availability heuristic

John went to the beach for vacation shortly after having watched a documentary film about shark attacks. Overestimating the possibility of encountering a shark in the water, he decided to spend the day sunbathing and reading instead of going for a swim. John's reasoning can be explained through

Logical-mathematical

Keisha performs well in her geometry course in school, and her classmates often ask her for help with understanding word problems and writing formal proofs. Her friends describe her as very rational and analytical. According to Howard Gardner, which type of intelligence is Keisha most likely to possess?

Currently, she will likely be able to discriminate the phonemes \l\ and \r\; after she reaches about eight months of age, she will have begun to lose the ability to discriminate these phonemes.

Maki is a three-month-old living in a household of Japanese speakers. Which of the following best describes how her ability to discriminate phonemes will develop?

She never encoded the names into long-term memory

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?

procedural

Matthew learned to play the violin at a very early age. He is able to play several songs from memory, but he does not remember learning to play them. Matthew's ability to play the violin depends on which of the following types of memory?

confirmation bias

Patrick believes his basketball coach doesn't like him and subsequently focuses on all the times the coach criticizes his playing and ignores all the times the coach praises his performance. Patrick's behavior is best explained by the concept of

proactive interference

People who have difficulty remembering recently learned materials because of similar information learned earlier in life are demonstrating the phenomenon of

Asking them questions about the meaning of each word

Professor Belvedere wants to help her anatomy students memorize the names of different parts of the body. Which of the following techniques will best help her students?

a mental set

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?

She is overregularizing her use of the past tense.

Rodrigo's three-year-old sister says the phrase "We goed to the store" instead of "We went to the store." According to Noam Chomsky, what is the best explanation for her behavior?

memory that can hold only a small amount of information

Short-term memory is best described as

the speech of the second generation tends to have more complex grammar rules

Sometimes people who speak different languages are in a community together and must develop a way of communicating. Similarly, their offspring must also find a way to communicate. The main difference between the speech of the first generation and the speech of the second generation is

motor learning

The cerebellum is most directly involved in?

requires more automatic processing than selective attention does

The difference between divided attention and selective attention is that divided attention

a lack of encoding

The difficulty many people have recalling the details of common objects such as pennies can best be explained by

an association network

The fact that Lori finds herself thinking about dogs and other pets after seeing a cat is evidence that human memory is organized into

syntax

The utterance "likes dog my swim to" does not sound correct because it violates the rules of

semantic coding

To help himself remember the name of his new colleague, Hope, Jose thinks about the meaning of her name—the feeling of hopefulness. Which of the following concepts best corresponds to Jose's strategy?

the method of loci

To remember a list of words, Jerry tries walking through his bedroom and making associations between words on the list and various areas he visits in his bedroom. Jerry is trying to improve his memory encoding by using

behaviorism

Vandana, a 12-month-old infant, is listening to her father talk to her and suddenly repeats a word that he just said. Her father praises her and gives her a cookie. After she gets the cookie, she repeats the word again. Vandana's behavior can be best explained by using the theory of

implicit memory

When Amy was seven years of age, she had a babysitter from France. During this time Amy learned to speak a little French. Years later, when Amy got to college, she signed up for a beginning French class. Amy learned the material in her French class much more quickly than her classmates did. Amy's rapid learning was most likely due to

Elaborative encoding, because engaging in deeper processing improves memory.

When Gustavo goes through lists of inventory items and thinks about whether each one is a fruit or not, he remembers more of the items on those lists later than when he goes through lists of inventory items and does not think about what each item is. Which of the following concepts best explains Gustavo's performance?

a heuristic

When Joe arrives at the library, he can choose from any of several strategies that might help him find the book he needs. He could examine all the books on every shelf, and be certain that he would eventually find the book he wants, but this strategy would take too long. Joe decides instead to ask a librarian to direct him to the appropriate section of the library. Joe is using

retrieval cues

When Lois looks at her wedding pictures, she has vivid memories of the early years of her marriage. The pictures serve as

There will be no transfer of the information to long-term memory.

When rehearsal of incoming information is prevented, which of the following will most likely occur?

Amy studied for a vocabulary test in the same classroom and at the same time of day as the normal class, and she performed better on the test than students who studied in different classrooms under different conditions.

Which of the following scenarios best demonstrates the role of context effects in memory?

Steven studies a list of word pairs and is later given the first word of each pair and asked to recall the second word in the pair.

Which of the following scenarios involves using cued recall?

Carl tries to remember the name of his first boss, but he cannot because he keeps thinking of the name of his current boss.

Which of the following scenarios is an example of retroactive interference?

The first time Colleen tries to remember Leo's name it takes her a long time, but over time she remembers it more quickly.

Which of the following scenarios is best explained by long-term potentiation?

Automatic processing requires little mental effort.

Which of the following statements about automatic processing or effortful processing is true?

Language shapes the way an individual thinks and interprets experiences.

Which of the following statements is most consistent with Benjamin Whorf's concept of linguistic determinism?

He memorized and later recalled hundreds of nonsense syllables to document memory decay.

Which of the following statements is true of Hermann Ebbinghaus and his research?

It requires an incubation period in which the problem solver can start fresh on the problem.

Which of the following statements is true of insight problem solving?

maintenance rehearsal

A teacher asks Yvonne to go to another classroom to get a student whom Yvonne has never met. As she walks, she repeats the student's name to herself over and over to help her remember. Yvonne is boosting her memory by using

Deciding whether an umbrella would be useful to pack for a trip

According to research by Fergus I. M. Craik and Endel Tulving on levels of processing, which of the following would most improve the ability to recall the word "umbrella"?

the representative heuristic

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?

How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?

After Doug witnessed two cars involved in a car accident, a police officer asked Doug how fast the cars were going when the accident happened. According to research by Elizabeth Loftus, which of the following questions could the officer ask that would make Doug most susceptible to the misinformation effect?

schemas

After visiting her professor's office, Rachel writes down everything she remembers seeing there. She correctly remembers many details, but she falsely remembers seeing books even though there were no books in the office. Additionally, she did not remember seeing a skull that was in the office. Which memory concept best explains why Rachel falsely encoded the books and failed to encode the skull?

phonemes

All human languages have several basic sounds in common called

Amir telling Jorge the same story Jorge told him earlier in the week, because Amir forgot Jorge already told him the story

An example of a failure of source monitoring is

Reagan brainstorming as many uses of a toothpick as possible in a two-minute period

An example of divergent thinking is

Tommy finding it easier to remember the materials on an exam while taking it because he was sad while studying for the exam

An example of state-dependent memory is

Sam remembering which tree is the ginkgo by using the phrase "stinko ginkgo" because the fruit of the ginkgo tree smells bad

An example of using elaborative encoding to improve memory is

Elizabeth Loftus

Which of the following psychologists is most strongly associated with research on false memories?

long-term memories being formed from short-term memories

Consolidation can be described as the process of

divergent thinking

Creativity is most closely associated with which of the following?

Vehicle, convertible

Which of the following represent, respectively, superordinate and subordinate categories for the basic-level category of "automobile"?

Long-term memory, because Catherine failed to encode the word; therefore, the word did not become a part of her long-term memory.

When studying for a vocabulary test, Catherine read one of her vocabulary words and its definition aloud several times. About twenty seconds later, she still remembered the word's meaning, but then she moved on to the next word in the list without engaging in any further strategies to enhance her memory. The next day, she tested herself on the same vocabulary word at the same time, in the same mood, and in the same location as when she had first studied the word, but she could not remember its definition. It is most likely that Catherine could not remember the word because she failed to engage which of the following memory functions?

Memorizing the layout of a neighborhood

Which of the following activities most directly relies on the hippocampus?

When people have better recall of things that occur at the beginning of a sequence

Which of the following best describes the primacy effect?

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.

Which of the following best illustrates Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve?

It is where declarative memories are stored.

Which of the following describes one of the functions of the temporal lobe of the brain?

Marsha thinks the waiter asked her whether she wanted water even though he did not, because she thinks waiters ask patrons whether they want water.

Which of the following describes the concept of schema?

Geoff is able to easily remember a long list of instructions after hearing them only once and also scores higher than average on intelligence tests.

Which of the following examples is most consistent with the theory that executive functioning provides the basis for general intelligence?

Susam left his grocery list at home and can remember only the first two items on the list.

Which of the following illustrates the primacy effect?

Emma is telling her friend what she did over summer vacation when she discovers she cannot think of a specific word that she would like to say. She stops telling the story, because she has the distinct feeling that she is about to be able to think of the word if she waits just a moment.

Which of the following is an example of the tip-of-the-tongue effect?

A young child's memory of a day at the beach

Which of the following is most likely to be a false memory?

Relevant analogies usually help people solve problems, but people often do not spontaneously think of relevant analogies.

Which of the following is true of analogies in supporting problem solving?

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Which of the following psychologists is best associated with studying the function of memory?