History of Cognitive Psychology/Iconic Memory

Aristotle's doctrine of association suggests that mental life can be explained in terms of ideas, and the associations between them. What were the three critical ways in which he thought things could be associated?

a. contiguity, similarity, common fate
b. similarity, connectedness, contrast
c. contrast, contiguity, similarity
d. familiarity, simplicity, continuation

Answer: C

Difficulty: Easy - this is a straight memorization question

Perceiving Machines" are used by the U.S. Postal service to "read" the addresses on letters and sort them quickly to their correct destinations. Sometimes, these machines cannot "read" an address, because the writing on the envelope is not sufficiently clear for the machine to "match" the writing to an "example" it has stored in "memory". Human postal workers are much more successful at reading unclear addresses, most likely because of

a. bottom-up processing.
b. top-down processing.
c. template matching
d. feature recognition.

Answer: D

Difficulty: Hard - this is more of an applied question and we got cut off right before we ended on the first day so don't worry if you didn't know the answer on first glance. Expect a number of questions like this on exams, where I'll give more real-world type scenarios related to the concepts we've learned. To be able to answer these questions you need to understand and recognize the critical concept

Why do we have sensory memory?

a. allows us to select pertinent information to which we wish to attend
b. enables the understanding of the flow of language
c. allows for a stable and continuous view of the environment
d. all of the above

Answer: D

Difficulty: Moderate

Attention: Bottleneck and Capacity

When Sam listens to his girlfriend Susan in the restaurant and ignores other people's conversations, he is engaged in the process of ____ attention.

a. low load
b. divided
c. cocktail party
d. selective

Answer: D

Difficulty: Moderate

Broadbent's "Filter Model" of selective attention proposes that the filter identifies the attended message based on

a. meaning.
b. modality.
c. physical characteristics.
d. higher order characteristics.

Answer: C

Difficulty: Moderate

Attention: Automaticity, Visual search

Which of the following is not traditionally considered to be one of the four kinds of
attention?

a. selective
b. vigilance
c. categorical
d. divided

Answer: C

Difficulty: Easy - this is just straight memorization

The Stroop effect demonstrates

a. how automatic processing can interfere with intended processing.
b. a failure of divided attention.
c. the ease of performing a low-load task.
d. support for object-based attention.

Answer: A

Difficulty: Moderate

A difference between a heuristic and an algorithm is

a. algorithms usually take longer to carry out than heuristics.
b. algorithms are usually less systematic than heuristics.
c. heuristics do not result in a correct solution every time as algorithms do.
d. algorithms provide "best guess" solutions to problems more so than heuristics.

Answer: A

Difficulty: Hard - this is a tricky question if you don't know the terms

Visual attention basics, Object/Space attention

If you are standing in line at a movie and in your periphery, you detect someone waving at you, this would most likely lead to a _______ and _________ shift of attention

a. endogenous, covert
b. endogenous, overt
c. exogenous, covert
d. exogenous, overt

Answer: D

Difficulty: Moderate...basically if you know the definitions of the above terms this should be fairly easy (though of course the similarity of the words makes it tough)

That you are slower to return your attention to a location that you have previously fixated is referred to as ____________, and is a mechanism that is thought to aid _______________

a. inhibition of return, visual search
b. negative priming, reading
c. negative priming, visual search
d. inhibition of return, reading

Answer: A

Difficulty: Easy...pretty much a straight memorization question

How do cuing effects brought on by peripheral cues differ from cuing effects brought on by central cues?

a. central cuing effects emerge faster
b. central cuing effects are larger
c. central cues lead to inhibition of return whereas peripheral cues do not
d. peripheral cuing effects are larger

Answer: D

Difficulty: Moderate

Studies which have examined object-based attention, have provided us with evidence that

a. attention selects locations
b. attention selects objects
c. attention stays with an object even when it moves in space
d. all of the above

Answer: D

Difficulty: Easy

Introduction to Perception

The inverse projection problem states that ambiguity occurs because the image on the retina

a. can be caused by an infinite number of different objects
b. appears magnified compared to its actual size
c. is inverted compared to its actual orientation
d. can only be viewed from one angle

Answer: A

Difficulty: Moderate - this is mostly just memorization

There are two different neural correlates of perception, the _________ stream which provides “what” information (perception) and the __________ stream, which provides “where” information (action input)

a. visual, motor
b. motor, visual
c. dorsal, ventral
d. ventral, dorsal

Answer: D

Difficulty: Easy - mostly a memorization question

Which of the following is NOT one of the original Gestalt laws of perceptual organization

a. similarity
b. good continuation
c. uniform connectedness
d. common fate

Answer: C

Difficulty: Moderate - need to know the original six laws to know which one wasn't a part of them

Auditory Perception and Cognition

The graphical depiction of sound stimuli is given on a:

a. Spirograph
b. Pictograph
c. Anagram
d. Spectrograph

Answer: D

Difficulty: Easy - this is essentially straight memorization

What quality of a sound does the frequency of a sound wave dictate?

a. Loudness
b. Timbre
c. Pitch
d. Duration

Answer: C

Difficulty: Easy - this is essentially straight memorization

Interaural time difference, the differnece in time between when a sound reaches one ear versus the other, is a ___________ cue for sound
localization, as is ___________.

a. monaural, interaural level difference
b. binaural, interaural level difference
c. monaural, interaural wavelength discrepancy
d. binaural, interaural wavelength discrepancy

Answer: B

Difficulty: Moderate

Visual illusions and what they tell us

Color afterimages are attributable to

a. orientation-sensitive cells in the striate cortex
b. fatigued cells in the retina
c. lateral inhibition
d. the contrast between the perceived color and the background

Answer: B

Difficulty: Moderate - mostly memorization but there are other plausible sounding options there

Both the hollow mask and Margaret Thatcher illusions are attributable to

a. change blindness
b. the context in which the stimuli are presented
c. our knowledge/expertise regarding how faces should look
d. a failure to activate the fusiform face area

Answer: C

Difficulty: Easy

The “ball in a box” shadow illusion in which the trajectory of the ball seems to change as the trajectory of the shadow changes is an example of how ____________ influences perception

a. context
b. action
c. attention
d. don't choose d

Answer: A

Difficulty: Moderate

Introduction to memory: modal memory, STM, LTM

The primacy effect is attributed to

a. a type of rehearsal which improves memory for all items in a list
b. recall of information still active in STM
c. forgetting of early items in a list as they are replaced by later items
d. recall of information stored in LTM

Answer: D

Difficulty: Easy

The recency effect is attributed to

a. a type of rehearsal which improves memory for all items in a list
b. recall of information still active in STM
c. forgetting of early items in a list as they are replaced by later items
d. recall of information stored in LTM

Answer: B

Difficulty: Easy

Prospective memory is

a. memory for actually experienced events
b. memory for action
c. memory for facts
d. memory for tasks that need to be carried out in the future

Answer: D

Difficulty: Moderate