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Cognitive Psych. Fall ‘04
Exam 1
Name: __________________________________
Multiple Choice. Circle the best alternative for each of the following. (1 pt each)
1. Which of the following is not an example of a cognitive process?
a. recognition
b. problem solving
c. reflex
d. attention
2. DesCartes’ belief that the mind and body are two different things is known as:
a. connectionism
b. dualism
c. functionalism
d. empiricism
3. A traditional “school” within psychology that emphasized the adaptation of the organism to its environment,
and focused on questions such as what role a particular system served for an organism, is:
a. structuralism
b. Gestalt
c. connectionism
d. functionalism
4. Which of the following methods would a behaviorist be most likely to use?
a. rats running a maze
b. introspection
c. a PET scan
d. all of these
5. Which of the following was instrumental in producing the “cognitive revolution”?
a.
b.
c.
d.
the development of human factors engineering
the development of computers and artificial intelligence
Noam Chomsky’s work in the field of linguistics
all of the above
6. Which of the following is not a characteristic of the ecological approach to psychology?
a.
b.
c.
d.
an emphasis on cultural contexts for cognition
an emphasis on realistic, “everyday” contexts
an emphasis on carefully controlled laboratory experimentation
it has its roots in psychology and anthropology
7. Aphasia, or an inability to speak, would be most likely to occur after damage to:
a. the left frontal lobe
c. the left parietal lobe
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b. the right frontal lobe
d. the right parietal lobe
8. The split-brain studies showed that, in most people, the right hemisphere is dominant for:
a. speaking
b. understanding language
c. arithmetic
d. visuo-spatial functions
9. ___ can be used to study the electrical activity of the brain.
a. PET
b. functional MRI
c. CAT
d. EEG
10. When one side of the brain perceives stimuli on the opposite side of the body, it is said to be:
a. bottom-up
b. top-down
c. ipsilateral
d. contralateral
11. Which of the following is a central tenet of the Gestalt school of psychology?
a. The goal of psychology is to break down and identify the simplest mental elements that make up
conscious experience.
b. The most important function of the mind is to allow the individual to adapt to his or her environment.
c. Psychological phenomena cannot be reduced to simple elements, but must be studied in their entirety.
d. Subjective phenomena such as remembering and expecting are not objectively testable and thus are not
proper subject matter for psychology.
12. Visual agnosias involve:
a. an inability to see
b. impaired ability to interpret visual images
c. seeing something that is not really there
d. all of these
13. If pattern recognition were entirely bottom-up, we would expect that:
a.
b.
c.
d.
perception of an item would be influenced by the context in which it occurs
perception of an item would not be influenced by the context in which it occurs
processing would be parallel
more attention would be required
14. A certain computer can respond to a limited number of voice commands such as “open file”. However, the
speaker must take care to pronounce the commands very precisely, and it will not recognize commands
spoken with an accent. This computer probably uses:
a. featural analysis
b. top-down processing
c. a neural network
d. template matching
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15. In an experiment in which the subject is asked to press a button as fast as they can when they see the letter
“O”, they would be expected to respond fastest to which of the following displays?
a. O
b. TOP
c. XRO
d. FRV
16. The model of perception that says that a percept is compared to idealized representations in memory, and
matched to the one it most closely resembles is:
a. prototype matching
b. the pandemonium model
c. the Gestalt model
d. featural analysis
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17. We see the figure below as a set of columns rather than rows because of the Gestalt principle of:
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
a. similarity
b. closure
c. proximity
d. good continuation
18. The fact that people can hear their name spoken in a conversation they’re not paying any attention to is
evidence for:
a. early selection
b. late selection
c. parallel processing
d. serial processing
19. According to Treisman’s attenuation theory, the cocktail party effect occurs because:
a.
b.
c.
d.
words like your own name have lowered thresholds for recognition
your name has been primed by the context of the conversation
its physical characteristics make it stand out from surrounding conversation
none of these – Treisman’s theory cannon explain the cocktail party phenomenon
20. Based on research on dual task performance, which of the following people would you predict would be the
most likely to get in an auto accident?
a.
b.
c.
d.
some one listening to the radio turned up very loud
some one driving from work to home and talking on a cell phone
some one driving in a city they’ve never been in before and talking on a cell phone
none of the above would affect whether some one would have an accident
21. Glancing out your window, you notice a woman in a blue coat walking with a child in a red coat. Later, you
recall seeing a child in a red coat. You have experienced the phenomenon known as:
a. the Stroop effect
b. illusory conjunction
c. automatic processing
d. the bottleneck effect
22. Research on the psychological refractory period suggest that, as the interval between the presentation of two
tasks gets shorter,
a.
b.
c.
d.
the time taken to complete task 1 gets shorter
the time taken to complete task 1 gets longer
the time taken to complete task 2 gets shorter
the time taken to complete task 2 gets longer
23. The Stroop effect is evidence that:
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a. reading occurs automatically
b. color naming occurs automatically
c. reading and color naming are both automatic
d. neither reading nor color naming is automatic
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24. Lesions to the right parietal cortex will often lead to:
a.
b.
c.
d.
an inability to see anything in the left visual field
an inability to see anything in the right visual field
neglect of things in the left side of space
neglect of things in the right side of space
25. According to a study by Posner and Raichle, the posterior parietal lobe of the brain is involved in:
a.
b.
c.
d.
disengaging attention from where it was previously focused
focusing attention on a new stimulus
processing attending information
all of the above
Short Answer. Answer 3 of the following 4 questions. (use a separate page; 5 pts each)
1. Why is behaviorism often referred to as “black box” psychology?
2. What is the difference between “bottom-up” and “top-down” processing? Describe one piece of evidence
that has been found for each.
3. In terms of divided attention (i. e. performing 2 or more tasks at once), what are the differences between a
task that is “automatic” and one that requires attention?
4. In terms of visual search, what are the differences between a search that is “automatic” and one that is
“controlled”?
Essay. Answer 1 of the following questions. (use a separate page; 10 pts)
A. While all cognitive psychologists agree that “cognition” or “thinking” occurs in the brain, some of them
argue that it is not necessary to know anything about how it occurs in the brain in order to understand it.
In other words, studying the brain doesn’t tell us anything about cognition we haven’t already learned
using other methods. Using what you have learned in this class, produce an argument against this point of
view.
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B. It has been suggested that people who use their left hemisphere more are more analytical, and like to focus
on small details, while people who use their right hemisphere are more “wholistic” and focus on the big
picture. Describe how you could test this hypothesis by using the chimeric faces task, along with one or
more of the perception / pattern recognition tasks we discussed.