Final Exam

Question 1

Which of the following observations supports late selection theory more than early selection theory?

Answer 1

The interpretation of an ambiguous word can be affected by an unattended stimulus.

Question 2

Which of these the following theories of neural coding is most closely related to the idea that each mental representation involves many neurons and each neuron is involved in many representations?

Answer 2

Population coding

Question 3

The detectors in the Interactive Activation model are similar to neurons because they communicate using excitatory and inhibitory signals. This is one reason that Interactive Activation model is called

Answer 3

a neurally inspired model

Question 4

In the figure below, the numbers in the gray boxes are the activations of the corresponding neurons (nodes) and the numbers in the yellow boxes are the connection strengths. Which of the following statements is true? (Hint: Exactly two of the choices are true.)

Answer 4

The connection from neuron A to neuron Y is excitatory.

Given these activations, Hebbian learning would make the connection from neuron A to neuron X more inhibitory.

Question 5

The Hebbian Learning assignment demonstrated that the use of the Hebbian learning rule

Answer 5

Sometimes results in retroactive interference, but not always

Question 6

Feature analysis is a strategy for pattern recognition that can be applied to

Answer 6

A, B, and C:
a. two-dimensional drawing
b. three-dimensional geometric shapes
c. human faces

Question 7

Structural connectivity

Answer 7

is the brain’s “wiring diagram” created by axons that connect brain areas.

Question 8

Which theory of neural coding is exemplified by the feature detectors of the Interactive Activation model and the Feature Integration theory ?

Answer 8

Specificity coding

Question 9

According to Ungerleider and Mishkins, the dorsal pathway…

Answer 9

Includes regions in the parietal lobe and is responsible for spatial processing.

Question 10

This graph most likely depicts the results of an experiment on
(shapes around 400 and color words around 600 for reaction time and stimulus type)

Answer 10

the stroop effect

Question 11

Which of the following neuropsychological disorders primarily involves an impairment in attention?

Answer 11

neglect

Question 12

Which of the following contrasts is most directly relevant to Schneider and Shiffin’s (1977) memory scanning experiment?

Answer 12

Automatic vs controlled processing

Question 13

Which of the following approaches to perception is most closely related to Helmholtz’s theory of perception?

Answer 13

The Bayesian approach

Question 14

The most common form of neuron-neuron communication involves the release of neurotransmitter from one neuron’s __ to another neuron’s ___.

Answer 14

axon, dendrite

Question 15

In a graph plotting the results of a visual search experiment, what should be plotted on the y-axis?

Answer 15

reaction time

Question 16

Which of these theories is both anti-mentalist and anti-physicalist?

Answer 16

behaviorism

Question 17

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals which brain regions are active during a particular task by measuring

Answer 17

Changes in blood flow in the brain.

Question 18

What does the field of neuropsychology study?

Answer 18

Behavior of people with brain damage

Question 19

Which brain regions are most closely associated with executive control?

Answer 19

the frontal and parietal lobes

Question 20

If a neuron has an off-center/on-surround receptive field, that amount of light falling in the center of its receptive field will determine

Answer 20

its firing rate

Question 21

Which of these concepts is most closely associated with Gestalt psychology?

Answer 21

Good continuation.

Question 22

Which theoretical concept is most closely related to the work of Hubel and Wiesel?

Answer 22

Receptive fields

Question 23

Which of the following principles is most closely associated with constructivist theories of perception?

Answer 23

Information is lost in the transformation of the distal stimulus to the proximal stimulus.

Question 24

Which three of the following statements are true according to early selection theory. (Choose three of the answers.)

Answer 24

Selection occurs prior to recognition

Selection is based on physical properties

Selection is all-or-none

Question 25

The fact that an office is likely to contain both a desk and a chair is an example of a

Answer 25

semantic regularity

Question 26

An experiment investigating overt shifts of attention would most likely use which of the following devices?

Answer 26

eye tracker

Question 27

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

Answer 27

prosopagnosia

Question 28

The attenuation theory can explain why you might notice someone saying your name in a conversation that you aren’t paying attention to by assuming that: (More than one answer may be correct.)

Answer 28

The detector for your name has a relatively low threshold.

Selection is not an all-or-none mechanism.

Question 29

In the template model, the more faces you have stored in memory the longer it will take (on average) to recognize a familiar face when you see one. This is because the template model uses

Answer 29

serial search

Question 30

Which of these theories emerged during the first two decades after the cogntive revolution?

Answer 30

The template and early selection models.

Question 31

Donders introduced an experimental method for measuring

Answer 31

the time needed to make a decision.

Question 32

Suppose we run a visual search experiment in which participants search for a blue circle in a field of red circles and red triangles. How would increasing the number of distractors affect reaction time?

Answer 32

RT would stay constant

Question 33

Which of the following is a true statement about the computer metaphor?

Answer 33

All of the above:

It played a critical role in the development of the cognitive revolution.

It suggests that the relationship between mental processes and the brain is similar to the relationship between softward and hardware in computers.

It suggests a way of understanding how physical (brain) states can have meaning/aboutness.

Question 34

The four things you should know about every experiment are (i) What they did, (ii) What they measured, (iii) What they found, and (iv):

Answer 34

what it means

Question 35

Suppose the input to the interactive activation model is the C*T display above. If the activation values for the detectors for the middle letter position are as shown in the graph, what would you conclude?

Answer 35

The connections from the word detectors to the letter detectors have been removed.

Question 36

Which of these is an example of source misattribution?

Answer 36

Thinking that something you dreamed actually happened.

Question 37

Which of the following statements is true? (More than one answer may be correct.)

Answer 37

False memories tend to become more likely as the retention interval increases.

False memories can be the result of general-world knowledge.

Question 38

One theoretical implication of Brewer & Treyen’s experiment on memory for things in an office room is that:

Answer 38

Memory for an event is shaped by general world knowledge.

Question 39

Match each set of properties with the mechanism of forgetting that has those properties

Answer 39

Occurs at retrieval; affects accessibility, due to other memory traces: Blocking

Occurs at storage; affects availability, due to other memory traces: Unlearning

Occurs at storage; affects availability, not due to other memory traces: Decay

Occurs at retrieval; affects accessibility, not due to other memory traces: None

Question 40

A Google search is oftern considered to be analogous to a search of human memory. Which of the following is not an appropriate comparison?

Answer 40

access to a website being restricted by a foreign government is like forgetting due to blocking

Question 41

The tendency to remember events more fondly and positively than they were perceived at the time of the experience is called:

Answer 41

The rosy recollection effect

Question 42

Which of these processes occur during the retrieval stage? (More than one answer may be correct.)

Answer 42

selection of retrieval cues
evaluation

Question 43

The three stages of memory include:

Answer 43

encoding, storage, retrieval

Question 44

The main goal of the Wickens “Release from proactive interference” experiment was to study

Answer 44

forgetting in STM

Question 45

The data depicted in this figure provide evidence that:

(3 graphs with blue bars for delay and % correct and it is a big difference then little difference, then slightly larger)

Answer 45

forgetting in STM is due to proactive interference

Question 46

In his 1967 book, Neisser characterized the way human memory works by comparing the rememberer to

Answer 46

a paleontologist who reconstructs an entire dinosaur from a few bone fragments

Question 47

Suppose that Max plays a new video game for one hour a day on each of eight days. Kurt plays that same game for four hours a day on each of two days. Assuming that Max and Kurt started out at the same level of performance, who is likely to be playing better at the end of the eight hours.

Answer 47

Max will perform better because of the spacing effect.

Question 48

Suppose we use an immediate recall task to study working memory. What would Baddeley’s working memory model predict? (More than one answer may be correct.)

Answer 48

“Uzbekistan Mauritania Slovenia Uruguay” would be remembered worse than “Fiji Chad Belize Laos”.

“Take Lake Make Sake” would be remembered worse than “Take Desk Tree Fish”

Question 49

Match each theoretical construct with the experimental procedure/manipulation best suited to study it.

Answer 49

capacity of STM: immediate recall of digits in lists of varying length

principle of encoding specificity: whether memory for a list of words is tested in teh same context as where it was studied

capacity of the phonological loop: length (in syllables of the to be remembered words in an immediate recall task

levels of processing theory: asking participants in a LTM tasks to make judgments about the TBR words based on either how the words look or what they mean

Question 50

One technique that can help you remember a newly learned fact is to imagine where you were when you learned it. This example illustrates which of the following theoretical ideas?

Answer 50

the principle of encoding specificity.

Question 51

The Modal Model’s assumption about that nature of the code in short-term memory was based in part on the observation that in short-term memory tasks, participants sometimes ‘remember’ words that weren’t actually on the to-be-remembered list. When this happens, the falsely ‘remembered’ word often

Answer 51

sounds like a word that was on the list.

Question 52

Vogel et al. (2005) used ERP (evoked response potentials) to study individual differenes in working memory. Their primary finding was that individuals with greater visual working memory capacity:

Answer 52

were better at suppressing irrelevant visual information.

Question 53

Chase and Simon’s (1973) study of STM contrasting chess experts and novices illustrates the role of ___ in short-term memory

Answer 53

chunking

Question 54

Why is it almost easier to recognize that a word was on a study list than it is to recall it?

Answer 54

Recognition tests provide more retrieval cues than recall tasks.

Question 55

According to Daniel Schacter, actually remembering having heard a word on a list ( a “real” memory) can be distinguished from a false memory of having heard that word because:

Answer 55

There is less activation in the brain regions involved in spoken word perception during a false memory.

Question 56

In a serial-position curve experiment, which of the following manipulations would be expected to increase the primacy effect and have little impact on the recency effect?

Answer 56

Increasing the amount of time between words during the study task.

Question 57

Last night I couldn’t remember the name of a senator from Minnesota. This morning I saw someone who looks like her and her name immediately came to mind. Given what we know about memory, which of the following was probably true

Answer 57

Last night, the senator’s name was available in my memory but not accessible.

Question 58

Which of the following studies involves misleading postevent information?

Answer 58

The Red Datsun study.

Question 59

What is the purpose of having participants count backwards during the retention interval of a short-term memory task?

Answer 59

Counting backwards blocks rehearsal

Question 60

Which of the following describes the reminiscence bump?

Answer 60

People in their sixties generally exhibit enhanced memory for events that occurred in their late teens and early twenties relative to memory for childhood events or events that occured in their thirties.

Question 61

This graph illustrates the results of a hypothetical experiment comparing flashbulb memories to memory for everyday events. Given what is now known about flashbulb memories, which of the following dependent variables is probably being depicted in this graph.

Answer 61

The proportion of details remembered.

Question 62

This graph plots hypothetical results from a memory experiment in which participants study a list of words and are asked to recall those words after some retention interval. What is wrong with this graph?

Answer 62

The scale of the x-axis is misleading.

Question 63

From the perspective described in the text book, how do autobiographical and episodic memory differ?

Answer 63

Autobiographical memory has a different time course of forgetting.
Autobiographical memory is more multidimensional.

Question 64

The results of the Morris et al. experiment involving a rhyme recognition task were consistent with the prinicple of transfer-appropriate processing. They were also inconsistent with the prediction that:

Answer 64

Deeper processing results in better memory.

Question 65

“Remembering” that when you were a child you got lost at a mall, even though that never actually happened, is an error of___

Answer 65

commission

Question 66

Which component of Baddeley’s Working Memory is most analogous to short-term memory in the Modal model?

Answer 66

The phonological loop

Question 67

Which of the following is a true statement about false memories?

Answer 67

They arise from the same constructive processes that produce true memories.

Question 68

After work today I couldn’t find my car when I got to the parking lot. Eventually I figured out that I was looking in the wrong parking lot–the one I had parked in yesterday rather than the one I parked in this morning. Which mechanism of forgetting is illustrated by this example?

Answer 68

Proactive interference.

Question 69

Which of these statements exemplifies the levels-of-processing effect on memory?

Answer 69

You are more likely to remember a written word if you form a mental image about it than if you decide whether it is printed in lower-case letters.

Question 70

When surveyed, a majority of memory scientists agreed with which of the following statements?

Answer 70

None of the above.

Answers:
Human memory works like a video camera, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect them later.
The testimony of one confident eyewitness should be enough evidence to convict a defendant of a crime.
Once you have experienced an event and formed a memory of it, that memory does not change.

Question 71

The finding that people tend to incorrectly conclude that more people die from tornados than from asthma has been explained in terms of the

Answer 71

availability heuristic

Question 72

Which of the following brain regions is the ‘hub’ of the hub and spoke model?

Answer 72

Anterior temporal lobe

Question 73

Which of these concepts would Rosch place at the subordinate level?

Answer 73

coffee table

Question 74

Which theory states that a concept is defined by a set of necessary and sufficient features?

Answer 74

definitional

Question 75

This figure on the left plots the strength of the hippocampal and cortical memory traces for an event that occurred at time 0 according to the the Complementary Learning Systems theory. The figure on the right plots that theory’s predictions about the strength of the hippocampal and cortical memory traces for a person with

Answer 75

retrograde amnesia

Question 76

Which approach to categorization involves forming a representation of a category based on the average of category members that a person has encountered in the past?

Answer 76

prototype

Question 77

According to the complementary learning systems theory, the computational characteristics of the hippocampal system include which of the following? (More than one answer may be correct.)

Answer 77

It is less susceptable to interference than the cortical system.

It uses sparse coding

Question 78

Concluding that “Cristiano Ronaldo is mortal” based on the premises “All humans are mortal” and “Cristiano Ronaldo is a human” is an example of what kind of reasoning?

Answer 78

deductive

Question 79

Which of the following is characteristic of retrograde amnesia due to damage to the medial temporal lobe? (More than one answer may be correct.)

Answer 79

It involves impaired memory for events that occurred before damage to the MTL.

It involves impaired performance on explicit memory tasks.

Question 80

People are more likely to use a birth-control method that is described as having a 90% success rate than a 10% failure rate. This preference exemplifies which of the following?

Answer 80

the framing effect

Question 81

Which of these examples illustrates the pattern of progressive differention observe during human development?

Answer 81

The distinction between plant and animal is learned before the distinction between dog and cat.

Question 82

Match each task with the type of process it is most likely to engage

Answer 82

personal moral judgement: type 1

impersonal moral judgements: type 2

prototype-based category learning: type 1

wason 4 card task using abstract rules: type 2

conjunction search: type 2

Question 83

Evidence for innate category specificity in the brain comes from research which found that

Answer 83

blind and sighted participants showed similar neural response patterns in their visual systems for judgments about animals and nonliving things

Question 84

One reason that most people do not easily solve the original (abstract) version of the Wason four-card problem is that they

Answer 84

are prone to confirmation bias.

Question 85

HM was able to name Martin Luther King based on his picture, even though MLK was not well known at the time of HM’s surgery. Given what we know about memory and its neural basis, what is the most likely explanation for this finding?

Answer 85

Given repeated exposure, a new fact can be learned on the basis of slow cortical learning alone,

Question 86

Research on decision making has shown that

Answer 86

People are more sensitive to changes in probability near 0 or 1 than changes to intermediate probability values

Question 87

Consolidation is associated with which stage of memory?

Answer 87

storage

Question 88

Which of the following is preserved in amnesia? (More than one answer may be correct.)

Answer 88

repetition priming
procedural learning

Question 89

Damage to which of the following brain regions is most likely to cause amnesia?

Answer 89

medial temporal lobe

Question 90

The graph below depicts the hypothetical results of an experiment in which participants (either amnesics or controls) had to decide whether each word on a list referred to an abstract (e.g., BEAUTIFUL) or concrete (e.g, GRANITE) concept. Later, they completed two different tasks: A cued recall task, is which they they were asked to remember a word from the abstract/concrete task that started with a particular letter sequence (BEA_____), or to try to think of any word that starts with that sequence (a word completion task). Given what we now know about amnesia, which of the following are likely possibilities for what is depicted by the graph?

Answer 90

task A: word completion
task B: cued recall

Question 91

Grounded models of semantic memory argue that

Answer 91

the perceptual system is important for forming concepts, but then they are transduced into symbols stored in LTM

Question 92

How does the strength of a cortical memory trace change over time according to the Complementary Learning Systems theory?

Answer 92

It is weak at the time of encoding, increases in strength for a while, and then begins to decrease in strength.

Question 93

Sanfey et al. (2003)’s Ultimatum Game study found that unfair proposals are more likely to be rejected if

Answer 93

Brain regions associated with emotion are strongly activated

Question 94

Bayes’ rule is a mathematical formalism that can be used to

Answer 94

decide how prior beliefs should be updated on the basis of new evidence

Question 95

In propositional network models, a concept is represented by a

Answer 95

node

Question 96

Which of the following statements about the neural bases of memory is true?

Answer 96

Procedural learning and repetition priming involve different brain circuits.

Question 97

Which of the following is a characteristic of implicit memory but not explicit memory? (More than one answer may be correct.)

Answer 97

It is not impaired in amnesia.

It does not require the intention to remember

Question 98

Nader et al.’s (2000) experiment on fear learning in rats revealed that

Answer 98

When a memory is reactivated, it becomes capable of being changed or altered, just as it was immediately after it was formed.

Question 99

Knowledge of what kind of category would be least likely to be lost early in the course of progressive semantic dementia?

Answer 99

superordinate

Question 100

In the connectionist model of semantic memory, similar concepts are represented by.

Answer 100

both A and B

Similar patters of activation
Nearby points in state space

Question 101

“Coherent covariation” refers to

Answer 101

the consistent co-occurrence of a set of features

Question 102

Which of these statements best illustrates the concept of cognitive economy?

Answer 102

The property can fly is stored at the bird node.

Question 103

Some theorists have questioned whether the embodied approach can explain

Answer 103

How we understand abstract concepts

Question 104

The soundness of a syllogism depends on

Answer 104

both its form and the truth of its premises

Question 105

Normative theories of decision making ignore practical limitations such as the number of options that can be considered and limited access to information about the possible outcomes of those options. Recognition of this fact led to Herbert Simon to introduce the concept of ____.

Answer 105

Bounded rationality.