Cognitive Psychology Test Questions, Exam Questions, Quiz Questions

Some researchers explain Capgras Syndrome as:
A) a subtype of schizophrenia
B) a simple failure of visual recognition
C) a failure of long-term memory, because patients cannot remember what their own close family members look like
D) the result of a disconnection between a cognitive appraisal and a sense of familiarity.
Theorists have proposed that working memory is best understood as a system involving multiple components. The activities of this system are controlled by a resource called:
A) the supervisor.
B) the central processor.
C) the central executive.
D) the secretary.
How is the effect of word length on memory span in interpreted? In terms of…
A) the Stroop effect
C) Word superiority process
B) Number of slots in the short term store
D) intentional articulatory rehearsal
A participant is shown a series of stimuli and is asked to name the color of the ink in which the stimuli are printed. The eighth stimulus happens to be printed in green ink. We should expect a relatively slow response if the stimulus happens to be:
A) the word "GREEN" printed in green
B) a series of green X's
C) the word "RED" printed in green
D) a nonword printed in green
Which of the following is the most effective way to prevent subjects from successfully reporting back letters read to them in a 'memory span test'?
A) Ask them to speak something irrelevant such as "cola-cola-cola" aloud.
B) Forbid them from speaking anything aloud.
C) Ask them to smile during the process.
D) Ask them to repeat each letter when they hear it.
The "word-superiority effect" refers to the fact that:
A) it is easier to recognize a word presented in a phrase than it is to recognize a word presented by itself.
B) words that are frequently used are more readily identified under tachistoscopic conditions.
C) it is easier to recognize a letter within the context of a word than it is to recognize a letter presented by itself.
D) short (three- or four-letter) words are easier to recognize than longer words.
Biederman's Recognition by Components (RBC) model:
A) makes use of geon detectors, which in turn trigger detectors for geon assemblies
B) asserts that priming takes place primarily at levels higher than the level of geon detectors
C) can recognize three-dimensional objects provided they are seen from the appropriate viewing angle
D) does not rely on a hierarchy of detectors
Which of the following illustrates the successful operation of selective attention?
A) being able to recognize your own name even when you are not paying attention to a speaker
B) falling asleep while watching a radar screen for six hours
C) being able to accurately shadow speech that you focus your attention on
D) being worse at both tasks when you are trying to do two things at once
Which of the following techniques is NOT commonly used to study the localization of brain functions?
A) electrical stimulation during brain operation
B) studies of Aphasia patients
C) measuring the word superiority effect
D) brain imaging by using fMRI
Priming based on specific "conscious" expectations about the identity of the upcoming stimulus produces:
A) a benefit for processing if the expectations are correct but has no effect on processing if the expectations are incorrect.
B) the same benefit as "automatic" stimulus-based repetition priming.
C) a benefit for processing if the expectations are correct but slows processing if the expectations are incorrect.
D) no benefit for processing if the expectations are correct but slows processing if the expectations are incorrect.
The task of reuniting the various elements of a scene, elements that are initially dealt with by different systems in different parts of the brain is called:
A) Binding problem.
B) The "where" system.
C) The "what" system.
D) Parallel processing.
Which of the following statements about "pop out" in Treisman's visual search task is true?
A) "Pop out" happens when you must combine features
B) "Pop out" needs attention and therefore takes time and capacity
C) "Pop out" is not automatic
D) Reaction time is largely independent of the number of items in the visual display
In Treisman's theory of feature integration, the feature combination stage:
A) all of the following answers are correct
B) requires attention
C) requires serial processing
D) has limited capacity
Toby and Tim both have lesions in their left frontal lobes. Toby has trouble producing speech; Tim has difficulties comprehending speech. Both Toby and Tim are likely to receive a diagnosis of:
A) aphasia.
B) neglect syndrome.
C) apraxia.
D) agnosia.
Testing patients with a sectioned corpus callosum allows researchers to do what, better than essentially any other technique?
A) Test whether contralateral projection of visual pathways is true
B) Test whether different sensory systems are represented differently in the brain
C) Apply neuroimaging techniques to map out the dynamics of the living brain
D) Identify the distinct functions of the two hemispheres
Stroop interference indicates that:
A) practice with a variable-mapping task leads to automaticity
B) automatic activities cannot produce interference with other, simultaneous activities
C) the identification of a stimulus requires few resources
D) word reading is automatized
Primary visual cortex (area V1) in the right hemisphere of the brain receives information from:
A) Visual information that reaches right eye
B) Left visual field
C) Right visual field
D) Visual information that reaches left eye
Which of the following techniques uses the BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) response?
A) ERP
B) fMRI
C) MEG
D) CAT
Which of the following does the Stroop effect convincingly demonstrate (at least, for a person's native language)
A) That it is very difficult to avoid naming a word that you see
B) That it is at least as fast to name a word as to name a color
C) That saying one color word can interfere with saying another color word
D) All of the above
Which of the following is the "attentional blink" phenomenon?
A) Normal people have difficulty detecting image change in alternating images.
B) In an experiment in which a student asked directions of an older pedestrian but was replaced by another student when some workmen carried a door past, a lot of subjects failed to notice this.
C) Subjects have more difficulty finding the letter T among Ls than finding a red T among blue Ts.
D) Attention to one stimulus inhibits attention to another stimulus in the same location for 100 ms or so.
Which of the following is true of eye movements:
A) the eyes sometimes move smoothly but occasionally show saccadic movements when you are reading a book
B) the eyes show saccadic movements when you are pursuing a moving object
C) the eyes show saccadic movements when you are reading a book
D) the eyes show smooth movement when you are reading a book
One important difference between classical behaviorism and cognitive psychology is that cognitive psychology:
A) insists on studying topics that can be directly and objectively observed.
B) argues that unobservable mental states can be scientifically studied.
C) emphasizes the evolutionary roots of our behavior.
D) rejects the use of human participants.
The primary cortical region that first receives visual stimuli is the
A) optic nerve
B) fovea
C) somatosensory area
D) the occipital lobe
Which of the following is NOT plausibly viewed as a top-down effect in perception?
A) the word superiority effect
C) the difficulty of finding errors in proofreading
B) the phoneme restoration effect
D) feature popout
The phenomenon in which you perceive a speech sound that belongs in a familiar word, but was actually missing when the word was pronounced, is called:
A) the word-frequency effect
B) the verbal-transformation effect
C) the phonemic restoration effect
D) the biased-perceiver effect.
You are more likely to cause an auto accident if you are talking on a cell phone while you are driving than if you are not using a cell phone. This is best interpreted in terms of
A) the popout effect
B) limited capacity
C) change blindness
D) Stroop interference
If you try very hard, you probably can reduce the Stroop effect. What part of the brain do you think is most related to this task?
A) Broca's area
B) Ventral temporal area
C) Thalamus
D) Frontal cortex
Some "framing effect" phenomena in decision-making can be explained by assuming that:
A) people are affected by their expectations (top-down processing) as well as by objective reality (bottom-up processing)
B) subjective utility is an S-shaped function of objective value, with the fastest changes in subjective utility occurring at relatively small values of objective gain or loss
C) subjective utility is an S-shaped function of objective value, with the smallest changes in subjective utility occurring at relatively small values of objective loss or gain
D) people do not make their decisions in a rational way but instead area affected by how the decisions are framed
As a neuromaging techinque, ERP is characterized by
A. Low spatial and low temporal resolution
B. Low spatial and high temporal resolution
C. High spatial and high temporal resolution
D. High spatial and low temporal resolution
What is one way in which a feature net (for recognizing words) can account for the fact that letter strings that follow the spelling patterns of English are recognized faster than letter strings that don't?
A. including bigram detectors as nodes in the net
B. including whole-word nodes in the net
C. including the correct primitive features in the net
D. including hypercomplex features as nodes in the net
The recognition of faces:
A. resembles other forms of recognition in that our ability to recognize faces is relatively unimpaired by changes in viewing angle or orientation
B. differs from other forms of recognition in that face recognition appears not to be influenced by expectation or knowledge effects
C. is influenced by configurational factors, suggesting that a model based on feature detection will provide a poor explanation of face recognition
D. seems to rely on the detection of features and geons, indicating that the recognition by components model can be applied to face recognition