Cognitive Psychology Test Questions, Exam Questions, Quiz Questions

If you are trying to remember a list of words for later recall, the WORST way to do it is:
A) make yourself generate the words when you are provided with minimal cues for them
B) try to relate the words meaningfully to one another
C) repeat the words over and over, quickly
D) think about what the words mean
What kind of concept theory adequately accounts for your knowledge that small birds sing but big birds don't sing?
A) Exemplar theory
B) Classical concept theory
C) Roschian theory
D) Prototype theory
Which of the following tasks is least appropriate as a means of testing implicit memory?
A) word-stem completion
B) repetition priming in tachistoscopic recognition
C) lexical decision
D) cued recall
Which of the following is most generally true? _________ errors are most common in short term recall while __________ errors are most common in long term recall:
A) sound-alike...sound-alike
B) meaningful...meaningful
C) meaningful...sound-alike
D) sound-alike...meaningful
In a parallel distributed processing (PDP) connectionist model, an object or event is represented by ______.
A) Activation of one specific node.
C) A learning algorithm.
B) An activation function.
D) A pattern of activation across nodes.
The fan effect, discussed in class, is taken to support
A) state-dependent learning
B) spreading activation network theories
C) depth of processing
D) encoding specificity
A position described by your lecturer (and advocated in the textbook) claims that implicit memories _________________ while explicit memories ____________.
A) involve meaningful, conceptual relationships...involve perceptual fluency
B) generally involve language...generally involve perception
C) involve perceptual fluency...involve meaningful, conceptual relationships
D) are lost in cases of hippocampal damage...are retained in cases of hippocampal damage
An important theme emerging from memory research is that memory connections:
A) improve memory access but have no impact on memory accuracy.
B) make memories easier to locate but can lead to intrusion errors.
C) play a role in episodic memory but not in generic memory.
D) are crucial for recognition but are less important for recall.
The fact that you generally do best when you are tested for material in the same location as where you learned it is most closely related to:
A) source memory
B) state-dependent memory
C) the von Restorff effect
D) proactive inhibition (as opposed to retroactive inhibition)
In spoken language, morphemes are made up of sound categories called _____.
A) phrases.
B) phonemes.
C) words.
D) none of the above.
A connectionist model has all but which of the following:
A) a homunculus
B) activation functions
C) nodes
D) connections
Which of the following is a true difference between sensory storage and working memory?
A) Sensory storage needs rehearsal but working memory does not
B) Sensory storage is verbal and meaningful while working memory relies on visual form
C) Sensory storage lasts longer than working memory.
D) Sensory storage is preattentive while working memory needs attention to encode.
There are some basic problems with the modal model of memory. Which of the following is one of them?
A) LTS may actually keep information longer than STS.
B) Information actually stored in LTS is meaningful.
C) Maintenance in STS is actually not necessary for LTS encoding.
D) Maintenance in STS is actually sufficient for LTS encoding.
If you are played a series of 8 sounds that span the range acoustically from [pa] to [ba], how do you perceive them?
A) Because of top-down processing, you hear them as real words
B) As a continuously graded series that gradually changes from [pa] to [ba]
C) As a series of [pa] sounds that quite suddenly change to some [ba] sounds
D) As a random alternation between [pa] and [ba]
According to language acquisition rules, which of the following mistakes will children seldom if ever make in speaking language?
A) Those that violate logic.
B) Those that contain meaningless words.
C) Those that violate the grammar of their language.
D) Those that violate Universal Grammar.
The creation of false memories in someone:
A) is possible only in the presence of trauma.
B) is possible only with highly suggestible participants.
C) is possible with just a few brief interviews.
D) is possible only with strong and explicit suggestions to them.
Flashbulb memories are extremely detailed, vivid memories, usually associated with highly emotional events. The accuracy of these memories seems:
A) unrelated to any factors researchers have probed so far.
B) strongly associated with participants' confidence levels, differentiating flashbulbs from other forms of memory.
C) best predicted by the consequentiality of the event to participants' lives.
D) remarkably high, identifying these memories as a special class of episodic recall.
In network models, subthreshold activation of a node:
A) influences a node only if the node is already primed.
B) causes that node to fire.
C) can add together with other subthreshold activation.
D) has no effect on the node.
Half of the participants in an experiment learned a list of new material, slept for 8 hours, and were then tested for the material they had learned. The remaining participants learned the same material, spent the next 8 hours awake, and were then tested. Based on other research in this area, we should expect that:
A) the two groups will be similar in their memory performance because the retention interval is the same for both.
B) the group that slept will remember more because they have less opportunity for memory decay.
C) the group that slept will remember more because they will experience less retroactive interference.
D) the group that slept will remember less because they will have less opportunity for post event rehearsal.
Which of the following types of concept theories can account for what we know about the variability of items in a category (e.g., that pennies are always the same size, but pizzas are not)
A) ad hoc theory
B) exemplar theory
C) prototype theory
D) classical theory
In the exemplar theory framework, which of the following is employed to categorize new things?
A) A defining feature
B) Individual instances
C) A prototype
D) Distinctive features
Several scholars have proposed that concepts must be understood in the context of "mental models" or "implicit theories." This perspective implies all of the following except that:
A) our beliefs about a concept indicate which aspects of the concept are essential and which are not.
B) in order to understand an individual concept, we need to understand the concept in the context of other, related concepts.
C) the meaning of a concept is determined by a network of other beliefs.
D) our understanding of a concept includes a definition of the concept but is not limited to that definition.
Following Eleanor Rosch, which of the following is the basic level concept for most people?
A) Mammal.
B) Dog.
C) Collie.
D) Animal.
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
The sentence "John knew the answer was wrong" is
A) a (mild) garden path sentence
B) a sentence used to demonstrate the "minimal attachment" strategy
C) a sentence with a temporary ambiguity
D) all the above
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

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