Cognitive Psychology Test Questions, Exam Questions, Quiz Questions

1. Many people get the flu, but the form known as the Blue Flu is relatively rare, affecting less than one-tenth of one percent of the population, i.e., 1 in 1000. Nevertheless, a diagnostic test indicates that Jane has the Blue Flu, and this diagnostic test has, in the past, been accurate 90 percent of the time (in the sense that it says that someone has the blue flu 90% of the time when the person does have it, and 10% of the time when the person does not have it). Given this information, the likelihood of Jane having the Blue Flu:
A. is less than 1 percent
B. can not be calculated from this information
C. is approximately 90 percent
D. is approximately 10 percent
2. Heuristics are strategies that:
A. are underused, despite their advantages
B. ensure step-by-step procedures for finding correct conclusions
C. sometimes risk error in order to gain efficiency
D. protect us from overestimating the frequency of real-life events
3. Which of the following logically follows from "All A are B; all C are B"
A. some A are C
B. no A are C
C. all A are C
D. none of the above
4. In the late 1800s the young science of psychology:
A. largely ignored the topic of consciousness.
B. considered consciousness to be a central concern of the science.
C. argued that consciousness could not be studied scientifically.
D. studied consciousness by focusing on the biological roots of conscious thought.
5. One of the typical problems with automatic, unconscious processes is that they:
A. interfere with other processes
B. are incompatible with expertise
C. are inflexible
D. are slow
6. Some reasoning involves going beyond the specific information given to arrive at general principles. What is this reasoning called?
A. Bayesian reasoning
B. Syllogistic reasoning
C. Inductive reasoning
D. Deductive reasoning
7. Remember the phenomenon in which people with damage to the striate cortex, who behave as if they are blind, are significantly above chance when forced to "guess" whether they saw (e.g.) an X or an O. This phenomenon is called:
A. preconscious perception
B. blindsight
C. repression
D. functional fixedness
8. What helps performance in the Wason 4-card task the most?
A. Being trained in syllogistic reasoning
B. Being given substantial monetary incentive to do well
C. having several years experience studying formal logic
D. Being given the task in a concrete form that involves permission
9. A theorist might claim that people innately have certain rules for reasoning (e.g., they have a schema that says if "A and B" is true, then "A" is true). What general approach does this theorist follow?
A. Premise-conversion
B. Mental logic
C. Mental models
D. Syllogisms
10. Solomon thought to himself, 'I must stay away from the bank.' According to the text:
A. Solomon's thought is clear and well defined and refers to both a river's edge and a financial institution.
B. Solomon was probably uncertain whether he was thinking about a river's edge or a financial institution.
C. the ambiguity of this thought is resolved by the unconscious support structure that seems to provide a context for all thought.
D. this thought would be ambiguous by itself, but subsequent thoughts remove the ambiguity.
11. Which of the following is the most justifiable conclusion from Gick & Holyoak's work on the role of analogies in the "tumor" problem?
A. analogies are of substantial value in solving the problem only if people's attention is somehow called to them
B. analogies generally lead people astray in solving the problem because they distract their attention from the underlying structure of the problem
C. having a good analogy usually results in a good solution
D. analogies are not very relevant to solving the problem
12. When reasoning with logic rules, we are likely to make errors when more or more different rules are applied. This is because______.
A. mental illness.
B. our knowledge of the rules is invalid
C. our capacity to use the rules we know is limited.
D. we don't really have logical ability.
13. A mental model theorist explains why some syllogisms are hard and some are easy by claiming:
A. That the hard ones are simply less familiar in everyday life
B. That the hard ones correspond to a greater number of possible mental models than the easy ones
C. That the hard ones are hard because of framing effects
D. That the hard ones involve negation and quantification
14. Which decision heuristic or phenomenon is most like the "typicality effects"? (Hint: think about categorization and concepts)
A. The availability heuristic
B. Inattention to base rates
C. The representativeness heuristic
D. Framing effects
15. Expert problem solvers:
A. use analogies less often than do novices.
B. tend to categorize problems in terms of their deep structure.
C. do not need to rely on mapping in their use of analogies.
D. Focus on the surface of a problem rather than on its deep structure.
16. Of the following, the greatest concern associated with 'framing effects' is that:
A. frames can lead participants to ignore factors that are clearly pertinent to their decision.
B. changes in a decision's frame can lead participants to contradict themselves.
C. frames can lead participants to make risk-averse decisions.
D. frames can lead participants to make risk-seeking decisions.
17. In the context of problem solving, hill-climbing is a(n)
A. algorithm
B. problem space
C. functional fixation
D. heuristic
18. Some cognitive psychology research can increase our understanding of the nature of consciousness. Which area of research is meant by this?
A. perception
B. attention
C. memory
D. all of these areas
19. The term 'covariation' refers to:
A. a cause-and-effect relationship between two variables.
B. the relationship between frequency of objects in the world and their availability in memory.
C. the tendency for one observation to be linked to another observation so that, for example, if one is strong, the other is weak.
D. the pattern of evidence leading participants to the gambler's fallacy.
20. What problem-solving heuristic identifies the difference(s) between the current state and the goal state and selects an operator to reduce these differences?
A. problem restructuring
B. a means-end heuristic
C. hillclimbing
D. Tower of Hanoi
21. The "gambler's fallacy" can best be understood in terms of"
A. The representativeness heuristic
C. Modus Ponens and Modus Tolens
B. The atmosphere effect
D. The availability heuristic
22. Rigidly sticking to familiar uses of objects in defining a problem is often called:
A. functional fixedness
B. hill-climbing
C. means-end heuristic
D. representativeness
24. Researchers have tried to study the 'moment of illumination' in the laboratory. The evidence indicates that:
A. when participants report an illumination, they have in fact made a discovery that will allow them to solve the problem.
B. when participants report an illumination, they are at least as likely to be moving toward a dead end as they are to be moving toward the problem's solution.
C. this experience cannot be observed reliably in laboratory conditions.
D. moments of illumination usually signal that a difficult problem is on the verge of being solved correctly.
25. What kind of college training (major) produces the greatest increase in the frequency with which statistical reasoning is used?
A. psychology and social science
C. foreign languages
B. physics and natural science
D. humanities and fine arts
26. Spelke, Hirst, and Neisser trained their participants to read a book while simultaneously taking dictation. Their data indicate that:
A. participants were unaware of what they had accomplished, so they did not realize that they had actually understood the dictated material.
B. participants were fully aware of the meaning of both the material they were reading and the dictated material.
C. participants were able to write down the dictated material but were unable to comprehend what the 'unattended' material meant.
D. participants were able to write down the dictated material but were unable to remember the material later on.
27. In the linear order problem described in class, what is the "distance effect?"
A. people are slower to accept conclusions that are more distant from their own personal experience
B. people are slower to accept conclusions the longer the time that has elapsed since the problem was presented
C. people are slower to accept conclusions about things that were farther apart in the order
D. people are faster to accept conclusions about things that were farther apart in the order
28. The Tower of Hanoi problem can be solved with a(n):
A. problem space
B. algorithm
C. hillclimbing procedure
D. heuristic
29. The form of reasoning illustrated by the classic "All men are mortals; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal" is called a(n):
A. belief perversion
B. algorithm
C. syllogism
D. heuristic
30. According to an evolutionary psychological perspective, people will perform better on a reasoning problem if that problem can be related to:
A. logical rules
B. statements about necessity rather than sufficiency
C. hunting or gathering.
D. detecting cheaters or betrayal.
31. Some psychologists describe problem solving as a process of 'search.' Which of the following is not part of this description?
A. the problem's 'goal state'
C. the problem's 'operators'
B. the problem's 'initial state'
D. the problem's 'path conflicts'
32. In general, the technique known as 'brainstorming':
A. increases the quality, but not the quantity, of ideas produced.
B. has no effect on either the quantity or the quality of ideas produced.
C. increases the quantity, but not the quality, of ideas produced.
D. increases both the quality and the quantity of ideas produced.
33. Heuristics like availability and representativeness are:
A. undesirable and should be avoided
C. error-free but slow and difficult
B. not used by experts
D. efficient and often useful
34. The fact that most people overestimate their chances of winning when they buy a lottery ticket can plausibly be attributed to:
A. availability heuristic
B. concept prototypes
C. Einstellung
D. algorithmic reasoning
35. While cognitive processes are often unconscious, their products are generally conscious. One of the exceptions to this general point (where the products of cognitive processes were also unconscious) is the case of:
A. explicit memory
B. the popout effect in visual search
C. subliminal perception
D. language comprehension
37. Bayes' rule may be presented as a way of:
A. evaluating the validity of the different syllogistic figures
B. introducing causal reasoning into problems that would otherwise be solved on purely statistical grounds
C. taking base rates as well as diagnosticity into account in estimating conditional probabilities
D. overcoming framing effects in problems involving loss vs. gain
38. One plan for solving a problem would be to consider every possible option, searching for the best solution. This broad plan:
A. is usually the only plan available.
B. is often ruled out by the sheer number of possible states within the problem space.
C. is usually the best way to proceed for large and complicated problems.
D. is more effective with ill-defined problems.
39. At the root of which of the following phenomena may confirmation bias and the availability heuristic be?
A. base rate effects in judgement
B. successful statistical reasoning effects in judgement
C. illusory correlation effects in judgment
D. representativeness effects in judgment
40. The 'expected utility' associated with an action:
A. is negative if the likelihood of success with the action is extremely low.
B. is calculated as the utility of the likely outcome of the action multiplied by the probability of reaching that outcome.
C. provides an estimate that is independent of the likelihood of reaching the action's desired outcome.
D. can be calculated as a value independent of the action's consequences.