Understanding the Mind

1. Patients suffering from clinical amnesia are characterized by a disorder in their:
a. memory
b. ability to recognize patterns
c. speech
d. ability to comprehend language

2. Introspection, by definition, CANNOT be used to study:

a. topics that are strongly colored by emotion
b. mental events that are unconscious
c. processes that involve conceptual knowledge
d. events that take a long time to unfold

3. Which of the following would a classical behaviorist be LEAST likely to study?
a. a participant’s response to a particular situation
b. a participant’s beliefs
c. changes in a participant’s behavior that follow changes in the environment
d. principles that apply equally to human behavior and to the behavior of other species

4. Cognitive psychology often relies on the transcendental method in which:
a. mental events are explained by referring to events in the central nervous system
b. information from introspection transcends behavioral data
c. researchers seek to infer the properties of unseen events on the basis of the observable effects of those events
d. theories are tested via computer models

5. The “word-superiority effect” refers to the fact that it is easier to recognize:
a. short (three- or four-letter) words than long words
b. a letter within the context of a word than it is to recognize a letter presented by itself
c. a word presented in a phrase than it is to recognize a word presented by itself
d. words that are frequently used under tachistoscopic conditions

6. In a tachistoscopic procedure, participants are shown the sequence NACL. Evidence indicates that:
a. the distinctive letter pattern in the sequence will help participants recognize the sequence
b. the familiarity of the sequence (i.e., the chemical formula for table salt) will help participants recognize the sequence
c. participants are likely to misperceive the sequence, reading it as if it were a common letter pattern such as NAIL
d. participants will be unable to organize the letters, and therefore they will only perceive some of the sequence’s features, not the large-scale units

7. Compared to detectors that haven’t fired recently, a detector that has fired recently is likely to:
a. be at a higher position within the network of detectors
b. have a higher response threshold
c. have a higher activation level
d. require more priming in order to fire

8. Participants in a tachistoscopic procedure are shown the sequence CQRN. Participants misperceive this string as CORN. In a feature-net account, which of the following statements is probably NOT contributing to this effect?
a. O is a more frequently used letter in English than is Q. Therefore, the O-detector is better primed.
b. CO is a more frequent letter pair in English than CQ. Therefore, the CO- detector is better primed.
c. A well-primed bigram detector will fire even if the letter detectors feeding into that bigram detector are firing weakly.
d. Feature nets are generally unable to identify nonwords.

9. Biederman’s recognition by components (RBC) model:
a. does not rely on a hierarchy of detectors
b. makes use of geon detectors, which in turn trigger detectors for geon assemblies
c. asserts that priming takes place primarily at levels higher than the level of geon detectors
d. can recognize three-dimensional objects provided they are seen from the appropriate viewing angle

10. Top-down mechanisms suggest:
a. upright stimuli are processed faster than inverted stimuli
b. faces are processed faster than other body parts or inanimate objects
c. processing can be driven by knowledge and expectations
d. incoming information about a stimulus activates feature detectors

11. The task of shadowing involves:
a. immediately repeating, word for word, the contents of a message
b. drawing the mirror image of a simple sketch
c. copying the movements of a target individual
d. repeating back, from memory, a message heard some minutes earlier

12. A participant has just participated in an experiment involving dichotic listening. Of the following choices, the participant is LEAST likely to remember:
a. whether the unattended channel was spoken by a male or a female
b. whether the unattended channel contained nonspeech noises or speech
c. the semantic content of the attended channel
d. the meaning of the words presented on the unattended channel

13. In which of the following situations would we expect the fastest response time?
a. The stimulus being presented to the participant is identical in form to the stimulus used as the warning signal.
b. The stimulus being presented to the participant is markedly different from the stimulus used as the warning signal.
c. The stimulus being presented to the participant is the stimulus the participant was expecting.
d. The stimulus being presented to the participant is identical in form to the warning signal but is different from the stimulus the participant was expecting.

14. In each trial of an experiment, participants see a warning signal and then, a half-second later, see a pair of letters. The participants press one button if the letters are the same (e.g., W W) and a different button if the letters are different (e.g., P X). In 80% of the trials, the warning signal is identical to the letters that will be shown on that trial. Listed below are the warning signals and the test stimuli presented on trial number 97 of the procedure.
Group 1 warning signal = L; test pair = L L
Group 2 warning signal = U; test pair = L L
Group 3 warning signal = +; test pair = L L
In this setup we should expect fastest responses from:
a. Group 3 and slowest responses from Group 2
b. Group 1 and slowest responses from Group 3
c. Group 1 and slowest responses from Group 2
d. Group 1 and no difference between Groups 2 and 3

15. A patient has suffered brain damage and, as a result, now seems to ignore all information on the left side of her world. If shown words, she reads only the right half of the word; if asked to copy a picture, she copies only the right half. This patient seems to be suffering from:
a. a hemispherectomy
b. right hemiblindness
c. the unilateral neglect syndrome
d. parietal syndrome

16. Change blindness indicates that:
a. perception is not sufficient for attention
b. attention cannot be divided
c. changes in a scene are easily detected
d. attention is not sufficient for perception

17. The operations through which we gain new knowledge, retain that knowl¬edge, and later use that knowledge are often divided into three categories. Which of the following is NOT one of those categories?
a. retrieval
b. acquisition
c. deliberation
d. storage

Free recall refers to:
a. word association within a list of words
b. recalling words from a list in any order
c. recalling experiences from the past prompted by words within a list
d. memory that requires few attentional resources

19. An experimenter reads a list of 30 words to a group of participants at the rate of one word per second. This is immediately followed by a free-recall test. A second group of participants hears the same 30 words presented at the faster rate of two words per second. We should expect that the group hearing the slower presentation will show improved memory performance for the:
a. pre-recency portion of the list, but there will be no impact on the recency effect
b. recency effect and diminished performance for the rest of the list
c. entire list
d. words at the list’s end, but there will be no improvement for the words earlier in the list

20. Within working memory, “helpers” like the visuospatial buffer and articulatory rehearsal loop:
a. can take over some of the lower-level analyses ordinarily performed by the central executive
b. can provide verbal, but not visual, analysis of the memory items
c. provide short-term storage of items likely to be needed shortly by the central executive
d. preserve the items to be remembered in their initial sensory form (e.g., visual stimuli are preserved as visual images)

21. Data indicate that, all things being equal, recall performance will be BEST if materials are encoded with _____ processing.
a. shallow
b. intermediate
c. deep
d. sensory

22. Establishing a memory connection:
a. allows you to access memory X from memory Y if they are connected but will not help you access memory Z if it is not connected to memory X or Y
b. primes all memory connections so that all memories are quicker to retrieve
c. can occur only for emotional memories
d. is better for emotional memories than for other types of memories

Context has an effect on memory:
a. because it interferes with the retrieval paths
b. only if the information is recalled in the same physical environment where it was learned
c. because it influences how the person thinks of the material to be remembered
d. but not on the way a person perceives a memory

. Which of the following statements is NOT true for explicit memory?
a. Explicit memory is typically revealed as a priming effect.
b. Explicit memory is usually assessed by direct, rather than indirect, testing.
c. Explicit memory is usually revealed by specifically urging someone to remember the past.
d. Explicit memory is often tested by recall testing or by a standard recognition test

25. Theodore has suffered from Korsakoff’s amnesia for the last decade. Theodore is LEAST likely to do which of the following actions?
a. accurately recall events from early childhood
b. hold a coherent conversation lasting many minutes
c. recall events that occurred last month
d. recognize people he met 18 years ago

26. If a memory is like a city you want to travel to, and the retrieval paths you use to find the memory are like highways that lead to that city, which is the BEST strategy for memorizing?
a. Build one really big highway, so you are more likely to find the answer later.
b. Build many highways that travel in many directions, so you have multiple ways to remember it later.
c. Build toll roads (premium highways) so you can get to the memories as fast as possible with little traffic.
d. Invest very little in building highways because you never know which highway will be the best road in the future.

27. A broader understanding of a situation or story:
a. always improves memory by providing context
b. always hurts memory by confusing new events with old information
c. can improve or hurt memory
d. does little to affect the quality or quantity of memory

28. Liz is trying to remember what she read in a text chapter, but she inadver¬tently mixes into her recall her own assumptions about the material covered in the chapter. This is an example of:
a. omission errors
b. recognition failures
c. intrusion errors
d. misses

29. When presented with a list of words along a theme (e.g., “bed,” “rest,” “slumber,” “dream,” “tired”), participants often (mis)recall the theme word to be part of the list (e.g., “sleep”). This procedure is commonly referred to as the:
a. Disclusion–Recall–Memory procedure
b. Decreased-Remembering-Magniture procedure
c. Deese–Roediger–McDermott procedure
d. Daily-Reconstructing-Mnemonics procedure

30. Which of the following claims regarding schema-based knowledge is NOT true?
a. Gaps in our memory can often be filled by relying on schema-based knowledge.
b. Schema-based knowledge often ends up regularizing our recollection of the past.
c. Schema-based knowledge relies on remembering specific information within a memory (e.g., although shelves normally contain books, I remember that those shelves contain only boxes).
d. Schema-based knowledge can help guide attention and understanding so that it can help reconstruct parts of a memory that we cannot remember

31. Evidence suggests that decay:
a. accounts for the vast majority of forgetting
b. probably explains far less forgetting than interference or retrieval failure
c. in combination with repression, explains virtually all of forgetting
d. occurs for all memories

32. Will has been to the zoo many times, usually with his family but also once on a school field trip. When Will tries to remember the field trip, his recollection is:
a. likely to include elements imported from memories of other zoo trips
b. unlikely to be influenced by schematic knowledge
c. likely to be highly accurate in its details
d. unlikely to include much perceptual information

. An important theme emerging from memory research is that memory connections:
a. are crucial for recognition but are less important for recall
b. can improve our memory accuracy
c. make memories easier to locate but can lead to intrusion errors
d. play a role in implicit memory but not in generic memory

34. We cannot prevent memory errors, but can they be detected?
a. Yes, they can be detected by using confidence as an indirect measure of accuracy.
b. Yes, they can be detected by using physiological measures of emotion.
c. No, they cannot be detected, but confidence is correlated with accuracy.
d. Currently there is no reliable detector.

35. It seems unlikely that our conceptual knowledge is represented by mental definitions because:
a. each person has his or her own idea about how concepts should be defined
b. many of our abstract concepts (justice, love, and God) are difficult to define
c. it is easy to find exceptions to any definition proposed
d. most of our concepts are difficult to express in words

36. Participants are asked which birds they think are “particularly birdy” and which birds are “not very birdy.” We should expect that the birds judged as “birdiest” are birds:
a. rarely mentioned in a production task
b. that are infrequent in the participants’ environment
c. identified quickly in a picture-identification task
d. not likely to be identified as typical

37. Judgments about which category members are typical:
a. are easily shifted by changes in context or changes in perspective
b. shift as one learns more about the category but then become quite stable
c. differ sharply across cultures
d. are impressively constant across individuals and situations

38. Reuben is visiting the aquarium and has just seen an octopus for the very first time. Reuben is therefore likely to have:
a. a definition for the concept of octopus
b. only exemplar-based knowledge for the concept of octopus
c. a prototype for the octopus concept
d. a prototype for the octopus concept and some exemplar-based knowledge

39. A categorization heuristic strategy:
a. allows swift categorization of a target even if the strategy risks an occasional error
b. seeks accurate categorization even if the strategy is sometimes inefficient
c. predicts both inefficient and slow categorization
d. uses prototypes to promote accurate identifications

40. Participants are told that Flower A has a disease and are asked how likely it is that all flowers will have the same disease. Which of these is LEAST likely to affect the participant’s opinion?
a. whether the participant is an expert of flowers
b. whether Flower A is a typical flower
c. whether Flower A had been mentioned recently and so has been primed
d. a participant’s causal belief in how the disease infected Flower A

41. Which of the following explanations is NOT discussed with respect to theories of categorization?
a. use definitions to create categories
b. use dissimilarity to determine category membership
c. create boundaries to separate categories
d. focus on the center of a bounded area

42. A psychologist asks her experimental participants to describe their experiences in using mental imagery. The psychologist is collecting:
a. sentence-verification results
b. self-report data
c. chronometric evidence
d. converging evidence

43. Participants are given a task that requires them to zoom in on a mental image in order to inspect a detail. Evidence indicates that:
a. the greater the distance to be zoomed, the more time required
b. the shorter the distance to be zoomed, the more time required
c. zooming in on an image is a virtually instantaneous process
d. there is no regular relationship between amount of zoom and the time required

44. In some studies, participants have been asked to visualize a particular stimulus (e.g., the letter A). If the same stimulus is then presented at low contrast, visualization:
a. has no effect on the perception of the stimulus
b. primes perception, but no more than when participants were asked to visualize a different letter (e.g., the letter B)
c. disrupts perception of the stimulus
d. serves to prime perception of the stimulus

45. Researchers have argued that visual images are created by:
a. activating large-scale “templates” in long-term memory
b. following “recipes” for the image construction, with the recipes drawn from image files in long-term memory
c. activating the relevant neurons on the retina
d. activating nodes within long-term memory that happen to be associated with sensory information

46. According to Paivio, a word like “chair” is _____ than a word like “faith.”
a. easier to memorize
b. more difficult to memorize
c. more easily confused with one another
d. easier to identify

47. Which of the following is NOT an example of a frequency judgment?
a. “You’ve only worn that shirt once since I gave it to you!”
b. “I am certain that he is bluffing.”
c. “There certainly are a lot of pizzerias in this neighborhood.”
d. “The number of truly caring physicians is getting smaller and smaller.”

48. An employer interviews a job candidate for 15 minutes. On the basis of this, the employer decides that the candidate will perform well in the job, so he hires her. This is a case of a:
a. sound decision because the employer is making use of available information
b. sound decision because the employer is employing base rates
c. potential error because the employer is assuming that a small sample of information (the interview) is representative of a broader pattern (job performance)
d. potential error because the employer is relying on schema-based reasoning rather than on deduction

49. Reasoning from “man who” arguments is usually inappropriate because generalizing from a single case is justified only:
a. for heterogeneous categories
b. when the sample size is adequate
c. when the base rates are unknown
d. for truly homogeneous categories

50. The tendency toward anchoring is:
a. evident whenever an anchor is present
b. not detected if participants see clearly that the anchor was randomly chosen
c. only observed if the anchor is suggested by an authority figure
d. not observed if the anchor is known to be false

51. The text suggests that illusory covariations arise from the fact that participants:
a. base their covariation estimates only on a small sample of the data that are available to them
b. are generally dogmatic and make their judgments with little regard for the data
c. do not know how to compute covariation, so they use an estimation strategy that is little better than guessing
d. do not know how to make these judgments, so performance improves once the participant gains some expertise

52. The law of large numbers implies that larger samples of data are less likely to show accidental patterns; therefore, larger samples are generally more informative. In making judgments about evidence, participants:
a. seem to understand and respect this law
b. ignore this law even though they do follow other principles of statistics
c. follow this law only if they have been trained in statistics
d. ignore this law in some situations but respect it in other situations

53. Background knowledge can lead to mistakes, but it can also provide a benefit if:
a. the person is aware of heuristics
b. the knowledge is about how the parts of the problem are related
c. the person is very confident in his or her knowledge
d. it contains descriptive information

54. Deduction is a process that:
a. allows us to extrapolate from a sample of evidence
b. allows us to make specific predictions on the basis of more general knowledge
c. helps us to draw general conclusions on the basis of specific facts
d. helps us to determine whether a pattern exists in a set of observations

55. Isaac Newton’s theories make a huge number of predictions, and the evidence generally fits with the predictions. Nonetheless, most physicists believe that Newton’s theories are wrong; that is, they describe only a limited range of cases, rather than all of reality. This state of affairs highlights the ambiguity of:
a. normative data, because Newton’s theory tells us little about how events should unfold
b. disconfirmation, because Newton’s theory is easily disconfirmed
c. confirming evidence, because Newton’s theory is well confirmed but still not true
d. hypothesis testing, because Newton’s theory has resisted a broader test

56. Belief perseverance is one of the phenomena used to demonstrate:
a. normative thinking
b. confirmation bias
c. rigid thinking
d. nonselective memory search

57. “All television shows are junk. Junk is not worth watching. Therefore, all television shows are not worth watching.” This is an example of:
a. conditional reasoning
b. a categorical syllogism
c. modus ponens
d. induction

58. In theories of decision-making, the utility of a particular commodity can be defined in terms of the:
a. degree of value associated with the commodity for a social group
b. value that has historically been placed on the commodity
c. monetary cost associated with the commodity
d. subjective value associated with the commodity for each individual

59. A rooster thinks it causes the sun to rise, because every morning the rooster crows and then the sun rises. This story illustrates which important point about reasoning?
a. Roosters do not have the reasoning skills humans do, because humans would never make this type of reasoning mistake.
b. Sometimes there is no way to disprove something.
c. A belief can be confirmed hundreds of times, but still be false.
d. It is more important to confirm a theory than disconfirm it.

60. Adam bets on the Super Bowl every year. He thinks he has a really good strategy for selecting the winning team, and most years he wins. In 2009, he bet on Arizona, but Pittsburgh won. How is Adam likely to remember this loss?
a. He won’t remember losing, he will think he selected Pittsburgh.
b. He won’t remember losing, because he will misremember Arizona winning.
c. He will remember losing, and say his strategy doesn’t always work.
d. He will remember losing, but say he should have won, if it wasn’t for that interception in the second quarter.

61. Some psychologists describe problem-solving as a process of searching. Which of the following is NOT part of this description?
a. the problem’s initial state
b. the problem’s path conflicts
c. the problem’s goal state
d. the problem’s operators

62. One plan for solving a problem would be to consider every possible option, searching for the best solution. This broad plan is:
a. usually the best way to proceed for complicated problems
b. more effective with ill-defined problems
c. usually ruled out by the sheer number of possible states within the problem space
d. often the only plan available

63. Which of the following is NOT a heuristic used in problem-solving?
a. framing
b. hill-climbing
c. means-end analysis
d. working backward from the goal state

64. Analogies are:
a. often misleading, since an analogy depends on a problem’s surface structure
b. relatively ineffective for solving problems, unless the problem is a familiar one
c. an effective way to promote understanding and problem-solving
d. relevant only for a narrow set of problems

65. Which of the following problems is ill-defined?
a. Sarah is trying to think of a way to impress her boss.
b. Susan is trying to decide which route to take to the soccer game.
c. Sheila can’t decide whether to go to a movie this evening or to study in the library.
d. Samantha is having trouble choosing which courses to take next semester.

66. According to the scoring procedure originally used by Binet, a child who scores at age 10 when he or she is only 8 would have an IQ of
a. 100
b. 125
c. 150
d. 200

67. Mark scored very well on a verbal intelligence test. How is he likely to score on a visuospatial test of intelligence?
a. He will score below average on the visuospatial test
b. He will score above average on the visuospatial test
c. One cannot assume how he will score because there is no correlation between general and specialized intelligence
d. He will score similarly if he takes the test today, but his score will be very different if he takes the test in a few months

68. Dr. Smarts is giving a test to a few students in his class. The test is very simple: he presents two objects and asks the students to reply as quickly as possible if they match (yes or no). Student 1 replies faster than student 2. What does this indicate about the students’ intelligence levels?
a. Student 2 is more intelligent than student 1
b. Student 1 is more intelligent than student 2
c. Both students are likely to have above average intelligence
d. Reaction time on this task is not correlated with intelligence

69. Which of the following is NOT an example of the principle, “We are aware of products but not of processes”?
a. Jeff knew that the stimulus seemed familiar, but he did not know why
b. Jesse believed that the stimulus was “cake,” but he could not tell whether he had seen the stimulus or just inferred it
c. Jeremy suddenly found himself thinking about marriage, and he could not figure out what had brought this idea into his thoughts
d. Jacob wanted to do well on the spelling test, but he did not know the best way to study the words

70. Our unconscious thinking about an event
a. tends to be simple and direct, leading us, for example, to think of the event as familiar or preferable
b. can often be quite complex, involving several steps of reasoning and inference
c. can influence us in small ways but seems not to have larger-scale impact
d. is most influential with novel events; with familiar events, we react in a more reflective fashion

71. Lisa rides the train to work and always gets off at stop A. One Saturday she has to go into town, and she rides the same train she takes to work. She is supposed to get off at Stop F, but she starts talking to her mother on the phone and then gets off at stop A. What does this tell us about unconscious processing?
a. Unconscious processing is impossible
b. Unconscious processing only causes problems
c. If not consciously attending to what we are doing, we will rely on habit
d. People tend to make the same mistakes over and over again

72. Is it possible to study unconsciousness through consciousness?
a. No; any tests would be based on subjective introspections
b. No; unconscious activity does not exist
c. Yes; by asking what activities can be done without consciousness
d. It has not been studied successfully yet, but will be in time

73. Which of these is NOT an example of causal attribution in unconscious thinking?
a. Jenny believes she remembers the color of her last birthday cake
b. Louise finds a name familiar so she believes it belongs to a famous person
c. Abby remembers the face of a man so she believes the man was part of a robbery
d. In an experiment, Jane is willing to experience a higher intensity of electric shock as she believes any adverse reactions are the side effects of a pill that she took prior to the experiment

74. When asked to introspect about their reasons for making a particular choice, participants
a. sometimes offer an explanation with great confidence even though the explanation names factors that they know to be irrelevant and leaves out factors that they know to be crucial
b. can usually specify their reasons and can also report on the processes used for selecting the reasons
c. often have no idea about their reasons, but if they are able to report their reasons, they are likely to be correct
d. report their reasons in general terms but do so with little confidence

75. Our thoughts seem to be embedded in a context that is usually not noticed yet serves to define and guide the thoughts. Which of the following is NOT an example of this sort of context?
a. Discovery based on mental imagery is influenced by the perceptual reference frame for the image
b. Decisions are guided by how the decision is framed
c. The meaning of the terms involved in our thoughts is clarified by the surrounding context of thought
d. Perception of a word or object is strongly shaped by the other words and objects that surround the target