Cognitive Psychology

Question

1.   Reaction time refers to the time between the _______ of a stimulus and a person's response to it.

a. sensation

1. b. transduction
2. c. change in intensity
3. d. presentation

2. According to Helmholtz’s theory, our perception of objects will follow the _________.

1. a. oblique effect.
2. b. likelihood principle.
3. c. principle of componential recovery.
4. d. principle of speech segmentation.

3. Perceiving machines are used by the U.S. Postal Service to "read" the addresses on letters and sort them quickly to their correct destinations. Sometimes, these machines cannot read an address because the writing on the envelope is not sufficiently clear for the machine to match the writing to an example it has stored in memory. Human postal workers are much more successful at reading unclear addresses, most likely because of

1. a. bottom-up processing.
2. b. top-down processing.
3. c. their in-depth understanding of principles of perception.
4. d. repeated practice at the task.

4. The relationship between the ____________ is NOT measured directly by cognitive psychologists.

1. a. physiological response and the behavioral outcome
2. b. cognitive task and the behavioral outcome
3. c. cognitive task and the physiological response
4. d. cognitive task and the mental response

5. According to the feature integration theory, attention is not involved in the_________stage(s).

1. a. binding
2. b. focused attention
3. c. preattentive
4. d. preattentive and focused attention

6. Rehearsal is important for transferring information from

1. a. sensory memory to long-term memory.
2. b. sensory memory to short-term memory.
3. c. long-term memory to sensory memory.
4. d. short-term memory to long-term memory.

7. Considering that children often produce sentences they have never heard before, Noam Chomsky concluded that language development is driven largely by

1. a. an inborn biological program.
2. b. cultural influences.
3. c. classical conditioning.
4. d. operant conditioning.

8. Entering a primary school and seeing someone selling cars on campus would be perceived as a violation of

1. a. law of good figure.
2. b. physical regularities.
3. c. scene schema.
4. d. law of symmetry.

9. The technique where the participant’s task is to focus on the message in one ear, called the attended ear, and to repeat what he or she is hearing out loud is known as

1. a. filter model attention.
2. b. shadowing.
3. c. dichotic listening.
4. d. detector listening.

10. When Carlos moved to the United States, he did not understand any English. Phrases like "Anna Mary Can Pi and I Scream Class Hick" didn't make any sense to him. Now that Carlos has been learning English, he recognizes this phrase as "An American Pie and Ice Cream Classic." This example illustrates that Carlos was not capable of ____ in English.

1. a. speech segmentation
2. b. the likelihood principle
3. c. bottom-up processing
4. d. algorithms

Answer 1

Hope this helps! :)

1.   Reaction time refers to the time between the presentation of a stimulus and a person's response to it. 

Think of your own reaction to something - you react to something when you first encounter it, or are presented to it. Transduction refers to the transition from a physical stimulus to an electro physical / neural stimulus. 

2. According to Helmholtz’s theory, our perception of objects will follow the likelihood principle

Helmholtz is most famous for his theory of unconscious perception. The likelihood principle proposes that one tends o perceive the most likely interpretation of a stimulus - aka, the one that is most likely to be correct. 

3. Perceiving machines are used by the U.S. Postal Service to "read" the addresses on letters and sort them quickly to their correct destinations. Sometimes, these machines cannot read an address because the writing on the envelope is not sufficiently clear for the machine to match the writing to an example it has stored in memory. Human postal workers are much more successful at reading unclear addresses, most likely because of top-down processing.

Top-down processing refers to the ability of one’s personal experience to guide their perception of a stimulus. In this case, a human postal worker has a lot of experience reading unclear handwriting and probably also has previous knowledge of addresses/neighborhoods. Because of those past experiences, they are able to deduct what the writing actually says. Bottom-up processing refers to the perception of a stimulus purely based on the stimulus itself, with no prior experience necessary. An example of this would be getting a paper cut, having your pain receptors detect painful stimuli, and tell your brain how to react. It’s literally and physically bottom-up, whereas top-down processing is from your brain down to your body. 

4. The relationship between the cognitive task and the mental response is NOT measured directly by cognitive psychologists.

Cognitive psychologists are focused on one’s cognitive processes (learning, memory, perception) and how one understands and reacts (solves problems, makes decisions) based on their cognition. They are also concerned with how their physiological response (neuronal communication) plays a role. 

5. According to the feature integration theory, attention is not involved in the binding stage(s).

Feature integration theory proposes that during a visual search, one initially focuses on the features of a stimulus (color, etc) unconsciously and automatically. This is known as the pre-attentive phase. Next, the person consciously focuses on the objects of the stimulus, like the shapes and orientation of the stimulus. 

6. Rehearsal is important for transferring information from short-term memory to long-term memory.

Memories only stay in short term memory for a brief period of time, so if you want to transfer it to the long-term, permanent memory, rehearsal and repetition of the memory is necessary. 

7. Considering that children often produce sentences they have never heard before, Noam Chomsky concluded that language development is driven largely by an inborn biological program.

Chomsky’s theory suggests that everyone is born with an innate understanding of the way language works. 

8. Entering a primary school and seeing someone selling cars on campus would be perceived as a violation of scene schema. 

Scene schema contains prior information about an object and its spatial relations that are likely to be found in a particular scene. An example of this would be to look for a knife in the kitchen and not in the bathroom, or to look for a stapler in the office and not outside. 

9. The technique where the participant’s task is to focus on the message in one ear, called the attended ear, and to repeat what he or she is hearing out loud is known as dichotic listening. 

This technique is often used to determine where/how the individual processes stimuli. If they attend to / repeat the auditory stimuli presented in the left ear, the psychologist knows their language is processed in the right hemisphere and vise versa. 

10. When Carlos moved to the United States, he did not understand any English. Phrases like "Anna Mary Can Pi and I Scream Class Hick" didn't make any sense to him. Now that Carlos has been learning English, he recognizes this phrase as "An American Pie and Ice Cream Classic." This example illustrates that Carlos was not capable of speech segmentation 

in English.

Speech segmentation refers to the process of mentally creating boundaries and breaks between words and syllables in spoken languages.