Attention and Cognition

Question 1

A medical student walks into a loud, crowded room. She is quickly able to pick up and then follow the sound of her friend’s voice over other conversations. Which type of attention will the student employ?

Answer 1

selective attention

This is the ability to focus on a specific task or stimuli while other, unrelated stimuli are occurring in the environment.

Question 2

A medical student on an emergency medicine rotation is told by her attending to perform a chart review on the patient in Bay 3. If a nurse comes by and tells the student they must also monitor the EKG readouts on the patient in Bay 2. Which type of attention will the student employ?

Answer 2

divided attention

This is the attention one uses when one is asked to perform more than one task at a time. The degree of division is related to the relative difficulty levels of the tasks.

Question 3

What kind of attention does Broadbent’s filter model and Treisman’s attenuation model exemplify?

Answer 3

selective attention

Both of these models sought to explain how we direct our attention to stimuli that are currently relevant or important while simultaneously ignoring unimportant stimuli.

Question 4

This model of attention proposes that only some information makes it past a barrier (or “filter”), while the rest is degraded and never enters short-term memory.

Answer 4

Broadbent’s filter model of attention

This was a relatively early and somewhat extreme model of attention, in that it posited that information either makes it past the filter or it doesn’t, with no gray area.

Question 5

In Broadbent’s filter model, where is information held if it does not pass the filter before being degraded or lost?

Answer 5

sensory store

According to Broadbent, all information begins in a sensory store (similar to the concept of sensory memory).

Based on characteristics such as loudness and direction, certain information passes through a selective filter and exits this store, while the rest lingers there until it is lost.

Question 6

This model of attention proposes that information that makes it past an initial barrier is noticed, while other information is dampened (and thus less likely to be noticed) but is not shut out entirely.

Answer 6

Treisman’s attenuation model

This is similar to Broadbent’s filter model, except that the filter does not block out information entirely. Instead, information that does not pass that initial barrier (here, an “attenuator” rather than a “filter) is simply dampened and is less likely to be noticed.

Question 7

Fill in the blank.

At a crowded event, you are deep in conversation with a good friend. Suddenly, you hear your name come up in a separate conversation, and your head turns. In psychology, this is termed the ______ ______ effect.

Answer 7

cocktail party

This effect, closely related to attention, refers to one’s ability to notice information that was not previously being attended to when that information is important (such as one’s name).

Question 8

Which mode of attention does the cocktail party effect supports?

Answer 8

Treisman’s attenuation model

If a person is able to notice his or her name in a conversation that he or she was not actively paying attention to, that conversation must have been attenuated but not filtered out entirely. This aligns with Treisman’s attenuation model.

Question 9

Name this common test of attention, in which a subject is presented with two different sounds at the same time, one in each ear.

Answer 9

dichotic listening

In a dichotic listening test, the subject is typically asked to put on headphones. Through one ear, one sound (such as a voice) is played, while a different sound is played through the other ear. The subject is then directed to pay attention to one ear or the other and asked questions.

Question 10

In a dichotic listening task, a subject is asked to repeat the words heard through the left ear. What are the term for tasks which the subject repeats words immediately after hearing them?

Answer 10

shadowing

Shadowing studies are common topics of MCAT psych/soc experimental passages. While the aim and exact topic of the experiment depends on the passage, shadowing studies typically focus on selective attention.

Question 11

Which cognitive model posits that the brain operates as a machine?

According to this model, the brain pays attention to and perceives our surroundings, and once the input is processed, it is stored for later.

Answer 11

information processing model

Question 12

In which of Piaget’s stages does one learn object permanence?

Even if an object is hidden from view, it continues to exist.

Answer 12

sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)

Question 13

In which of Piaget’s stages does the individual learn that objects and ideas can be symbolized through images and words?

The individual also learns to speak in this stage and is very egocentric, or ignorant of outside perspectives.

Answer 13

preoperational stage (2-7 years)

Question 14

In which of Piaget’s stages does the individual learn the principle of conservation, which is the concept that a tall, thin glass can hold the same amount of water as a shorter, wider glass?

The individual also learns to think logically about events during this stage.

Answer 14

concrete operational stage (7-11 years)

Question 15

During this Piaget stage, individuals learn to use abstract reasoning, such as moral reasoning and hypothesizing.

Answer 15

formal operational (12+ years)

Question 16

Name Piaget’s stages of cognitive development in order.

Answer 16

sensorimotor → preoperational → concrete operational → formal operational

Question 17

Which cognitive limitation is present during the preoperational stage of cognitive development, that prevents a child from seeing the viewpoints of others as different from their own?

Answer 17

egocentrism

For example, this causes children to believe that the adults around them like the same food they do and see objects from the same visual perspective that they do.

Question 18

What cognitive skill allows a child to understand that when his father disappears behind a door, he still exists?

Answer 18

object permanence

Object permanence is developed during the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development.

Question 19

What is it called when a child focuses solely on one aspect of a situation while ignoring all other aspects?

Answer 19

centration

Centration is prominent during the preoperational stage of cognitive development.

Question 20

What cognitive concept is a child failing to understand when they assume a tall, thin glass holds more water than a short, squat glass, despite seeing the same amount of water poured into both?

Answer 20

conservation

Conservation develops during the concrete operational stage of cognitive development.

Question 21

Name the first stage of Piaget’s stages of development.

Answer 21

sensorimotor

This stage occurs from ages 0-2. Its hallmark is the development of object permanence.

Question 22

Name the second stage of Piaget’s stages of development.

Answer 22

preoperational

This stage occurs between ages 2 and 7. Its hallmarks include egocentrism, the development of language, and symbolic thinking (for example, playing pretend).

Question 23

Name the third stage of Piaget’s stages of development.

Answer 23

concrete operational

This stage occurs between ages 7 and 11. A child at this stage understands conservation and can engage in inductive reasoning (drawing conclusions from observations).

Question 24

Name the fourth (and final) stage of Piaget’s stages of development.

Answer 24

formal operational

This stage occurs from age 12 onward (adolescence through adulthood).

Question 25

What are the several aspects of culture that are known to strongly influence cognitive development?

Answer 25

1. Social customs
2. Language
3. Use of words
4. Use of images
5. Social hierarchy

Question 26

What factors contributing to intelligence are twin studies on cognitive development ideal for differentiating the relative contributions?

Answer 26

• Heredity
• Environment

The interplay between these factors is often called the “nature vs. nurture” debate.

Question 27

In which lobe of the brain does cognitive organization and planning processes take place?

Answer 27

frontal lobe

Question 28

Many regions of the brain are associated with cognition. Which part is most responsible for memory formation?

Answer 28

hippocampus

The hippocampus is technically part of the limbic system and is located in the temporal lobe.

Question 29

Fill in the blank.

The hippocampus, hypothalamus, thalamus, and basal ganglia are all components of the limbic system. Another limbic structure, commonly associated with emotion and fear, is the ______.

Answer 29

amygdala

The amygdala acts to facilitate the emotions required to bring about alertness and motivation, both necessary to complete tasks.

Question 30

Which type of problem solving is described when a physician who uses a series of rules, tests, and statistical calculations (such as in evidence-based medicine) and computerized databases to make diagnoses?

Answer 30

Algorithmic

Question 31

In the TV show House, the titular physician would often come up with an initial diagnosis and treatment which would be incorrect, causing the patient to get worse. He and his team would repeat this cycle until the correct diagnosis was reached and the patient cured. Which type of problem solving does this exemplify?

Answer 31

Trial-and-error

This is a method by which one tests/experiments with different approaches until an effective approach is found.

Question 32

Fill in the blank.

Older physicians who eschew evidence-based methods and instead rely on their own medical experience and learned “rules of thumb” to make their diagnoses are employing ______ problem solving.

Answer 32

heuristic

This is the process of using cognitive shortcuts, commonly formed by previous experiences (e.g. a rule of thumb).

Question 33

Fill in the blank.

Primarily seeking out and favoring information that supports and agrees with one’s existing opinions is known as ______ ______.

Answer 33

confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for information that supports a pre-existing idea instead of seeking out new information that may contradict or challenge it.

Question 34

Older physicians often have difficulty in embracing new methods or in recognizing rare diseases, due to fixation on the methods that have worked for them in the past. These physicians exemplify which phenomenon?

Answer 34

mental set

A mental set is the inclination to fixate on answers or methods that have been successful in the past, even if they are irrelevant or inappropriate for the current task.

Question 35

Many stroke patients have significant difficulty learning to use their non-dominant hand after injury due to an insistence on using their impaired arm/hand. Which fixation type is most analogous to this scenario?

Answer 35

function fixedness

Function fixedness is the tendency to observe the functions of things as static. For example, one may think the only way to get to work is by train, when one could just as easily drive, bike, or take a cab.

Question 36

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people with low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. What cognitive bias does this effect is very likely to manifest?

Answer 36

overconfidence

The overconfidence effect states that people systematically overestimate their knowledge and ability to predict events. This effect does not deal with whether single estimates are correct or not, but rather represents the difference between what people know and what they think they know.

Question 37

Which cognitive bias is shown when a husband firmly believes that his wife loves him, despite her frequently leaving him, abusing him, and publicly shaming him?

Answer 37

belief perseverance

This is the tendency for people to hold their beliefs as true, even when there is ample evidence to discredit the belief.

Question 38

Fill in the blank.

A student who primarily searches for information in support of her thesis is exemplifying ______ ______.

Answer 38

confirmation bias

This is the tendency for a person to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions and ignore information which contradicts them.

Question 39

What is the difference between belief perseverance and confirmation bias?

Answer 39

• Confirmation bias refers to the act of seeking out information that agrees with our beliefs.
• Belief perseverance is the persistence of our beliefs regardless of contradictory information that is presented to us.

Question 40

During the Duke lacrosse trial of 2006, the police investigators gathered and interpreted information that only fit with their view of the crime. Information that did not fit their belief was ignored, misinterpreted, or discredited, which lead to the collapse of the case. What cognitive bias is characterized by an ignorance of contradicting evidence?

Answer 40

belief perseverance

Belief perseverance occurs when, faced with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, people may choose to discredit, dismiss, misinterpret, or place little significance on the contradictory information.

Question 41

Due to his part-time work in a research lab, a premed student believes that he has a better ability to answer Skill 3 and Skill 4 MCAT science questions than any other pre-med. Which cognitive bias is the student suffering from?

Answer 41

overconfidence bias

A person with overconfidence bias believes that he/she is better at performing a skill than others, generally to an excessive or inaccurate extent.

Question 42

Psychologist William Stern was the first to devise methods with which to accurately measure intelligence. What parameter did he come up with to measure the “mental age” of an individual?

Answer 42

intelligence quotient (IQ) test

This was an attempt to quantify and compare the collection of abilities/impairments of a particular child to the abilities/impairments possessed by typical children of a similar age group.

Question 43

Name and describe Gardner’s eight types of intelligence.

Answer 43

1. Musical - the ability to compose and/or perform musically.
2. Kinesthetic - the ability to perform athletically.
3. Natural - the ability to understand the biological aspects of the world.
4. Linguistic - the ability to write, read, and speak.
5. Intrapersonal - the ability to have insight regarding, or understand, the self.
6. Interpersonal - the ability to understand and associate with others.
7. Mathematical - the ability to perform mathematical tasks/operations.
8. Spatial - the ability to see and process the space around you.

Question 44

The idea of “street smarts,” or the ability to apply one’s experiential or knowledge base to the world around them, is more formally known as what type of intelligence?

Answer 44

Contextual/practical

This type of intelligence is the ability to apply one’s knowledge base to the outside world. For example, if a person has learned that smoking can give you lung cancer, he or she might move away in public when someone nearby begins to smoke.

Question 45

Doctors with a warm, open bedside manner often exhibit great empathy and sympathy towards their patients. What type of intelligence is this an example of?

Answer 45

Emotional

This type of intelligence refers to the ability to understand, sympathize, empathize, and control one’s emotions.

Question 46

The existence of the g factor, originally proposed by Charles Spearman, relates to the concept of _______ intelligence.

Answer 46

general

Spearman proposed that a single factor, g (corresponding to “general” intelligence) was responsible for an individuals’s performance across mental tasks in general. This was contradicted by many later theories that subdivided intelligence into multiple types.

Question 47

The psychologist Raymond Cattell is best known for developing a theory of intelligence in which the general intelligence factor (g) is divided into which two forms of intelligence?

Answer 47

1. fluid intelligence
2. crystallized intelligence

Question 48

Define:

fluid intelligence

Answer 48

This refers to the ability to use reasoning and logic to solve new problems without referencing existing knowledge.

Fluid intelligence is often contrasted with crystallized intelligence.

Question 49

Define:

crystallized intelligence

Answer 49

This is the ability to use learned knowledge, experience, and information.

Crystallized intelligence is often contrasted with fluid intelligence.

Question 50

Mary Temple Grandin, an American woman with autism, demonstrated profound ability in the field of animal science when she invented her “hug box” or squeeze machine for use in livestock slaughter. What syndrome exemplifies the juxtaposition of excess ability in one area with severe mental deficiency in another?

Answer 50

Savant

This syndrome is characterized by extreme talent in one particular area, such as language, but poor cognitive functioning in most other areas. Savant syndrome may also involve a form of mental retardation or autism.

Question 51

Fill in the blank.

Intelligence is very hard to measure accurately. In particular, differences in IQ between some racial groups is likely not due to race, but due to built-in ______

Answer 51

bias

Many of the tests administered to quantify intelligence/IQ have built-in bias and/or unavoidable confounding factors. For example, distinct racial groups may score differently from each other not because of race, but because of other factors, such as socioeconomic status, income, and access to different qualities of education.

Question 52

Fill in the blank.

The average IQ is ______.

Answer 52

100

The average (or mean) IQ is 100, while the standard deviation of the IQ scale is 15.

Question 53

Fill in the blank.

Individuals who are within one standard deviation of the mean have IQs between ____ and ____.

Answer 53

85 and 115

Since the standard deviation of the IQ scale is 15, to have an IQ within one standard deviation of the mean requires one to have an IQ between 85 (one standard deviation below the mean of 100) and 115 (one standard deviation above 100).

Question 54

Individuals who are within two standard deviations of the mean have IQs between ____ and ____.

Answer 54

70 and 130

Again, the mean of the IQ scale is 100, while the standard deviation is 15. This means that two standard deviations below the mean is 70 (that is, 100 - 15*2), while two standard deviations above the mean is 130 (that is, 100 + 15*2).

Question 55

Which theory states that all languages are alike in structure, and due to common grammar rules and patterns, humans can learn to speak without formal instruction.

Answer 55

Universal Grammar

Question 56

Fill in the blank.

________ believe that humans are born with an innate capability for language development.

Answer 56

Nativists

Nativists believe that humans are born with an innate capability for language development, while interactionists counter that language development is dependent on use and experience.

Question 57

Fill in the blank.

________ counter that language development is dependent on use and experience.

Answer 57

Interactionists

Question 58

Name the two primary brain areas which control speech.

Answer 58

1. Broca’s area
2. Wernicke’s area

Broca’s area - This area is located in the frontal lobe (specifically, the left frontal lobe in most individuals).
Wernicke’s area - This area is located in the temporal lobe (specifically, the left temporal lobe in most individuals).

Question 59

What is the function of Broca’s area?

Answer 59

It is responsible for forming speech.

Patients with damage to Broca’s area cannot properly produce the physical sounds of speech, but they can comprehend language.

This condition is termed Broca’s aphasia.

Question 60

What is the function of Wernicke’s area?

Answer 60

It is responsible for understanding language.

Patients with damage to this area tend to produce the sounds of speech properly, but that speech often degenerates into hard-to-follow “streams of consciousness,” which may be littered with gibberish or made-up words.

This condition is termed Wernicke’s aphasia.

Question 61

Which heuristic involves the tendency to rely disproportionately on information that is more readily obtainable in our minds?

Answer 61

availability heuristic

This heuristic often leads us to overestimate the likelihood of certain events just because they are more freshly “available” in our memories (such as seeing a violent crime on TV and then overestimating the violent crime rate).

Question 62

Which heuristic involves assessing objects and events based on their similarities to a mental “standard,” or prototype, of the object or event?

Answer 62

representativeness heuristic

This heuristic refers to when an individual judges a situation based on how similar the aspects are to prototypes or classic examples the person holds in their mind.

Question 63

Which heuristic involves emotion in our decision-making and can be thought of as similar to a “gut instinct.”

Answer 63

affect heuristic

In psychology, the term “affect” refers to emotion or mood, so the use of the word “emotion” in this description is a helpful clue. Specifically, the affect heuristic refers to the influence that emotional response has on decision-making, particularly the assessment of risks and benefits.

Question 64

Which heuristic might lead an individual to take the same actions they took in a situation in the past, thinking their actions will have a similar result.

Answer 64

familiarity heuristic

This heuristic involves assuming that current situations are similar to familiar ones, which usually causes the individual to take similar action. This can be perfectly fine, but it fails when the current situation is actually different in key aspects.

Question 65

The U.K. referendum in 2016 resulted in a decision (commonly termed “Brexit”) to leave the European Union. This decision was highly unexpected, but after it happened, many people believed that they knew it would happen all along. What bias does this exemplify?

Answer 65

hindsight bias

Hindsight bias refer to our tendency to feel like we anticipated a given outcome when looking back from the future. This is where the common phrase “hindsight is 20/20” comes from.

Question 66

A voter hears the word “socialist” and has an immediate negative reaction, although he cannot tell exactly why, and he rates socialism as “highly dangerous” in a political survey. Which heuristic does this best relate to?

Answer 66

affect heuristic

The affect heuristic refers to the impact that our emotional responses to certain words or potential events impact our assessment of risk related to those events. Here, the voter has no concrete evidence in mind as to why he reacted the way he did—just emotion.

Question 67

A woman expects an office party to be thrown for her on her birthday. She anticipates that her coworkers will surprise her with a cake, even though they know she eats tuna fish every day for lunch. This is most likely due to which heuristic?

Answer 67

representativeness heuristic

This heuristic, or mental shortcut, is the tendency to make judgments about the probability of something happening based on our prototypical idea of a particular event. For example, the woman believes she will receive a cake rather than a tuna fish sandwich, because cakes are typically representative of a birthday.

Question 68

Jill, an ER nurse, has treated over 300 flu patients in the past month. While at the movies on her day off, if someone near her coughs, which diagnosis is Jill likely to mentally make according to the availability heuristic?

Answer 68

Jill will mentally diagnose the person with the flu

The availability heuristic is the tendency to believe that something is more common or more likely to happen just because it is more readily obtainable in our memory. Here, if many people around Jill at her job have the flu, and she notices someone at the movies with a cough, she may make the deduction that they, too, have the flu.

Question 69

Last time C.J. applied for a job, he visited the business in person and handed the receptionist his resume. Now that he is job searching again, he does the same thing. This best relates to which heuristic?

Answer 69

familiarity heuristic

This heuristic refers to our tendency to see events as similar to previous familiar events and therefore to respond to those events similarly to how we did in the past.