CH 1: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Question 1

System that creates mental representations of the world and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning.

a. mind
b. cognition
c. cognitive psychology

Answer 1

a. mind

Question 2

The mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making.

a. mind
b. cognition
c. cognitive psychology

Answer 2

b. cognition

Question 3

The branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making. In short, this branch of psychology is concerned with the scientific study of the mind and mental processes.

a. mind
b. cognition
c. cognitive psychology

Answer 3

c. cognitive psychology

Question 4

Joe and Meg are doing a study in psychology. Joe is asked to push a button as soon as he sees a red light whereas Meg is asked to push a red button if she sees a red light and a green button if she sees a green light. From the information, ________ appear to be involved in a task measuring choice reaction time.

a. only Joe
b. only Meg
c. both Joe and Meg
d. neither Joe nor Meg

Answer 4

b. only Meg

Question 5

The time it takes to react to a stimulus. This is usually determined by measuring the time between presentation of a stimulus and the response to the stimulus. Examples of responses are pushing a button, saying a word, moving the eyes, and the appearance of a particular brain wave.

a. reaction time
b. simple reaction time
c. choice reaction time

Answer 5

a. reaction time

Question 6

Reacting to the presence or absence of a single stimulus (as opposed to having to choose between a number of stimuli before making a response).

a. reaction time
b. simple reaction time
c. choice reaction time

Answer 6

b. simple reaction time

Question 7

Time to respond to one of two or more stimuli. For example, in the Donders experiment, subjects had to make one response to one stimulus and a different response to another stimulus.

a. reaction time
b. simple reaction time
c. choice reaction time

Answer 7

c. choice reaction time

Question 8

Which one of these early pioneers in cognitive psychology was the first to undertake quantitative measurements of mental processes?

a. Donders
b. Ebbinghaus
c. Wundt
d. James

Answer 8

b. Ebbinghaus

Question 9

Wundt’s approach to psychology was called _____ ; an approach to psychology that explained perception as the adding up of small elementary units called sensations.

a. structuralism
b. behaviorism
c. analytic introspection

Answer 9

a. structuralism

Question 10

A procedure used by early psychologists in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli.

a. structuralism
b. behaviorism
c. analytic introspection

Answer 10

c. analytic introspection

Question 11

Hermann Ebbinghaus studied how rapidly information that is learned is lost over time. He used a measure called _____, to determine how much was forgotten after a particular delay.

a. forgetting
b. savings
c. decaying
d. savings curve

Answer 11

b. savings

Measure used by Ebbinghaus to determine the magnitude of memory left from initial learning. Higher savings indicate greater memory.

Question 12

Hermann Ebbinghaus’s plot of savings versus time after original learning.

a. forgetting
b. savings
c. decaying
d. savings curve

Answer 12

d. savings curve

Question 13

Taught Harvard’s first psychology course and made significant observations about the mind in his textbook, Principles of Psychology. Most known for his observations on the nature of attention: paying attention to one thing involves withdrawing from other things.

a. Hermann Ebbinghaus
b. William James
c. John Watson

Answer 13

b. William James

Question 14

________ founded behaviorism which ________ the study of invisible mental processes.

a. John Watson ; rejected
b. John Watson ; accepted
c. William James ; accepted
d. William James ; rejected

Answer 14

a. John Watson; rejected

Question 15

A procedure in which pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a response causes the previous neutral stimulus to elicit that response.

a. operant conditioning
b. classical conditioning
c. behaviorism

Answer 15

b. classical conditioning

Question 16

The approach to psychology, founded by John B. Watson, which states that observable behavior provides the only valid data for psychology. A consequence of this idea is that consciousness and unobservable mental processes are not considered worthy of study by psychologists.

a. structuralism
b. behaviorism
c. analytic introspection

Answer 16

b. behaviorism

Question 17

Type of conditioning championed by B. F. Skinner, which focuses on how behavior is strengthened by presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or social approval, or withdrawal of negative reinforcers, such as a shock or social rejection.

a. operant conditioning
b. classical conditioning
c. behaviorism

Answer 17

a. operant conditioning

Question 18

An animal might learn the general conception of a maze through the use of ________ .

a. the savings curve
b. analytic introspection
c. artificial intelligence
d. cognitive map

Answer 18

d. cognitive map

Question 19

Called himself a behaviorist but studied cognitive processes that were out of the mainstream of behaviorism. Coined the term, “cognitive map” to describe the mental conception of spatial layout within a rat’s mind when studying a maze.

a. John Watson
b. Edward Tolman
c. Hermann Ebbinghaus
d. William James

Answer 19

b. Edward Tolman

Question 20

Noam Chomsky saw language development as being determined not by imitation or reinforcement, but by an ________ that holds across cultures.

a. auditory reinforcement
b. imitation
c. cultural differences
d. inborn biological program

Answer 20

d. inborn biological program

Question 21

The cognitive revolution, which marked a rebirth of the study of the mind, began in the ________ .

a. 1920s
b. 1950s
c. 1990s
d. 1960s

Answer 21

b. 1950s

Question 22

The predominant theme of the information-processing approach holds that the operation of the mind occurs ________ .

a. only through observed behaviors
b. via unconscious processes
c. through a sequence of stages
d. merely through reinforcement

Answer 22

c. through a sequence of stages

Question 23

In a flow diagram of the mind, messages first enter a(n) ________ .

a. unit
b. filter
c. cognitive map
d. detector

Answer 23

b. filter

Question 24

British psychologist that proposed the first flow diagram of the mind.

a. Ebbinghaus
b. Watson
c. Broadbent

Answer 24

c. Broadbent

Question 25

In a classic paper from the 1950s, George Miller argued that the information-processing of the mind is ________ .

a. unlimited
b. limited to about seven items
c. limited to about one million items
d. limited to about 100 items

Answer 25

b. limited to about seven items (plus or minus 2)

Question 26

British psychologist _____ (1953) attention experiment: when people focused on the attended message, they could hear the sounds of the unattended message but were unaware of the contents of that message.

a. John Watson
b. Donald Broadbent
c. Colin Cherry

Answer 26

c. Colin Cherry

Question 27

Mathematics professor at Dartmouth College, organized a conference at Dartmouth in 1956 to discuss artificial intelligence (the ability of a computer to perform tasks usually associated with human intelligence).

a. John Watson
b. Donald Broadbent
c. John McCarthy

Answer 27

c. John McCarthy