Chapter 13: Cognitive Functions

Question 1

The left hemisphere of the brain is connected to the right eye in guinea pigs. In humans, the left hemisphere is connected to the left half of each retina. Explain the reason for this species difference.

Answer 1

In guinea pigs, the right eye is far to the side of the head and sees only the right visual field. In humans, the eyes point straight ahead and half of each eye sees the right visual field.

Question 2

In humans, the right half of each retina receives visual information from which side of the world and sends its output to which hemisphere?

Answer 2

The right half of each retina receives input from the left half of the world and sends output to the right hemisphere, enabling the right hemisphere to see the left half of the world.

Question 3

What can a split-brain person do that other people cannot do?

Answer 3

A split-brain person can draw different things with their two hands at the same time, or move the hands at different speeds at the same time.

Question 4

Can a split-brain person name an object after feeling it with the right hand? With the left hand? Explain.

Answer 4

A split-brain person can describe something after feeling it with the right hand but not with the left. The right hand sends its information to the left hemisphere, which is dominant for language in most people. The left hand sends its information to the right hemisphere, which cannot speak.

Question 5

Which hemisphere is dominant for the following in most people: speech, emotional inflection of speech, interpreting other people’s emotional expressions, spatial relationships?

Answer 5

The left hemisphere is dominant for speech. The right hemisphere is dominant for the other items listed.

Question 6

What are three likely explanations for why bonobos made more language progress than common chimpanzees?

Answer 6

Bonobos may be more predisposed to language than common chimpanzees. The bonobos started training at an earlier age. They learned by imitation instead of formal training techniques.

Question 7

What evidence argues against the hypothesis that language evolution depended simply on the overall evolution of brain and intelligence?

Answer 7

Some people have normal brain size but very poor language. Also, some people have intellectual disabilities but nevertheless develop nearly normal language.?

Question 8

List tasks that people with Williams syndrome do poorly and those that they do well.

Answer 8

Poor: self-care skills, attention, planning, numbers, visual-motor skills, and spatial perception. Relatively good: language, interpretation of facial expressions, some aspects of music.

Question 9

What is the strongest evidence in favor of a sensitive period for language learning?

Answer 9

Deaf children who did not learn either spoken language or sign language while young do not become proficient at either type of language later.

Question 10

What kind of words are Broca’s patients least likely to use?

Answer 10

They have the greatest trouble with “closed-class” words that are meaningful only in the context of a sentence, such as prepositions, conjunctions, and helping verbs.

Question 11

What kind of words do Broca’s patients have the most trouble understanding?

Answer 11

They have the most trouble understanding the same kind of words they have trouble producing—the closed-class words.

Question 12

Describe the speech production of people with Wernicke’s aphasia.

Answer 12

People with Wernicke’s aphasia speak fluently and grammatically but omit most nouns and verbs and therefore make little sense.

Question 13

Describe the speech comprehension of people with Wernicke’s aphasia.

Answer 13

People with Wernicke’s aphasia have trouble understanding speech.

Question 14

What evidence suggests that many of the brain abnormalities associated with dyslexia are a cause of the disorder rather than a result?

Answer 14

Certain abnormalities have been reported at an early age, before the start of language training.

Question 15

Felix is left-handed. For him, there is approximately a/an______ chance that his left hemisphere is dominant for his speech production.
a. 0 percent
b. 80 percent
c. 100 percent
d. 50 percent

Answer 15

80 percent

Correct. According to fMRI data and other methods, the left hemisphere is dominant for speech production in more than 95 percent of right-handers and nearly 80 percent of left-handers (possibly including Felix).

Question 16

Which of the following is true?
a. Each ear of the auditory system sends information to both sides of the brain.
b. The left ear sends information to the left side of the brain, and the right ear to the right side of the brain.
c. There is crossing over such that the left ear sends information to the right side of the brain and vice versa.
d. The auditory system sends information to the brain in an identical fashion to the visual system.

Answer 16

Each ear of the auditory system sends information to both sides of the brain

Correct. The auditory system is organized differently. Each ear sends the information to both sides of the brain, because any brain area that contributes to localizing sounds must compare input from both ears.

Question 17

Which of the following is true?
a. Adults are better than children at learning the grammar and pronunciation of a second language.
b. Even if you start learning a second language later in life, you can still reach the level of a native speaker easily.
c. Children are better than adults at memorizing vocabulary associated with a second language.
d. People who grow up in a bilingual home show bilateral activity during speech for both languages.

Answer 17

People who grow up in a bilingual home show bilateral activity during speech for both languages

Correct. It is incorrectly assumed that a bilingual person might rely on the left hemisphere for one language and the right hemisphere for the other. People who grow up in a bilingual home show bilateral activity during speech for both languages, and stronger than average connections between the two hemispheres. Also, adults are better than children at memorizing the vocabulary of a second language, but children have a great advantage on mastering grammar and especially pronunciation.

Question 18

Why do nearly all scientists and philosophers reject the idea of dualism?

Answer 18

Dualism contradicts the law of the conservation of matter and energy. According to that law, the only way to influence matter and energy, including that of your body, is to act on it with other matter and energy.

Question 19

What is meant by the “hard problem”?

Answer 19

The hard problem is why minds exist at all in a physical world. Why is there such a thing as consciousness?

Question 20

In the experiment by Dehaene and colleagues, how were the conscious and unconscious stimuli similar? How were they different?

Answer 20

The conscious and unconscious stimuli were physically the same (a word flashed on the screen for 29 ms). The difference was that a stimulus did not become conscious if it was preceded and followed by an interfering pattern.

Question 21

In this experiment, how did the brain’s responses differ to the conscious and unconscious stimuli?

Answer 21

A stimulus that reached consciousness activated the same brain areas as an unconscious stimulus but more strongly, and then the activity spread to additional areas. Also, brain responses became synchronized for a conscious pattern.

Question 22

How could someone use fMRI to determine which of two patterns in binocular rivalry is conscious at a given moment?

Answer 22

Make one stimulus pulsate at a given rhythm and look for brain areas showing that rhythm of activity. The rhythm takes over widespread areas of the brain when that pattern is conscious.

Question 23

If someone is aware of the stimulus on the right in a case of binocular rivalry, what evidence indicates that the brain is also processing the stimulus on the left?

Answer 23

If a stimulus gradually appears on the left side, attention shifts to the left faster if that stimulus is a meaningful word than if it is a word from an unfamiliar language.

Question 24

In what way does the phi phenomenon imply that a new stimulus sometimes changes consciousness of what went before it?

Answer 24

Someone who sees a dot on the left and then a dot on the right perceives the dot as moving from left to right. The perceived movement would have occurred before the dot appeared on the right, but the person had no reason to infer that movement until after the dot appeared on the right.

Question 25

As people lost consciousness under anesthesia and later regained it, what changed most strikingly in the brain?

Answer 25

Connectivity among brain areas increased as people regained consciousness.

Question 26

What brain response was related to people’s ability to resist distraction from an irrelevant red square among the green squares and circle?

Answer 26

Resistance to distraction related to the amount of activity in part of the prefrontal cortex before the presentation of stimuli.

Question 27

What is the evidence that spatial neglect is a problem in attention, not just sensation?

Answer 27

When a patient with neglect sees a large letter composed of small letters, he or she can identify the large letter but then neglects part of it when asked to cross off all the small letters. Also, someone who neglects the left hand pays attention to it when it is crossed over the right hand.

Question 28

What procedures increase attention to the left side in a person with spatial neglect?

Answer 28

Simply telling the person to attend to something on the left helps temporarily. Having the person look to the left while feeling something on the left side increases attention to the felt object. Crossing the left hand over the right increases attention to the left hand. Moving a hand far to the left makes it easier for the person to point to something in the left visual field because the hand will move toward the right to point at the object.

Question 29

Reita believes that mental processes and certain kinds of brain processes are the same thing, just described differently. Her view would be described as a form of _____.
a. dualism
b. materialism
c. mentalism
d. identity position

Answer 29

identity position

Correct. Reita believes in the identity position that says the mind is brain activity. Just as fire is not a “thing,” but what happens to something, mental activity is what happens in the brain.

Question 30

Decreased consciousness or loss of consciousness was marked by decreased overall activity and especially by decreased connectivity between the _____ and areas such as the thalamus, hypothalamus, and basal ganglia.
a. cerebral cortex
b. brainstem
c. pituitary
d. amygdala

Answer 30

Cerebral Cortex

Correct. Loss of consciousness was marked by decreased overall activity and especially by decreased connectivity between the cerebral cortex and subcortical areas such as the thalamus, hypothalamus, and basal ganglia. Initial recovery of consciousness depended on increased connectivity between subcortical and cortical areas, and later increases in alertness depended on increased activity in the cortex.

Question 31

Tawnya is participating in a research study where she is asked to say out loud the color of the ink that certain words are written in. The challenging part of the study is that the words are color names. She is participating in a way to study attention using _______.
a. the Stroop effect
b. inattentional blindness
c. change blindness
d. spatial neglect

Answer 31

the Stroop effect

Correct. Tawnya is taking part in one of psychologists’ favorite ways to study attention—the Stroop effect. She finds it difficult to ignore words and say the color of ink. After all her years of learning to read words, it is hard to suppress her habit and respond to the color instead.

Question 32

When a rat is deciding whether it hears more clicks on the left or right side, what happens in the frontal orienting fields?

Answer 32

Depending on which ear is “ahead” at a given point, one set of cells or a different set of cells becomes active.

Question 33

What evidence says that rats can imagine the future?

Answer 33

While pausing at a choice point in a maze, place cells in the hippocampus become active in the sequence that would occur as the rat traveled down one arm or the other in the maze.

Question 34

How does the role of the prefrontal cortex differ from that of the basal ganglia?

Answer 34

The basal ganglia gradually learn a preference based on the usual result. The prefrontal cortex modifies that preference based on the most recent information.

Question 35

Why is it misleading to call oxytocin the “love hormone”?

Answer 35

Oxytocin apparently magnifies love that was already present, but it does not create love toward a stranger.

Question 36

How is the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex similar for value decisions and social behavior?

Answer 36

. In both cases these brain areas are important for interpreting and evaluating information relevant to choices and actions.

Question 37

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex and other areas relay information to the nearby _____, which responds based on how an expected reward compares to other possible choices.
a. orbitotemporal cortex
b. hypothalamus
c. temporal lobe
d. orbitofrontal cortex

Answer 37

Orbitofrontal cortex

Correct. The orbitofrontal cortex responds based on how an expected reward compares to other possible choices. It updates the expected value of one action or another, based on your current circumstances.

Question 38

Rosie is in graduate school studying ______, which is how genes, chemicals, and brain areas contribute to social behavior.
a. parental psychology
b. behavioral psychology
c. social neuroscience
d. sociology

Answer 38

social neuroscience

Correct. Rosie is studying social neuroscience, the study of how genes, chemicals, and brain areas contribute to social behavior. This is a relatively new area of study and Rosie is particularly interested in studying love and altruism.

Question 39

Helpfulness depends on _____.
a. sadness
b. sympathy
c. empathy
d. happiness

Answer 39

empathy
Correct. Helpfulness depends on empathy, the ability to identify with other people and feel their pain almost as if it were your own. Although empathy is not unique to humans, it is stronger in us than in other species.