Cognitive Control & Consciousness (Level 5)

Question 1

What is one of the mysteries of psychology?

Answer 1

The way that cognitive processes are controlled.

Question 2

How much do we know about how single cognitive capacities like perceptual analysis, memory search, or response selection, or even more specific skills such as reading or face recognition, are selected and combined to produce the complex chains of behaviour observed in everyday life, despite the considerable progress that has been made to understand them?

Answer 2

Little is known about this.

Question 3

What is often described as “adopting a particular task set”?

Answer 3

Preparing to perform any sort of task.

Question 4

Of what is the brain clearly capable?

Answer 4

The brain is clearly capable of adopting an enormous range of different task sets.

Question 5

What seem necessary in the case of the devotion of the brain’s capacities to one specific task rather than another (the issue of task-set selection), and in the case of activities consisting of multiple steps, once selected, being performed in the right order and with the appropriate timing (the issue of task-set execution)?

Answer 5

Cognitive control mechanisms that select and supervise the operations of subordinate, special-purpose sub-systems.

Question 6

What are two examples of activities consisting of multiple steps?

Answer 6

Making a cup of coffee, and travelling from home to college.

Question 7

To what has cognitive control often been assumed to be intimately related?

Answer 7

Consciousness.

Question 8

What is a promising way to investigate cognitive control?

Answer 8

To study cases where control processes break down.

Question 9

According to James (‘Principles of Psychology’, 1890, ‘The Will’), what illustrates a common type of control failure?

Answer 9

A man who goes to his bedroom to change his clothes in preparation to go out for dinner, who suddenly finds himself in his night-shirt, ready for bed.

Question 10

Who has distinguished several types of everyday control errors?

Answer 10

Reason (1984).

Question 11

Which three types of everyday control errors has Reason distinguished?

Answer 11

Capture errors (evoked by strongly associated stimuli); cross-talk errors (arising when two tasks are simultaneously active); and lost intentions and failed triggers (having missed the trigger situation in a sequential action plan).

Question 12

What is an example of a cross-talk error?

Answer 12

Putting milk on the bookshelf and the book in the fridge.

Question 13

What is an example of missing a trigger situation in a sequential action plan?

Answer 13

Planning to put a letter in the post-box, passing by the post-box, and instead finding oneself in an irrelevant building.

Question 14

In which situations do well-practised or habitual activities seem to intrude and disrupt performance?

Answer 14

In the three types of everyday control errors distinguished by Reason.

Question 15

What were subjects asked to write down in an extended diary study conducted by Reason?

Answer 15

Instances where their actions deviated from their intentions.

Question 16

In an extended diary study conducted by Reason, what were subjects asked to rate after having written down instances in which their actions deviated from their intentions?

Answer 16

How often they tended to experience such instances.

Question 17

What were the results of the extended diary study conducted by Reason?

Answer 17

More than 80% of all erroneous activities were rated to be performed ‘often’ or ‘very often’.

Question 18

Which evidence indicates that the tendency of inappropriate task sets to interfere with smooth performance seems to be a function of the frequency and recency with which these sets are normally active?

Answer 18

The results of the extended diary study that was conducted by Reason.

Question 19

By which effect is the interference of well-practised cognitive routines with intentional action reflected?

Answer 19

By the Stroop effect (Stroop, 1935).

Question 20

What dramatically affect the responses following instructions to respond to the colour of colour words (red on the left, and blue on the right) according to the Stroop effect?

Answer 20

Irrelevant colour names (such as “red” or “blue”).

Question 21

According to the Stroop effect, when are responses following instructions to respond to the colour of colour words, delayed and error rates increased?

Answer 21

When a colour word’s name refers to the colour mapped to another response (such as the word “blue” being printed in red).

Question 22

With what does word meaning seem to interfere, despite being completely irrelevant, according to the Stroop effect?

Answer 22

With the smooth performance of the task related to the Stroop effect.

Question 23

What can, apparently, not be inhibited completely, in relation to the task related to the Stroop effect?

Answer 23

The analysis of word meaning.