Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
What is an illusion ?
Rational inferences
What are considered to be the 5 human senses ?
Vision - sight
Audition - sound
Gustation - taste
Olfaction - smell
Tactician - touch
Why have reindeer adapted to perceive ultraviolet light ?
Allows them to detect camouflaged prey
What illusion involves the misconception of line length ?
Ponzo illusion
What are some facts about light/dark adaptation ?
It helps brightness constancy
It is responsible for negative afterimages
It enables the visual system to work under different lighting conditions
What is the Ishihara test used to test ?
Colour perception
Where are rods located ?
In the peripheral retina
The luminance and wavelength of light are related to what two perceptions ?
Brightness and colour
Objects that are perceived to be brighter tend to what ?
Reflect more light
What is it called when there is a difference in image location between the eyes ?
Binocular disparity
What happens in the horopter ?
Objects falling on it will project to corresponding positions in the two references
Which Gestalt principle helps preserve the grouping of occluded objects ?
Good continuation
What are 3 evaluations of the Gestalt grouping principle ?
Some have been criticised as too imprecise
They have generally been shown to hold across a range of images
They are manifestations of the law of Pragnanz
Harmonics occur at frequencies that are what ?…
Multiples of the fundamental frequency
A complex sound consists of more than one what ?
Sinusoidal component of different frequencies
Do louder sounds have higher or lower firing rates in the auditory nerve fibres ?
Higher
What are 3 facts about sound waves ?
They require a medium to travel
They can be visualised using Ruben’s tube
They are caused by vibrations
What is the cone of confusion ?
The set positions in space where all sound produces the same binaural localisation cues
What are 3 facts about interaural time differences ?
They depend of distance between the ears
They require phase locking
They are maximal when sounds are positioned to one side of the listener
What is the lowest frequency in a sound called ?
Fundamental frequency
Which grouping principle does not apply to the perceptual organisation of sounds ?
Symmetry
What factors influence the magnitude of interaural time differences ?
Location of the source in the azimuth
Speed of sound
Size of head
What percentage of correct answers were there in Broadbent’s 1952 study ?
50% - It is very difficult to understand two messages that are presented at the same time
What is shadowing ?
Ps is presented with two messages and has to repeat back one of them
Following a dichotic listening task, which characteristics would you expect to be reported from the unattended auditory stream ?
Changes from voice to a tone
Changes from male to female
What assumptions are shared by Broadbent’s 1958 and Treisman’s 1960 model ?
Selection occurs on the basis of physical characteristics
The perceptual systems have limited capacity
Perceptual information is a subject to a selective filter
What is true of early selection theories ?
Unattended information is not identified
According to Broadbent, on what basis is irrelevant information filtered out ?
Physical stimulus properties
What is the point of a flanker test ?
Tests the ps ability to ignore distracting information
According to Lachter 2004, what is slippage ?
A temporary shift in attention to an unattended channel
According to Lavie 1995, is processing limited ?
Yes, if attended information consumes all processing capacity then nothing else will be attended to
What is repetition priming ?
When the prime word is the same as the test word
What did Lacie and Cox 1997 class as a high perceptual load ?
A stimulus that required search for the target
Is there a difference in compatibility effects ?
Yes, there is an effect in low perceptual load trails but not in high perceptual load trial
When perceptual load is low, perceptual load is low, processing of an irrelevant channel is…?
Unavoidable
What do change blindness and inattentional blindness have in common ?
They are both a failure to perceive things that are easily seen once noticed
They are both believed to be due to a lack of attention
Simons 2000 found that changed in an image can be hard to detect if…?
The change occurs slowly
What is a difference between change blindness and inattentional blindness ?
Whether or not memory has a role
What does the interactive activation model assume ?
There are levels of representation associated with features, letters and words
There is bi-directional activation between levels
Activated units at one level exert lateral inhibition on other units
According to the logogen model what words require less activation before firing ?
Logogens associated with high frequency words
When you hear the word mechanic readers assume its a male. What is this called ?
An elaborative inference
According to the minimalist hypothesis (Mackoon and Ratcliff 1992), when can automatic inferences be made ?
When information is explicitly stated in the text
Sperling 1960 found that information in the iconic memory decays quickly, how long is it ?
0.5 seconds
What task is least likely to interfere with a pursuit rotor tracking task ?
The visual patterns task
What tests show evidence for the phonological loop ?
Irrelevant speech effect
Word-length effect
Phonological similarity effect
What are the alternatives to Working Memory ?
Embedded processes model
SIMPLE model
Feature model
Ps were shown a photo for 5 seconds each, even after 10,000 pictures, performance was over 80%. What is this type of memory test ?
Recognition
What is an issue with eye-witness testimony ?
Giving a verbal description of a face can impair subsequent recognition for the face through a process known as verbal overshadowing
In Mecher and Schoolers 1996 study, what did they find about wine drinkers and the effects of description ?
Novice - memory enhances by verbalisation
Intermediate - memory reduced with verbalisation
Expert - memory unchanged
What are the big 5 emotions ?
Disgust
Anger
Sadness
Happiness
Fear
What does SAM stand for ?
Self assessment manikin
According to the basic emotion approach we…?
Have a set of emotions from which all experiences can be described
Have a limited number of fundamental emotions
What is the mere exposure effect ?
The preferential liking of objects that have previously been exposed
What are the appraisal components described by Smith and Lazarus ?
Motivational relevance
Accountability
Future expectancy
Give an examples of interpretive bias
If I took a remedy for a cold and after 2 days told my friend that this remedy cured my cold
What do emotional stroop tasks show ?
Angry faces divert participants’ attention from task relevant features
What do anxious ps show ?
Greater attention capture when they read unambiguous threat words
What did Gestalt psychologist focus on their approach to problem solving ?
Representation
Reorganization
Insight
What is the major obstacle people face when solving problems ?
Functional fixedness
Thorndike proposed that problem solving was…
Incremental - small amounts at a time
What are Wallas’ four stages of creative thinking ?
Preparation, incubation, illumination, verification
The false belief that the probability of future events is influenced by past events is called what ?
The gambler’s fallacy
How does the availability heuristic lead to errors in reasoning ?
Events that are more easily remembered are considered as more probable than events that are less easily remembered
Making illusory correlations underlies what ?
Superstitions
Stereotypes
Prejudice
What is the conjunction rule ?
The probability of a conjunction of two events cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents
