Content 2: Cognitive (Learning, Language, Memory, Thinking)

Question 1

(3) Organizing the string of letters B-F-J-T-A-V-K-C into JFK-TV-CAB is an example of:

(A) simplifying
(B) clustering
(C) seriating
(D) chunking
(E) paraphrasing

Answer 1

(D) chunking

Question 2

(5) Consider the sentence “The dishwasher is running.” Which of the following is true?

(A) It can have more than one surface structure.
(B) It can have more than one deep structure.
(C) It is grammatically incorrect.
(D) It can have more than one syntax.
(E) It violates the rules of bottom-up processing.

Answer 2

(B) It can have more than one deep structure.

Question 3

(7) Patients with bilateral damage to the hippocampal formation are tested on motor learning tasks such as the Tower of Hanoi. Studies show that the patients improve their performance with repeated exposures. When asked whether they have ever seen the task, even after numerous test sessions with it, they typically report not having seen it before. Such results have led to which of the following conclusions?

(A) Patients with hippocampal injury suffer from confabulation similar to Korsakoff’s patients.
(B) The inability to remember the Tower of Hanoi reflects a fundamental lesion-induced inability to name objects.
(C) Although procedural memory may not rely on normal hippocampal functioning, declarative memory does.
(D) Hippocampal injury enhances the acquisition of tasks relying on motor learning.
(E) Whereas procedural memory is severely impaired after hippocampal injury, reference memory is intact.

Answer 3

(C) Although procedural memory may not rely on normal hippocampal functioning, declarative memory does.

Question 4

(17) Over many trials a puff of air aimed at JoAnne’s eyes is paired with a loud noise and a subtle smell. Afterward, it is very likely that JoAnne’s conditioned eye blink will be under the control of the loud noise and not the subtle smell. This phenomenon is an example of:

(A) overshadowing
(B) conditioned suppression
(C) generalization
(D) counterconditioning
(E) reinstatement

Answer 4

(A) overshadowing

Question 5

(19) Which of the following is the best example of the categorical perception of human speech?

(A) Listeners are able to categorize speech samples in terms of the gender of the speaker.
(B) Listeners are able to categorize a stream of words into a series of distinct words, because they can identify the brief pauses that appear between words.
(C) When a sound is presented that is intermediate between the phonemes /b/ and /p/, listeners report that they heard either a distinct /b/ or a distinct /p/.
(D) During speech perception, listeners automatically place phonemes into one of two categories, vowels or consonants.
(E) After hearing a sentence, people process each word and make decisions about the word’s function within that sentence.

Answer 5

(C) When a sound is presented that is intermediate between the phonemes /b/ and /p/, listeners report that they heard either a distinct /b/ or a distinct /p/.

Question 6

(44) Which of the following predictions is reasoning based on Baddeley and Hitch’s theory of working memory?

(A) If two tasks using the same component are done concurrently, performance will be improved on one or both.
(B) If two tasks using the same component are done concurrently, performance will be impaired on one or both.
(C) If two tasks that do not use the same component are done concurrently, performance will be improve don one or both.
(D) If two tasks that do not use the same component are done concurrently, performance will be impaired on one or both.
(E) If two tasks are done concurrently, whether or not they use the same component, performance will be unchanged.

Answer 6

(B) If two tasks using the same component are done concurrently, performance will be impaired on one or both.

Question 7

(46) Marc recently moved to an area that experienced a large number of tornadoes, which frightened him greatly. Every time a storm containing high winds emerged, the lights in his home flickered. When the lights in his home flickered on a clear day, he became quite fearful and searched for a safe place to hide. What is the conditioned stimulus in this scenario?

(A) High winds
(B) Lights flickering
(C) Hiding place
(D) Storms
(E) Fear

Answer 7

(B) Lights flickering

Question 8

(47) Which of the following learning theorists first demonstrated that a neutral stimulus could acquire the ability to evoke a response originally attributed to another stimulus?

(A) Michael Domjan
(B) Ivan Pavlov
(C) Albert Bandura
(D) B. F. Skinner
(E) E. L. Thorndike

Answer 8

(B) Ivan Pavlov

Question 9

(48) Which memory store is believed to have the largest capacity?

(A) The sensory store
(B) The short-term store
(C) The long-term store
(D) The phonological loop
(E) The visuospatial sketch pad

Answer 9

(C) The long-term store

Question 10

(49) The use of polite words such as “please” and “thank you” in everyday speech is called:

(A) morphology
(B) syntax
(C) semantics
(D) pragmatics
(E) phonetics

Answer 10

(D) pragmatics

Question 11

(56) Which of the following predictions is the best example of context-dependent memory?

(A) Concrete words are easier to recall than abstract words.
(B) Auditory encoding is superior to visual encoding.
(C) Information is better recalled when learning and testing occur in the same room.
(D) Information is better recalled when it is deeply encoded.
(E) In a list of words, those in bold are easier to recall.

Answer 11

(C) Information is better recalled when learning and testing occur in the same room.

Question 12

(62) Young children form rudimentary sentences that resemble telegrams even though they have never heard anyone make such utterances before. This is evidence of:

(A) reinforcement theory
(B) a universal grammar
(C) pragmatics
(D) semantics
(E) morphology

Answer 12

(B) a universal grammar

Question 13

(77) What term is best used to describe the smallest meaningful unit of a language?

(A) Phone
(B) Phoneme
(C) Morpheme
(D) Syntax
(E) Semantic

Answer 13

(C) Morpheme

Question 14

(90) Ability derived directly from previous experience is known as:

(A) crystallized intelligence
(B) fluid intelligence
(C) formal operations
(D) concrete operations
(E) prospective memory

Answer 14

(A) crystallized intelligence

Question 15

(98) Which of the following approaches to assessment of intelligence is most consistent with the theories of both Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg?

(A) Using biological indexes of intelligence instead of the Stanford-Binet IQ test.
(B) Narrowing the definition of intelligence to include fewer key skill areas.
(C) Increasing the reliability of IQ tests.
(D) Increasing the emphasis on measuring [g] rather than specific abilities.
(E) Increasing the emphasis on measuring specific abilities rather than [g].

Answer 15

(E) Increasing the emphasis on measuring specific abilities rather than [g].

Question 16

Refer to [https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/practice_book_psych.pdf], PDF Page 27 for the visual.

If participants can say how many items are in Set 1 faster than they can say how many are in Set 2, the result is most consistent with:

(A) task-general resources
(B) the pop-out effect
(C) context-dependent memory
(D) the Stroop effect
(E) task-specific resources

Answer 16

(D) the Stroop effect

Question 17

(110) The Flynn effect is the phenomenon of:

(A) the gradual increase in IQ scores over the last century.
(B) higher IQ scores among children who were breast-fed.
(C) higher IQ scores among people with higher levels of education.
(D) a stronger correlation between the IQ scores of monozygotic twins than those between those of dizygotic twins.
(E) a stronger correlation between the IQ scores of siblings reared together than between those of siblings reared apart.

Answer 17

(A) the gradual increase in IQ scores over the last century.

Question 18

(113) According to current conceptions, working memory is characterized by:

(A) stress on episodic rather than semantic memory
(B) its unitary nature
(C) maintenance of information in current use
(D) greater importance for procedural than for declarative memory
(E) required use of mnenomics

Answer 18

(C) maintenance of information in current use

Question 19

(123) When asked to name all of the states in the United States, Steven mentally pictures a map and starts naming states from west to east. Steven’s strategy is useful during the process of:

(A) retrieval
(B) encoding
(C) storage
(D) flashbulb memory 
(E) selective attention

Answer 19

(A) retrieval

Question 20

(125) John recently moved to a large city and experienced an increase in the level of noise. His new home was located adjacent to a railroad track. The rail service was frequent and maintained a consistent schedule. John was awakened frequently each night as trains passed his home. However, after several months he was not awakened and he became less aware of the trains passing by his home. What mechanism accounts for John’s adaptation to his environment?

(A) Orienting response
(B) Sensitization
(C) Habituation
(D) Conditioned response
(E) Conditioned sitmulus

Answer 20

(C) Habituation

Question 21

(129) According to Albert Bandura’s approach to observational learning, which of the following is the best example of vicarious punishment?

(A) A child stops throwing pencils after watching a teacher scold another child for throwing a pencil across the room.
(B) A child watches a teacher say to another child, “You did so well on that homework that you do not need to take the test tomorrow.”
(C) A child acquires a schema about the difference between socially punished behavior and socially rewarded behavior.
(D) A child escapes punishment by cleaning up a mess before anyone notices it.
(E) A child is punished on a variable ratio schedule, rather than being punished every time a mistake is made.

Answer 21

(A) A child stops throwing pencils after watching a teacher scold another child for throwing a pencil across the room.

Question 22

(136) If a student hears a list of words such as night, bed, pillow, blanket, dream, and snore, she is likely to later remember the word sleep even though it was never presented. This can best be explained by:

(A) the activation of schematic knowledge
(B) high sensitivity in a signal detection model
(C) appropriate use of rote recall
(D) a failure of the encoding specificity mechanism
(E) too much retroactive interference

Answer 22

(A) the activation of schematic knowledge

Question 23

(141) Which of the following is most commonly associated with creative thinking?

(A) Convergent thinking
(B) Divergent thinking
(C) Representativeness heuristic
(D) Availability heuristic
(E) Functional fixedness

Answer 23

(B) Divergent thinking

Question 24

(149) A behavioral approach to personality would argue that the root of pathology lies in:

(A) unrealistic beliefs
(B) maladaptive learned-response patterns
(C) disordered functioning of construct systems
(D) fixation and regression
(E) incongruence

Answer 24

(B) maladaptive learned-response patterns

Question 25

(150) Five randomly selected groups of participants are shown a list of words, one word at a time. Each group of participants is assigned a different task to perform on each word on the list. After completing the task, the participants are given a surprise test for recall of the words. Which of the following assigned tasks is most likely to result in the best recall?

(A) Counting the number of vowels in each of the words
(B) Indicating whether each of the words contains the letter “t”
(C) Producing a rhyme for each of the words
(D) Saying each of the words three times in rapid succession
(E) Producing a synonym for each of the words

Answer 25

(E) Producing a synonym for each of the words

Question 26

(151) Participants are asked to look at a picnic scene and to indicate several ways that the people in the scene might deal with a sudden rainstorm. One of the objects in the scene is a picnic basket. However, most of the participants fail to notice that the basket could be used as protection from the rain. This failure is most likely a manifestation of:

(A) the Purkinje effect
(B) the availability heuristic
(C) the law of common fate
(D) functional fixedness
(E) illusory correlation

Answer 26

(D) functional fixedness

Question 27

(152) In a lexical decision task, two groups of participants are instructed to make a fast decision on whether each item is or is not an English word. The first group of participants is presented with the word “robin,” followed by the word “bird.” The second group is presented with the word “chair,” followed by the word “bird.” The first group’s responses to “bird” will most likely be:

(A) slower because of Stroop-like interference
(B) slower because of lateral inhibition
(C) slower because of a sequence effect
(D) faster because of semantic priming
(E) faster because of response bias

Answer 27

(D) faster because of semantic priming

Question 28

(154) The fact that Laura still knows how to ride a bicycle even though she has not ridden one in ten years best exemplifies which of the following types of memory?

(A) Procedural
(B) Propositional
(C) Semantic
(D) Episodic
(E) Iconic

Answer 28

(A) Procedural