Exam 2 Study Guide

Question 1

What is Source Monitoring?

Answer 1

Source Monitoring is the process of trying to determine the origin of a memory or piece of knowledge.

Question 2

How could seeing a bystander effect ones testimony reliability?

Answer 2

Seeing a bystander effect increases familiarity and may result in confusing the bystander with the predator.

Question 3

What does research tell us about the accuracy of flashbulb memories?

Answer 3

Although they are vivid, they are not more accurate than other memories.

Question 4

Describe the Narrative Rehearsal Hypothesis.

Answer 4

Neisser’s hypothesis that Flashbulb memories exist because we rehearse the details of those memories over and they get stored in long term memory.

Question 5

According to the constructive approach to memory, what people report as memories are based on what?

Answer 5

What actually happened plus additional factors such as other knowledge, experience, and expectations.

Question 6

What is false memory?

Answer 6

A memory for an event that did not actually occur, which research has revealed can be created by suggestion.

Question 7

What is source misattribution?

Answer 7

Failure to match a memory to the source during reconstruction.

Question 8

Define pragmatic inference.

Answer 8

An inference based on prior knowledge that leads you to have specific expectations about an event and may effect your memory for the event.

Question 9

How should police lineups be conducted, according to memory research?

Answer 9

Photo’s should be presented sequentially, the witness should be told that the suspect may or may not be present, police should not confirm or deny the witness’ selection.

Question 10

Which part of the brain is especially active when someone experienced emotional memory/flashbulb memories?

Answer 10

Amygdala

Question 11

What is prospective memory?

Answer 11

Remembering to perform a planned action or remembering an intention at a future point in time.

Question 12

According to research on autobiographical memory, people report a large number of memories from ___?

Answer 12

Transition points in theirs lives

Question 13

What is a schema?

Answer 13

Your knowledge of what a particular experience entails.

Question 14

What is the name for the phenomena where a witness to a crime misses details of the event due to the presence of a weapon?

Answer 14

Weapon focus effect,

Question 15

This type of eyewitness interview uses open ended questions and prohibits leading questions.

Answer 15

Cognitive Interview

Question 16

What are flashbulb memories?

Answer 16

Vivid and detailed memories associated with a highly emotional event.

Question 17

What are autobiographical memories?

Answer 17

Memory for significant and meaningful events in one’s life.

Question 18

Why is it important to notify a witness that a suspect may or may not be in the lineup?

Answer 18

So that the witness doesn’t feel influenced to positively identify a suspect.

Question 19

Elizabeth Loftus’ research showed particulars scenes from what in order to investigate the effect of misleading post-event information on memory?

Answer 19

A car accident

Question 20

What is the combination bias?

Answer 20

The tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to our hypothesis and to overlook information that argues against it.

Question 21

What is the law of large numbers?

Answer 21

It states that the larger the number of individuals that are randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be the entire population; people often violate this rule when they assume that small samples are representative

Question 22

What is the connection between the illusory correlation and a stereotype?

Answer 22

Illusory correlations occur when a correlation between two events appears to exist, but in reality there is no correlations or it is much weaker than it is assumed to be. Illusory correlations can occur when we expect two things to be related, so we fool ourselves into thinking they are related even when they are not. These expectations may take the form of a stereotype.

Question 23

Evaluate the validity of the following categorial syllogism.

Some dogs are happy beings.
All happy beings are excited.
Therefore, some dogs are excited.

Answer 23

Valid.

Because all happy begins are excited, and some dogs are happy beings, then those dogs are excited.

Making the conclusion that some dogs are excited valid.

Question 24

What is the difference between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning?

Answer 24

Deductive reasoning involves sequences of statements called syllogisms, where one must decide whether a conclusion follows logically from two premises. Inductive reasoning involves deciding what is probably true, based on evidence.

Question 25

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 25

The finding that events that are more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than events that are less easily remembered.

Question 26

What is the utility approach?

Answer 26

This approach assumes that people are basically rational, so if they have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the maximum expected utility.

Question 27

What is the Wason four card problem used for in cognitive psychology research?

Answer 27

The Wason four card problem has been used to study how people think when evaluating conditional syllogisms; the key to solving the problem is to apply the falsification principle.

Question 28

What is the omission bias?

Answer 28

The tendency to do nothing to avoid having to make a decision that could be interpreted as causing harm, especially to oneself.

Question 29

What impairments may be caused be damage to the prefrontal cortex (PFC)?

Answer 29

Perseveration and poor planning ability, resulting in poor performance on everyday tasks; impaired problem solving, comprehension, and complex reasoning.

Question 30

What determines whether a syllogism is valid?

Answer 30

A syllogism is valid when its conclusion follows logically from its two premises.

Question 31

What did Kermer’s research on emotions in decision making demonstrate?

Answer 31

People tend to overestimate impact of situations; people’s actual emotions after winning or losing were less extreme than they predicted.

Question 32

What are the antecedent and consequent?

Answer 32

The “if” portion of a conditional syllogism is called the antecedent, and the “then” portion is called the consequent.

Question 33

Evaluate the validity of the following conditional syllogism.

If Julie arrives, I can go home.
Julie did not arrive.
Therefore, I could not go home.

Answer 33

Not valid.

The syllogism does not state that is Julie doesn’t arrive, I cannot go home (for example, perhaps Julie was going to take over for me at work, and instead Tatiana arrived, so I was able to go home).

Question 34

What is the representativeness heuristic?

Answer 34

A heuristic is which we judge that the probability that A is a member of class B can be determined by how well the properties of A resembles the properties we usually associate with class B.

Question 35

What is the conjunction rule?

Answer 35

The probability of two events cannot be higher than the probability of one of those two events. For example, the probability that Sam has a golden retriever cannot be greater than the probability that Sam has a dog, because the two events together (having a dog and having a golden retriever) define a smaller number then one (having a dog).

Question 36

What is the permission schema?

Answer 36

A schema states that if a person satisfies condition A (such as being the legal age for drinking), then he/she gets to carry out action B (such as having a beer), which aids in our ability to perform inductive reasoning; reliance on the schema us why people perform better when the Wason four card problem is states in real-world terms, as in “drinking age” version, versus the abstract version.

Question 37

What is reasoning?

Answer 37

The process of drawing conclusions based on given information.

Question 38

What are conditional syllogisms?

Answer 38

Conditional syllogism have two premises and a conclusion, and the first premise has the form of an if/then statement; this type of reasoning is common in everyday life.

Question 39

What is a pragmatic reasoning schema?

Answer 39

A way of thinking about cause and effect in the world that is learned as part of experiencing everyday life, demonstrate in research by people’s performance on different variants of the Wason four problem.

Question 40

What is the given-new contract?

Answer 40

The given-new contract states that the speaker should construct sentences so that they include two kinds of information. The given information-information that the listener already knows and the new information-information that the listener is hearing for the first time.

Question 41

What is phoneme?

Answer 41

The shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of a word; phonemes refer to sounds, so they are not the same as letters.

Question 42

What is the name for the finding that a phoneme in a spoken word in a sentence can be perceived even if it is obscured by noise is?

Answer 42

Phonoemic restoration effect.

Question 43

What are morphemes?

Answer 43

The smallest units of language that have a definable meaning or a grammatical function.

Question 44

What is the utility approach to decision making?

Answer 44

This approach assumes that people are basically rational, so if they have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the maximum expected utility.

Question 45

What is parsing?

Answer 45

The grouping of words into phrases in order to determine the meaning of a sentence.

Question 46

What is lexical ambiguity?

Answer 46

Lexical ambiguity is a name for a situation when the same word has more then one meaning. For example “bug” means spy listening device, an insect, or “bugging” means annoying.

Question 47

What is the name for the language impairment defined by difficulty producing speech (typically with no comprehension difficulties)?

Answer 47

Broca’s aphasia

Question 48

What is the difference between semantics and syntax?

Answer 48

Semantics is the meaning of words and sentences; syntax specifi es the rules for combining words into sentences.

Question 49

Define word superiority effect?

Answer 49

Letters presented visually are easier to recognize when in a word.

Question 50

What is speech segmentation?

Answer 50

The process id perceiving individual words in the continuous flow of the speech signal.

Question 51

What is an anaphoric inference?

Answer 51

An inference that connects an object or person in one sentence to an object or person in another.

Question 52

Describe the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Answer 52

The idea that the nature of a culture’s language can affect the way people think.

Question 53

What us ab instrumental inference?

Answer 53

An inference about tools or methods used to accomplish something.

Question 54

What is the basic definition of language?

Answer 54

A system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

Question 55

What are inferences?

Answer 55

When people use their knowledge beyond the information provided in order to understand a text or story; inferences help create coherence in the story.

Question 56

What us a casual inference?

Answer 56

An inference that allows one to understand that the events described in one sentence were caused by events that occurred in a previous sentence.

Question 57

What is the critical period hypothesis?

Answer 57

The idea that there is a certain time during development during which one must be exposed to language in order to fully acquire the language.

Question 58

What type of therapy was used to help Gabby Gifford’s (the congresswoman who was shot in the head) to make progress in learning to speak again?

Answer 58

Music therapy

Question 59

Research by Pollack and Pickett (1964), in which participants’ voices were recorded while they waited for an experiment to begin and then individual words from their conversations were played back to them revealed about language?

Answer 59

Participants could identify only half the words (even though they were listening to their own voices from an earlier conversation), illustrating that their ability to perceive words in conversations is aided by context.