Quiz 1 Flashcards
In a real-world environment, there are far too many stimuli and possible response choices to process at any one time. The inability to deal with all of these possibilities is due to _____________________. The mind compensates for this by biasing our attention to focus on what is most immediately relevant.
computational complexity
Our attention system(s) help bias what specific information gets processed at one time. Our eyes, for example, seem naturally drawn towards high-contrast images. This example of visual salience is generally considered:
bottom-up (innate)
Which of the following best captures how the ‘whole-object constraint’ is thought to operate?
This is an innate bias for children to apply a new word to a whole object, and not merely to features of the object.
Which of the following is the most accurate characterization of mental chronometry and how it is used?
It is an indirect measure that allows you to infer how long it takes for a mental process to be completed.
In the memory experiment by Hermann Ebbinghaus, what key variable was discovered to affect memory retention (also called memory savings) for a list of nonsense words/syllables?
The delay in time before trying to re-learn a list after initial learning.
He initially learned the list of words/syllables. Then he waited for a variable length of time and then measured how long it took him to re-learn the list. The longer the delay in time, the more time it took him to re-learn the list.
Wilhelm Wundt wanted to understand mental processes in terms of basic elements called sensations. The method he used to try to access these elements was called __________________.
analytic introspection
In Watson and Rayner’s (1920) experiment, a nine-month-old became frightened of a rat after a loud noise was made every time the rat was presented. This kind of training was specifically called:
Classical conditioning
The key element that separated Behaviorism from other approaches in Psychology discussed so far was:
It believed that behavior was the only valid subject of Psychology
In Otto Tinklepaugh’s experiment, chimpanzees were trained to get a banana from one of two possible locations after observing where it was initially placed. After being removed from the training room for a time, a trained chimpanzee went to the last-seen location for a banana, but exhibited confusion when it found lettuce. The chimpanzee then refused to eat the lettuce. This suggests the existence of ____________, which was difficult for radical behaviorists to explain.
memory
Which of the following was not one of Noam Chomsky’s (1959) criticisms of Skinner’s book on language learning discussed in lecture?
It can’t explain how children generalize names for old objects to new objects.
