History and Research Methods of Cognitive Psychology

_____________ following philosophers like John Locke, holds that the mind is a "blank slate" at birth and that all of our knowledge comes from sensory experience and interactions with the external world.

Empiricism

_____________ associated with philosophers like Plato, argues that humans are born with certain innate, inborn capacities and mental structures that are not entirely dependent on experience.

Nativism

The method of ______________ where trained observers reported on the basic elements of their conscious experience in a controlled, experimental setting.

Introspection

________________ laid groundwork for the later emergence of functionalism and behaviorism in cognitive psychology.

Structuralism (Wilhelm Wundt)

According to William James, what is the primary function of emotions?

A) To reflect an individual's internal state
B) To elicit specific behavioral responses that aid adaptation and survival
C) To provide a selective advantage by helping individuals appropriately respond to their environment
D) To passively reflect external stimuli

The mind tends to perceive patterns, shapes or objects in the simplest, most regular form possible.(Gestalt Psychology)

The Law of Pragnanz

The ability to distinguish certain objects (figures) from their background.(Gestalt Psychology)

Figure-Ground Organization

The tendency to perceive complete images or patterns even if they are incomplete.(Gestalt Psychology)

Closure

Elements that are close together tend to be grouped together perceptually.(Gestalt Psychology)

Proximity

Elements that look alike tend to be grouped together.(Gestalt Psychology)

Similarity

Smooth, continuous contours and surfaces are perceived before those that are interrupted.(Gestalt Psychology)

Continuity

________ could not account for complex internal cognitive processes like language and perception.

Behaviorism

__________ to the ability to specify the correct combination of representations and processes used to accomplish a task.

Identifiability

what is called the body of knowledge structured according to what its proponents consider important and what they do not?

Paradigm

The ability to recognize and remember faces is an adaptation that has evolved to help us identify and interact with other individuals in our social group is a example of

The Evolutionary Approach

The belief that psychological phenomena cannot be reduced to simple elements but must be studied in their entirety is central to the school known as

Gestalt psychology

Wilhelm Wundt and his students used a technique known as _________ to study mental states.

introspection

The term “limited capacity processors” suggests that

human beings can only do so many things at once

Which psychologist extensively tested his own memory to develop theories of cognition

Ebbinghaus

The ______ is a method of gaining knowledge in a field that relies on observations of phenomena and allows for tests of hypotheses about these phenomena.

scientific method

Which of the following is NOT an example of a cognitive process?

reflex

One difference between functionalism and structuralism was that:

functionalists wanted to study whole organisms in real-life tasks.

Cognitive psychologists who focus on the role of consciousness in human thought processes want to know how much ______ we have in our behaviors.

conscious choice

The _______________ was a rejection of the prevailing assumption that mental events were beyond the realm of scientific study.

cognitive revolution

The idea of natural selection is central to which paradigm?

evolutionary

Which of the following represents a good example of a proximal stimulus?

the retinal image formed by a tree

Subjective contours are thought to:

be the result of simplifying a complex display

A stencil provides a good analogy for the theory of:

template matching

When we use knowledge of objects to aid in our perception of them, we are using ______.

top-down processing

You come home, and your house is a mess. The garbage is spilled all over the kitchen, there are rolls of toilet paper strewn about, and all of your decorative trinkets are broken on the floor, but nothing is missing. Your dog and cat are sitting calmly in the middle of the mess. According to the principle of Pragnanz, what would you assume caused the mess?

your cat and dog

When making a decision, we are likely to weigh all of the possible choices we could make. This is most similar to the concept of ______ in perception.

affordances

__________ are to visual perception what phonemes are to language, according to Biederman.

geons

__________ are to visual perception what phonemes are to language, according to Biederman.

geons

Which of the following explains the phenomenon of reversible images the best.

figure-ground organization

The meaningful interpretation of a proximal stimulus is called the:

percept

In David Marr’s model of vision, which stage of the process incorporates primarily bottom-up knowledge?

both the primal sketch and the 2 ½ D sketch

Which of the following is an analogy used to describe attention?

a filter of information

Treisman’s feature integration theory argues that:

we perceive objects in two distinct stages

Which of the following factors does NOT influence the allocation of mental resources in Kahneman’s capacity model?

the lateness of selection

Stroop interference lessens when:

participants are given more practice at naming colors

Which of the following is true regarding controlled processing?

It requires attention

According to the attention hypothesis of automatization.

attention is needed during practice, and determines both what is learned during practice and what will be remembered from the practice

The “cocktail party effect” refers to the fact that shadowing performance is disrupted when _______ is embedded in the unattended message.

the listener’s name

Noticing a red flower among a field of purple flowers illustrates ______.

the attention capture phenomenon

According to ____ theory, we never actually acquire unattended material at all.

schema

Which of the following is a characteristic of an automatic process?

It does not interfere with other activities

The calling to mind of previously stored information is known as

retrieval

Information is held in _____ for 20 to 30 seconds

short term memory

In Waugh and Norman's probe digit task

presentation rate had no effect on performance

Some experts describe memory as a ______, while others believe it is a ______

structure, process

You recently bought a new phone and had to change your number. However, your old phone number keeps interfering with your ability to remember your new one. This is an example of ______

proactive interference

Sternberg’s classic work on searching for information from short-term memory indicated that the search process is

both serial and exhaustive

Higher working memory capacity means that an individual

is better able to control his cognitive focus

Information in short-term memory is assumed to be coded primarily by

sound

Unattended information is stored briefly in

sensory memory

Repeating a phone number to yourself to hold it in memory while you dial it would use which component of working memory?

the phonological loop

Psychologists believe that the capacity of long-term memory is

unlimited

Learning a rhyme that begins “One is a bun, two is a shoe” is part of the mnemonic technique called the

pegword method

A retrieval cue will be effective if and only if it reinstates the context of the to-be-remembered event, according to the principle of

encoding specificity

“A natural process that occurs when information is unable to be retrieved from memory” is the definition of ______.

forgetting

You met an attractive person at a party last Friday, when you were a bit tipsy from too many beers. The next morning you could no longer remember that person’s name and phone number. Saturday night you went to another party and drank a few more beers, and suddenly you were able to remember the name again. Which principle best explains your retrieval processes?

state-dependent learning

Your memory of your first college lecture would be an example of:

episodic memory

Bartlett’s research on the retelling of stories shows that over time, the same person’s recall

becomes more distorted

After you have memorized a list of words, you are most likely to demonstrate ______ if you are tested on the list the next day.

the primacy effect

Retroactive interference occurs when ____ information interferes with _____ information in memory

new, old

Coding of information in long-term memory is based on

meaning