Cognitive Psych Quizzes 1-5

The first two lectures spent a significant amount of time discussing early pioneers in the theory of computing, AI, and information theory. Why is this material relevant to a course on cognitive psychology?

The distinguishing feature of cognitive psychology (as compared to other branches of psychology) is the fundamental commitment to the idea that the human mind can be understood through the lens of "information processing". But this requires a scientific framework that can say anything meaningful about what information processing actually is, what it entails, and how it can be carried out in a physical substrate (for example, the brain). Meaningful progress on these issues first originated in fields such as computing and artificial intelligence in the mid 20th century.

True or False: Cognitive psychologists believe the brain is a lot like a digital computer.

False

The dominant (mainstream) theoretical approach in modern cognitive psychology is based upon

• A. Behaviorism

• B. Dualism

• C. Materialism

• D. Hypercomputationalism

C

Describe analytic introspection and explain two limitations to this method.

Analytic introspection is a psychological research method where participants are extensively trained to carefully observe and verbalize their own thoughts, feelings, and sensations in response to a given stimulus. Through this process, participants are essentially attempting to break down their conscious experience into its basic components. Two major limitations to this method are its high susceptibility to subjective bias and the difficulty in verifying the accuracy of reported internal experiences, as individuals may not always be aware of or accurately report all aspects of their mental processes.

In Donders’s experiment on decision making, when participants were asked to press one button if the light on the left was illuminated and another button if the light on the right was illuminated, they were engaged in which type of task?

• A. Memory recall

• B. Simple reaction time

• C. Choice reaction time

• D. Problem solving

C

Which topics would a cognitive psychologist most likely investigate?

• A. How personality affects behavior at a party

• B. Reaction time

• C. How the presence of others increases the likelihood of helping

• D. How babies change in height and weight through the first year of life

B

Which of the following methods was used in the psychology laboratory established by Wilhelm Wundt?

• A. Analytic introspection

• B. Measuring reaction times

• C. Forgetting time and savings

• D. Classical conditioning

A

John Watson believed that psychology should focus on the study of

• A. Observable behavior

• B. Mental processes

• C. Consciousness

• D. Attention

A

Who founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany?

• A. Erik Erikson

• B. Sigmund Freud

• C. Wilhelm Wundt

• D. Ivan Pavlov

C

The “Little Albert” study involving the presentation of a rat and a loud noise demonstrated which process?

• A. Reaction time

• B. Unconscious interference

• C. Classical conditioning

• D. Operant conditioning

C

Why can we consider Tolman one of the early cognitive psychologists?

• A. He used behavior to infer mental processes.

• B. His work focused on measuring behavior.

• C. His work focused on the stimulus-response connections.

• D. His main interest was the application of operant conditioning.

A

Which of the following would a neuropsychologist study?

• A. The behavior of people with brain damage

• B. The evolutionary history of the stress response

• C. The importance of higher mental processes

• D. Sequences of mental operations in cognition

A

Describe Tolman’s maze experiment. Describe the concept developed based on the results of this research, and its connection to the broader theme of cognitive psychology.

Tolman’s maze experiment involved placing rats in a maze and observing their behavior. Tolman found that rats were not simply forming stimulus-response associations, but rather creating cognitive maps of the maze. This challenged the behaviorist view of learning and emphasized the role of cognitive processes in behavior.

Former congresswoman Gabby Giffords survived a bullet wound to the left hemisphere of her brain in 2011. Since that time, she has been forthright about the challenges she continues to face in her recovery. From the perspective of neuropsychology, what is an example of something that could be learned about cognition from studying her case?

Answer

Giffords experienced significant difficulties with speech production (consistent with damage to Broca's area), while her comprehension and reasoning abilities remained largely intact. This demonstrates a dissociation between these abilities in the brain. In addition, she exhibits motor impairments on the right side of her body, as well as loss of vision in her right visual field. This illustrates that visual processing and motor control involve contra-lateral processing (activity in the left hemisphere responsible for vision and/or motor control on the right side of the body).

Which of the following scenarios illustrates the principles of operant conditioning?

• A. A student raises her hand in class; the teacher calls on her and praises her answer, and she raises her hand more frequently.

• B. A dog runs to the door whenever it hears the doorbell ring, because the doorbell has always preceded someone arriving.

• C. A child feels anxious whenever she sees a syringe, because syringes have been paired with painful shots.

• D. A man feels nauseated by the smell of spoiled orange juice after once getting sick from drinking it.

B

Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the principle of 'inference to the best explanation'?

• A. A researcher measures reaction times for 100 people on a simple task (identifying colors) and a complex task (solving logic puzzles). She finds the average reaction time is 300ms for the simple task and 800ms for the complex task. She concludes that complex tasks produce longer reaction times.

• B. A cognitive psychologist observes that people take longer to answer "Is a robin a bird?" than "Is a robin a vehicle?" She considers two possible explanations: (1) The mind performs mental steps to answer & simpler questions require fewer steps, or (2) People randomly guess based on how much they like the animal. She adopts the first explanation because it consistently accounts for reaction time patterns across many people and many questions.

• C. A student knows that "The mind processes information" and "Complex information requires more processing." She concludes that "Complex questions will take longer to answer than simple questions."

• D. A researcher observes that people who study longer for a test usually score higher. She notes this pattern but doesn't yet propose a theory for why studying improves performance.

B

Early studies of brain tissue that used staining techniques and microscopes from the 19th century described the “nerve net.” These early understandings were in error in the sense that the nerve net was believed to be

• A. continuous.

• B. composed of discrete individual units.

• C. composed of cell bodies, axons, and dendrites.

• D. composed of neurotransmitters rather than neurons.

A

The key structural components of neurons are the

• A. cell body, cellular membrane, and transmitters.

• B. axon, dendrites, and glands.

• C. cell body, dendrites, and axons.

• D. transmitters, dendrites, and nodes of Ranvier.

C

A synapse is

• A. a tube filled with fluid that conducts electrical signals.

• B. the structure that contains mechanisms to keep a neuron alive.

• C. the structure that receives electrical signals from other neurons.

• D. the gap that separates two different neurons.

D

Action potentials occur in the

• A. cell body

• B. synapse

• C. neurotransmitters

• D. axon

D

If the intensity of a stimulus to a touch receptor is increased, this tends to increase the

• A. rate of nerve firing.

• B. size of the nerve impulses.

• C. speed of nerve conduction.

• D. resting potential of the nerve impulses.

A

Which of the following statements BEST describes how neurons communicate?

• A. Dendrites make direct contact with each other.

• B. A chemical process takes place in the synapse.

• C. An electrical process takes place in the receptors.

• D. Action potentials travel across the synapse.

B

You are walking down the street and see a nice car drive by. You notice its color, movement, and shape. All of these features are processed

• A. in one localized area of the brain.

• B. by a specific object neuron.

• C. in different parts of the brain.

• D. through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) potentials.

C

Explain the concept of experience-dependent plasticity in the brain.

Experience-dependent plasticity is the brain's ability to change its structure and function throughout life based on life experiences. The essence of this idea is that our brain adapts and reorganizes neural connections in response to new information and interactions with the environment, allowing for learning and adaptation throughout life. In other words, our brain changes over time and we can influence those changes with our life experiences.

When the axon is at rest, the inside of the neuron has a charge that is 70 millivolts more negative than the outside. This difference will continue as long as

• A. the neuron’s receptor continues to be stimulated

• B. the impulse is past the recording electrode.

• C. signals remain in the neuron.

• D. the neuron is at rest.

D

Neurons that respond to specific qualities of objects, such as orientation, movement, and length, are called

• A. retinal cells.

• B. feature detectors.

• C. dendrites.

• D. receptors.

B

If kittens are raised in an environment that contains only verticals, you would predict that most of the neurons in their visual cortex would respond best to the visual presentation of a

• A. brick wall.

• B. chain link fence.

• C. solid wall.

• D. picket fence.

D

Explain the difference between functional connectivity and structural connectivity.

Structural connectivity refers to the physical connections between different brain regions, established through neural pathways; it is the brain’s wiring diagram created by nerve axons that connect different brain regions. Functional connectivity refers to the extent to which the neural activity in separate brain areas is correlated with each other.

Which of the following statements is the MOST accurate with regard to specificity coding?

• A. It is probably accurate, which explains why the human nervous system contains over 100 billion neurons.

• B. Research has found that specificity encoding does occur for lower animals, such as dogs and cats, but has not found this phenomenon to exist in human beings.

• C. It is unlikely to be correct because there are too many stimuli in the world to have a separate neuron for each.

• D. Specificity coding is one of the areas that is only theoretical and not applied, and thus there is no way to know if it truly exists in human beings.

C

A person that has been diagnosed with prosopagnosia is MOST likely experiencing problems with the ability to

• A. recognize faces.

• B. produce speech sounds.

• C. feel pain.

• D. make choices.

A

Which of the following is one of the functional networks determined by resting-state fMRI research?

• A. Language

• B. Memory

• C. Executive control

• D. Facial recognition

C

In Adelson's checkerboard illusion, tiles A and B are physically the same shade of gray but appear different. What does this illusion reveal about the goal of the visual system, and why does the lecture argue that "perception does not need to be veridical; it needs to be useful"?

The brain interprets the shading pattern as evidence of a cast shadow, and infers that the shadow must be changing the colors of the tiles. A tile in shadow should appear darker, a tile out of shadow should appear lighter. So the brain perceives the same exact color values differently, depending on inferred context. In other words, the brain isn't trying to accurately represent the raw retinal image; it's trying to reconstruct the real-world properties (like true reflectance) that most likely produced that image. Since evolution favors behavior that works in the real world, not photographic accuracy about the pattern of light hitting the retina, perception is built to be useful (correctly inferring the scene) rather than veridical (literally matching the image).

It was argued that deep neural networks (in computer vision) share some properties with biological vision but are still missing something fundamental. Use examples covered in class, name something that is shared between the two, and explain how they are also fundamentally different.

One shared property is hierarchical feature detection. Neural networks (NNs) are built from simple, neuron-like units organized in layers that build from simple to increasingly complex features. A fundamental difference shows up in how each fails: adversarial attacks can fool a NN with tiny, human-imperceptible pixel changes. NNs also often break down on unusual viewpoints that people recognize instantly. This points to NNs relying on superficial, bottom-up statistical patterns rather than the top-down, knowledge-driven understanding that lets human perception work reliably.

In Task 1 on the Attention Lab, most people respond faster on valid trials than on invalid trials. According to the textbook chapter, what does this result best demonstrate?

• A. Attention can be captured bottom-up by salient physical properties of stimuli.

• B. Directing covert attention to a location enhances processing there, like a spotlight or zoom lens.

• C. Broadbent was correct: unattended locations are filtered out before perception begins.

• D. Invalid cues are physically harder to see than valid cues.

B

In Task 2 on the Attention Lab, incongruent trials were typically the slowest. Why?

• A. The words are longer than the color squares.

• B. Incongruent ink colors are less saturated and therefore harder to see.

• C. Reading words is so well practiced that it becomes automatic and competes with naming the ink color.

• D. Participants' sustained attention is fatigued by the time they reach the incongruent trials.

C

In the Attention Lab, many people miss the small square in Task 3 even though it is clearly visible. This phenomenon is called ____________, and it differs from change blindness because ______________.

• A. auditory inattention; it involves hearing rather than vision

• B. surround suppression; the square changed color partway through the trial

• C. it involves not perceiving a stimulus due to focused attention, whereas change blindness is failing to detect a difference between two successive scenes despite trying

• D. the cocktail party effect; attention is captured by salient stimuli

C

The arrow cues in Task 1 in the Attention Lab required you to voluntarily shift your attention based on the cue. This is an example of __________ attention.

• A. exogenous, because arrows are physically salient

• B. overt, because your eyes had to move

• C. sporadic, because you sometimes missed the target

• D. endogenous, because it was voluntary and goal-directed

D

Differentiate inattentional blindness from change blindness, and give one real world example of each.

Inattentional blindness = missing a clearly visible stimulus because attention is focused on something else (e.g., the Iowa swimming-pool tragedy, where lifeguards missed two drowning swimmers; or not noticing a person in a gorilla suit walk through a basketball game). Change blindness = failing to notice a difference between two successive views of a scene (e.g., continuity errors in films, such as a character's hair changing length between shots).

Which of these is an experimental procedure used to study how attention affects the processing of competing stimuli?

• A. Early selection

• B. Filtering

• C. Channeling

• D. Dichotic listening

D

The technique where the participant’s task is to focus on the message in one ear, called the attended ear, and to repeat what they are hearing out loud is known as\

• A. Filter model attention

• B. Shadowing

• C. Dichotic listening

• D. Detector listening

C

Colin Cherry’s experiment in which participants listened to two different messages, one presented to each ear, found that people

• A. could focus on a message only if they are repeating it.

• B. could focus on a message only if they rehearsed it.

• C. could focus on one message and ignore the other one at the same time.

• D. could not focus on a message presented to only one ear.

C

Broadbent’s model is called the early selection model because

• A. sensory memory holds all of the information for fraction of a second and then transfers all of it to filter.

• B. the output is sent to short-term memory, which holds the information for 10–15 seconds and also transfers the information to long-term memory.

• C. the attended information has been let through the filter, the detector processes all information that enters it.

• D. the filter eliminates the unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information.

D

Which of these is the process by which features such as color, form motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object?

• A. Change blindness

• B. Change detection

• C. Illusory conjunctions

• D. Binding

D

Suppose you are in your kitchen writing a grocery list, while your roommate is watching TV in the next room. A commercial for spaghetti sauce comes on TV. Although you are not paying attention to the TV, you “suddenly” remember that you need to pick up spaghetti sauce and add it to the list. Your behavior is BEST predicted by which of these models of attention?

• A. Object-based

• B. Early selection

• C. Spotlight

• D. Late selection

D

Strayer and Johnston’s (2001) experiment involving simulated driving and the use of “hands-free” versus “handheld” cell phones found that

• A. talking on either kind of phone impairs driving performance significantly and to the same extent.

• B. driving performance was impaired only with the handheld cell phones.

• C. driving performance was impaired less with the hands-free phones than with the handheld phones.

• D. divided attention (driving and talking on the phone) did not affect performance.

A

The pickpocket Apollo Robbins says fancier researchers have "Posner's trinity model of attention," but offers his own simplified metaphor for how attention works. What is that metaphor?

• A. A filing cabinet that stores every sensory experience for later retrieval

• B. A two-stage assembly line that separates stimulus processing from response selection

• C. A surveillance system, with an internal security guard ("Frank") monitoring live camera and sensor feeds

• D. A spotlight that illuminates only one location in space at a time

C

Models designed to explain mental functioning are constantly refined and modified to explain new results. Which of the following exemplifies this concept based on the results presented in your text?

• A. Replacing the short-term memory component of the modal model with working memory

• B. Replacing the sensory memory component of the modal model with the episodic buffer

• C. Replacing the short-term memory component of the modal model with iconic memory

• D. Replacing the sensory memory component of the modal model with working memory

A

The three structural components of the modal model of memory are

• A. receptors, occipital lobe, temporal lobe.

• B. receptors, temporal lobe, frontal lobe.

• C. sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory.

• D. sensory memory, iconic memory, rehearsal.

C

Information remains in sensory memory for

• A. seconds or a fraction of a second.

• B. 15–30 seconds.

• C. 1 to 3 minutes.

• D. as long as it is rehearsed.

A

Imagine you are driving to a friend’s new house. In your mind, you say the address repeatedly until you arrive. To remember the address, you used a(n)

• A. control process in short-term memory.

• B. automatic process in iconic memory.

• C. coding process in long-term memory.

• D. iconic process in echoic memory.

A

When a sparkler is twirled rapidly, people perceive a circle of light. This occurs because

• A. the trail you see is caused by sparks left behind from the sparkler.

• B. longer light wavelengths from the sparkler produce a visual echoic effect.

• C. the length of iconic memory is about a fraction of a second.

• D. Gestalt principles work to complete the circle in our minds.

C

Compare and contrast the concepts of short-term memory and working memory. How do the models of each concept differ and why?

Short term memory is used for quick tasks such as remembering your hotel room number until you get there, and it lasts roughly 15-20 seconds. It has a limited capacity. Working memory stores information for short periods so you can solve problems and make decisions. For example, you may use to to paraphrase a sentence or track moves in chess. So, short term memory is just used for quick recall, while working memory is for putting that quick recall to use.

The effective duration of short-term memory, when rehearsal is prevented, is

• A. just under a fraction of a second.

• B. 15–20 seconds or less.

• C. 1 to 3 minutes or more.

• D. indefinite.

B

The research by Ericsson and colleagues (1980) examined the ability of a college student to achieve amazing feats of memory by having him remember strings of random digits that were recited to him. They found that this student used his experience with running times to help him retain these strings of numbers. The significance of this finding was that

• A. experts show larger primacy and recency effects than beginners.

• B. knowledge in an area of expertise increases a person’s digit span.

• C. expertise with some material reduces susceptibility to proactive interference with that material.

• D. chunking requires knowledge of familiar patterns or concepts.

D

Working memory differs from short-term memory in that

• A. short-term memory consists of a number of components.

• B. short-term memory has a central executive function.

• C. working memory is engaged in processing information.

• D. working memory has unlimited capacity.

C

Physiological studies indicate that damage to which area of the brain can disrupt behaviors that depend on working memory?

• A. Prefrontal cortex

• B. Amygdala

• C. Hippocampus

• D. Occipital lobe

A

Sperling's partial-report technique showed that immediately after a brief display, observers could report about 3–4 letters from any cued row, equally well no matter which row was cued. What does this demonstrate about sensory (iconic) memory?

• A. It holds only a few items, just like short-term memory.

• B. It briefly holds nearly the entire visual display, but decays within well under a second.

• C. It is auditory in nature, not visual.

• D. Partial-report performance is identical to whole-report performance.

B

Multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) studies on working memory suggest that:

• A. Working memory is localized entirely to the prefrontal cortex.

• B. Working memory depends only on subcortical structures.

• C. Working-memory information is represented across a distributed network of brain regions, not confined to one area.

• D. fMRI cannot detect working-memory-related activity reliably.

C

According to Shannon's definition of entropy applied to a biased coin (heads with probability p), uncertainty is:

• A. Maximized when p = 0 or p = 1.

• B. Constant, regardless of p.

• C. Maximized when p = 0.5, and zero when p = 0 or p = 1.

• D. Undefined for a binary outcome.

C

According to rate-distortion theory as applied to visual working memory, the rate-distortion curve shows the minimum information rate (in bits) needed to achieve a given average error. A point falling below this curve represents:

• A. An efficient but rarely used encoding strategy.

• B. A combination of error and information rate that is theoretically impossible to achieve.

• C. The performance typically seen in young children.

• D. The optimal strategy used by expert mnemonists like S.F.

B

Describe the Cognitive Tradeoff Hypothesis and the evidence Matsuzawa offered for it. Drawing on at least one additional finding or theoretical idea discussed in class, evaluate whether this evidence actually supports the conclusion that chimpanzees possess a working-memory capacity traded off against language.

The Cognitive Tradeoff Hypothesis theorizes that in order for humans to develop language, we needed to sacrifice some of our working memory capacity. This is likely false, as it was found that after enough training, humans could match the performance of the chimpanzees.

Explain what Shannon's rate–distortion theory offers when applied as a theory of human visual memory. What does it predict about the relationship between how many items a person tries to remember and how precisely each item is remembered?

Rate distortion theory offers a mathematical foundation to develop computational models of human perception. It shows that the brain trades off the number of bits used to show a visual stimulus with the distortion, or the number of errors in perception and recall. In simpler terms, the more items you attempt to remember, the less precisely you will remember each item.

The primacy effect is attributed to

• A. recall of information stored in long-term memory.

• B. a type of rehearsal that improves memory for all items in a list.

• C. recall of information still active in short-term memory.

• D. forgetting of early items in a list as they are replaced by later items.

C

Which of the following is an example of an explicit memory?

• A. Classical conditioning

• B. Repetition priming

• C. Procedural memory

• D. Semantic memory

D

An example of a semantic memory is

• A. your last birthday party.

• B. your first kiss.

• C. your address.

• D. your graduation.

C

K.C., who was injured in a motorcycle accident, remembers facts like the difference between a strike and a spare in bowling, but he is unaware of experiencing things like hearing about the circumstances of his brother’s death, which occurred 2 years before the accident. His memory behavior suggests intact

• A. semantic memory but defective episodic memory.

• B. procedural memory but defective semantic memory.

• C. episodic memory but defective semantic memory.

• D. episodic memory but defective procedural memory.

A

A patient with impaired episodic memory would most likely have the greatest difficulty in

• A. recognizing the faces of famous people.

• B. remembering the meaning of some words.

• C. recalling where to find eating utensils in the kitchen.

• D. remembering graduating from college.

D

Memory enhancement due to repetition priming is a result of the test stimulus being

• A. the same as or resembling the priming stimulus.

• B. different from the priming stimulus.

• C. similar in meaning to the priming stimulus.

• D. different in meaning from the priming stimulus.

A

Which of the following involves procedural memory?

• A. Knowing how it feels to be scared

• B. Recalling a childhood memory

• C. Knowing how an automobile engine works

• D. Reading a sentence in a book

D

The propaganda effect demonstrates that we evaluate familiar statements as being true

• A. only when we are aware we’ve seen them before.

• B. simply because we have been exposed to them before.

• C. only when we agree with them.

• D. unless we are told explicitly that the statements are false.

B

A researcher repeats a free-recall experiment with two changes: words are presented twice as slowly (giving more time to rehearse), and participants count backward for 30 seconds before recalling. Compared with the standard experiment, the most likely result is:

• A. A stronger recency effect and an eliminated primacy effect.

• B. Both primacy and recency effects are stronger.

• C. A stronger primacy effect and a largely eliminated recency effect.

• D. Both primacy and recency effects are eliminated.

C

Patient A has a digit span of about 2 but learns new information normally over days. Patient B has a normal digit span but cannot form new long-term memories. Why is having both patients more informative than either one alone?

• A. Together they show the two abilities can be impaired independently, ruling out that one task is simply harder than the other.

• B. Together they show that STM and LTM depend on the same brain region.

• C. A second patient only adds statistical power.

• D. Each patient alone already proves that STM feeds into LTM.

A

After an accident, a patient can state facts about the world (capital cities, how a car works) but cannot recall any specific personal experience. According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, which additional deficit is most likely?

• A. Inability to ride a bicycle.

• B. Loss of all semantic knowledge.

• C. A sharply reduced digit span.

• D. Difficulty imagining specific future events.

D

A pianist plays a piece fluently from memory, but her errors increase when she is asked to say aloud which finger is pressing each key. The best explanation is that:

• A. Her semantic memory for the piece has deteriorated.

• B. The verbal task overloads her sensory memory.

• C. Attending consciously to a proceduralized skill can disrupt its automatic execution.

• D. She never stored the piece in long-term memory.

C

A monkey is trained so that a tone reliably predicts a reward of a few drops of fruit juice. After extensive training, at the time the juice would be expected to arrive, which pattern of dopamine activity does reward prediction error theory predict under each of the following situations: (A) tone followed by juice, (B) tone followed by no juice, and (C) juice delivered with no tone?

• A. A: burst; B: no change; C: no change.

• B. A: no change; B: dip below baseline; C: burst.

• C. A: burst; B: dip below baseline; C: burst.

• D. A: no change; B: no change; C: dip below baseline.

B

A friend says, "I'm immune to misinformation. If I hear a claim, I just remember that it's false." Using the mere-exposure and illusory truth effects, evaluate this claim and suggest one practical way to reduce the risk.

This claim is largely biased and doesn't make much sense. It sounds like this person assumes every claim is false. Let's assume that they have heard the claim before and still assume it is false. The mere exposure effect shows that just by exposure, people are more predisposed to have a favorable opinion toward a claim. The illusory truth effect suggests that the more we hear a claim, the more we believe it may be true. Say that your friend's crazy grandpa thinks that aliens are definitely real. Hearing it from one person a couple of times, it is not very convincing. If you and all of your friends suddenly start saying that aliens are real and say it often, your friend is predisposed to agree. After hearing it enough times, they may be convinced of the idea as well.

It seems intuitively true that human forgetfulness is a bad thing. Based on specific findings and arguments in cognitive psychology, explain why this might not be correct.

Consider the case of an individual with the rare condition hyperthymesia, which does not allow them to forget. These individuals are often burdened by the amount of memories they have, spending excessive amounts of time ruminating on the past. One sufferer of the condition, Joey DeGrandis, said that he dwells on painful subjects longer than the average person, and can get very hurt by the loss of a family member or a breakup. Forgetting can also help clear our minds from mental clutter.

Explain in a few sentences Demis Hassabis's contributions to cognitive neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

Demis Hassabis has linked our episodic memory and imagination. One study showed that patients who have damage to their hippocampus (causing amnesia), cannot imagine themselves in a new experience. He founded a company called DeppMind stating that his goal was to "'solve intelligence' and then use intelligence 'to solve everything else'". He modeled AI based on our memories, allowing them to learn in similar ways to us.

What happened when social psychology widely adopted priming as a theoretical framework/methodology? Briefly (in 3-4 sentences) describe what went wrong and why.

Resesarchers began trying to replicate famous experiments involving priming. Specifically, they wanted to replicate an experiment where participants walked slowly after completing word puzzles with age-related words. When they replicated the experiment, they replaced stopwatches with infrared sensors. The effect disappeared, revealing that the effects of the first experiment were likely due to bias from experimenters. In 2015, 100 psychology studies were replicated. Only around 30% of studies from social psychology held up. Social priming specifically did not do well.