psych sample mc

Aristotle's doctrine of association suggests that mental life can be explained in terms of ideas, and the associations between them. What were the three critical ways in which he thought things could be associated?

a. contiguity, similarity, common fate

b. similarity, connectedness, contrast

c. contrast, contiguity, similarity

d. familiarity, simplicity, continuation

c. contrast, contiguity, similarity

Difficulty: Easy - this is a straight memorization question

Perceiving Machines" are used by the U.S. Postal service to "read" the addresses on letters and sort them quickly to their correct destinations. Sometimes, these machines cannot "read" an address, because the writing on the envelope is not sufficiently clear for the machine to "match" the writing to an "example" it has stored in "memory". Human postal workers are much more successful at reading unclear addresses, most likely because of

a. bottom-up processing.

b. top-down processing.

c. template matching

d. feature recognition.

d. feature recognition.

Difficulty: Hard - this is more of an applied question and we got cut off right before we ended on the first day so don't worry if you didn't know the answer on first glance. Expect a number of questions like this on exams, where I'll give more real-world type scenarios related to the concepts we've learned. To be able to answer these questions you need to understand and recognize the critical concept

Why do we have sensory memory?

a. allows us to select pertinent information to which we wish to attend

b. enables the understanding of the flow of language

c. allows for a stable and continuous view of the environment

d. all of the above

d. all of the above

Difficulty: Moderate

When Sam listens to his girlfriend Susan in the restaurant and ignores other people's conversations, he is engaged in the process of ____ attention.

a. low load

b. divided

c. cocktail party

d. selective

d. selective

Difficulty: Moderate

Broadbent's "Filter Model" of selective attention proposes that the filter identifies the attended message based on

a. meaning.

b. modality.

c. physical characteristics.

d. higher order characteristics.

c. physical characteristics.

Difficulty: Moderate

Which of the following is not traditionally considered to be one of the four kinds ofattention?

a. selective

b. vigilance

c. categorical

d. divided

c. categorical

Difficulty: Easy - this is just straight memorization

The Stroop effect demonstrates

a. how automatic processing can interfere with intended processing.

b. a failure of divided attention.

c. the ease of performing a low-load task.

d. support for object-based attention.

a. how automatic processing can interfere with intended processing.

Difficulty: Moderate

A difference between a heuristic and an algorithm is

a. algorithms usually take longer to carry out than heuristics.

b. algorithms are usually less systematic than heuristics.

c. algorithms do not result in a correct solution every time as heuristics do.

d. algorithms provide "best guess" solutions to problems more so than heuristics.

a. algorithms usually take longer to carry out than heuristics.

Difficulty: Hard - this is a tricky question if you don't know the terms

If you are standing in line at a movie and in your periphery, you detect someone waving at you, this would most likely lead to a _______ and _________ shift of attention

a. endogenous, covert

b. endogenous, overt

c. exogenous, covert

d. exogenous, overt

d. exogenous, overt

Difficulty: Moderate...basically if you know the definitions of the above terms this should be fairly easy (though of course the similarity of the words makes it tough)

That you are slower to return your attention to a location that you have previously fixated is referred to as ____________, and is a mechanism that is thought to aid _______________

a. inhibition of return, visual search

b. negative priming, reading

c. negative priming, visual search

d. inhibition of return, reading

a. inhibition of return, visual search

Difficulty: Easy...pretty much a straight memorization question

How do cuing effects brought on by peripheral cues differ from cuing effects brought on by central cues?

a. central cuing effects emerge faster

b. central cuing effects are larger

c. central cues lead to inhibition of return whereas peripheral cues do not

d. peripheral cuing effects are larger

d. peripheral cuing effects are larger

Difficulty: Moderate

Studies which have examined object-based attention, have provided us with evidence that

a. attention selects locations

b. attention selects objects

c. attention stays with an object even when it moves in space

d. all of the above

d. all of the above

Difficulty: Easy

The inverse projection problem states that ambiguity occurs because the image on the retina

a. can be caused by an infinite number of different objects

b. appears magnified compared to its actual size

c. is inverted compared to its actual orientation

d. can only be viewed from one angle

a. can be caused by an infinite number of different objects

Difficulty: Moderate - this is mostly just memorization

There are two different neural correlates of perception, the _________ stream which provides "what" information (perception) and the __________ stream, which provides "where" information (action input)

a. visual, motor

b. motor, visual

c. dorsal, ventral

d. ventral, dorsal

d. ventral, dorsal

Difficulty: Easy - mostly a memorization question

Which of the following is NOT one of the original Gestalt laws of perceptual organization

a. similarity

b. good continuation

c. uniform connectedness

d. common fate

c. uniform connectedness

Difficulty: Moderate - need to know the original six laws to know which one wasn't a part of them

Color afterimages are attributable to

a. orientation-sensitive cells in the striate cortex

b. fatigued cells in the retina

c. lateral inhibition

d. the contrast between the perceived color and the background

b. fatigued cells in the retina

Difficulty: Moderate - mostly memorization but there are other plausible sounding options there

Both the hollow mask and Margaret Thatcher illusions are attributable to

a. change blindness

b. the context in which the stimuli are presented

c. our knowledge/expertise regarding how faces should look

d. a failure to activate the fusiform face area

c. our knowledge/expertise regarding how faces should look

Difficulty: Easy

The "ball in a box" shadow illusion in which the trajectory of the ball seems to change as the trajectory of the shadow changes is an example of how ____________ influences perception

a. context

b. action

c. attention

d. don't choose d

a. context

Difficulty: Moderate

Jake is a professional baseball player for the Minnesota Twins. When he is up to bat and the ball is coming towards him, the ball appears ____ to him.

a. Bigger than the actual measurements

b. Smaller than the actual measurements

c. The same size as its measurements

a. Bigger than the actual measurements

DIfficulty: Easy

Researchers asked participants to complete an attention task. When comparing performances between when participants held their hands near the display and when participants had their hands far from the display, they noticed that people tended to react faster with hands near. This is an example of ____ differences in processing.

a. qualitative

b. quantitative

c. spatial

d. postural

b. quantitative

Difficulty: Moderate

What is an affordance?

a. The ability to afford something when shopping

b. The possibility for interaction

c. Something that draws our attention to a location

d. An object that we interact with

b. The possibility for interaction

Difficulty: Easy

The primacy effect is attributed to

a. a type of rehearsal which improves memory for all items in a list

b. recall of information still active in STM

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

d. recall of information stored in LTM

d. recall of information stored in LTM

Difficulty: Easy

The recency effect is attributed to

a. a type of rehearsal which improves memory for all items in a list

b. recall of information still active in STM

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

d. recall of information stored in LTM

b. recall of information still active in STM

Difficulty: Easy

Prospective memory is

a. memory for actually experienced events

b. memory for action

c. memory for facts

d. memory for tasks that need to be carried out in the future

d. memory for tasks that need to be carried out in the future

Difficulty: Moderate