Cognitive Psychology - Chapter 3 Review

1. According to the research on divided-attention tasks, when people divide their attention between two stimuli:

a) they usually perform very accurately.

b) they report that their performance accuracy suffers, but in reality, they simply perform the tasks more slowly.

c) they typically make more errors.

d) their performance shifts from serial processing to parallel processing.

2. The Stroop effect refers to the finding that people take longer to name:

a) a color in which a word is printed when the word’s meaning conflicts with the name of the color.

b) a color in which a word is printed when the word’s meaning matches the name of the color.

c) a word when the letters forming the word are colored differently than when they are all black-colored.

d) a word that is presented following a series of words in a meaningful sentence than to name a word in isolation.

3. What can we conclude about whether people notice the characteristics of the unattended

messages in a selective attention task?

a) People typically notice the same characteristics in the unattended message as in the attended message.

b) The only time people can notice the unattended message is when their own name is mentioned.

c) People can sometimes notice the meaning of the unattended message, depending on the characteristics of the task.

d) If people are conscientious about listening to the relevant message, they will not notice any characteristics about the irrelevant message.

4. Psychologists have conducted studies in which the participants must detect a stimulus in a display of many other objects. According to this research, people usually detect:

a) a combined feature more quickly than an isolated feature.

b) a feature that is present more quickly than a feature that is absent.

c) a stationary object more quickly than a moving object.

d) a small object more quickly than a large object.

5. Which of the following students provides the most complete and accurate definition for the term “attention”?

a) Josh: “Attention refers to a focusing of processing so that you can concentrate on seven stimuli.”

b) Maeve: “Attention refers to the active process of combining isolated stimuli into a meaningful whole.”

c) Jenn: “Attention is a storage component that takes in all possible external stimuli and holds them for several seconds.”

d) Igor: “Attention lets you concentrate your cognitive activity so that you can focus on information from your memory and your sensory world.”

6. The orienting attention network, as revealed by recent research:

a) is intimately involved in tasks such as visual search.

b) develops during the first year of life.

c) relies on activity in the parietal region of the right cerebral hemisphere.

d) All of the above are correct.

7. Posner and Rothbart propose that the executive attention network is active when people need to inhibit an automatic response. On this kind of attention task, the portion of the brain

that would be most active is:

a) the parietal lobe.

b) the temporal lobe.

c) the occipital lobe.

d) the frontal lobe.

8. Which of the following students provides the most accurate summary of the neuroscience research on attention?

a) Lucy: “One kind of attention task activates the frontal lobe, and a different kind of attention activates the parietal lobe.”

b) Nipon: “The orienting attention network is activated when people work on the Stroop task.”

c) Daniel: “The executive attention network is activated when people search for a specific target.”

d) Elena: “At present, the neuroscience research shows contradictory findings, so that it is too early to draw any conclusions about this topic.”

9. According to Treisman’s feature-integration theory:

a) automatic parallel processing (distributed attention) may lead to a “pop out” effect.

b) in a focused attentional search, the number of elements in a display does not matter.

c) illusory conjunctions are more likely when people perform a relatively easy task.

d) focused attention operates more quickly and yields more errors than distributed attention.

10. According to Treisman’s feature-integration theory, when a person is attending to a

scene there are two processing stages:

a) focused attention and distributed attention.

b) feature analysis and prototype identification.

c) automatic processing and unconscious processing.

d) automatic attention and uncontrolled attention.

11. Suppose that you are looking at a flower garden containing dozens of yellow tulips andone red tulip, which seems to stand out conspicuously. According to Anne Treisman’s theory,the explanation for this phenomenon is that:

a) you probably searched all the tulips serially.

b) focused attention drew your attention to the one discrepant feature.

c) you automatically processed some features—such as the color of the flower—during distributed attention.

d) you were searching for a conjunction of two properties.

12. Many studies investigating thought suppression (e.g., trying not to think about food orabout a white bear), reveal that people:

a) can easily suppress all automatic and controlled processes that involve theunwanted thought.

b) can effectively suppress all automatic processes that involve the unwantedthought by engaging only in controlled processes.

c) cannot engage in a controlled search for thoughts that are not the unwantedthought.

d) show ironic effects, such as a rebound effect following a period of thoughtsuppression.

13. Imagine that you have been on a strict diet for several weeks. No matter how hard youtry, you can’t avoid thinking about chocolate chip cookies and lemon meringue pie. You arehaving difficulty with:

a) thought suppression.

b) divided attention.

c) illusory conjunctions.

d) shadowing

14. Suppose that a woman has an injured visual cortex, as the result of an accident. Shesays that she cannot see a light, which is presented on her left side. However, sheaccurately points to the light’s location. She is demonstrating: (Difficulty Level: Moderate)

a) change blindness.

b) the ironic effects of mental control.

c) selective attention.

d) blindsight.