1. Which of these research questions would be mostly likely examined by cognitive psychologist?

Which personality characteristics predict workplace performance? incorrect

Why can't I remember all of the items on my shopping list? correct

Which therapy is most effective at treating depression? incorrect

Why are people less likely to help others when in groups? incorrect

Feedback: Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes like attention, reasoning, and memory. Options a, c, and d are more closely associated with other areas of psychology, such as personality psychology, clinical psychology and social psychology.
Section reference: 1.1 The Study of Cognition

2. Encoded and stored pieces of information about the environment are known as

processes. incorrect

computations. incorrect

algorithms. incorrect

mental representations. correct

mental representations.
Feedback: Pieces of information that are encoded and stored are called representations. Their format can be transformed and reconstructed while maintaining their meaning.
Section reference: 1.1 The Study of Cognition

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3. A major focus of grade school education is to help children understand how to combine quantities so that they become proficient in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Stating the challenge this way best reflects which of the multiple levels of analysis proposed by Marr?

Computational correct

Algorithmic incorrect

Implementational incorrect

None of the above incorrect

Feedback: The computational level of analysis involves understanding and defining the nature of the information that the mind must compute and towards what end. That is, what is the mind trying to compute, and why?
Section reference: 1.1 The Study of Cognition

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4. Eye movements can be measured in order to understand the role of attention or the relative priority given to face parts when people are trying to recognize faces. A study like this might best reflect which of the levels of analysis proposed by Marr?

Computational incorrect

Algorithmic correct

Implementational incorrect

None of the above incorrect

Feedback: This might best reflect the algorithmic level of analysis because the goal is to understand the rules and processes that contribute to face recognition.
Section reference: 1.1 The Study of Cognition

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5. Current state-of-the-art medical scanning technologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), can reveal which parts of the brain are most active during a cognitive process. Which of the levels of analysis proposed by Marr would this best reflect?

Computational incorrect

Algorithmic incorrect

Implementational correct

None of the above incorrect

Feedback: Implementational analyses focus on the physical processes that enable processing in cognition.
Section reference: 1.1 The Study of Cognition

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6. The field of cognitive psychology is often described as having emerged from the Cognitive Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. What fact(s) might someone use to support a claim that the history of cognitive psychology goes back further than that?

Experiments by physiologists in the 1800s tested how external stimulation affects conscious experience. incorrect

Questions and theories about cognition were laid out as far back as the ancient Greek philosophers, some of which still guide research today. incorrect

The 10^th century Arab scholar Ibn al-Haytham argued that raw visual stimulation was too ambiguous to give rise to perceptual experience without additional cognitive processing taking place. incorrect

All of the above correct

Feedback: All these answers are correct. Although a convergence of factors led to the of the Cognitive Revolution in the 1950s and 1960s, and to the emergence of cognitive research as part of mainstream experimental psychology, the history of cognitive research and theory extends back much further.
Section reference: 1.2 The Precursors to Cognitive Psychology

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7. Demonstrations that one could measure the speed of nerve impulses were a milestone that lay foundations for cognitive psychology because they

suggested that the speed of mental processes might also be measured, which could provide a means for making inferences about cognitive mechanisms. correct

indicated how fast information must travel in the body. incorrect

indicated how fast information must travel in the brain. incorrect

indicated which neural communications unfold serially and which unfold in parallel. incorrect

Feedback: By demonstrating that the speed of nerve impulses is affected by physical constraints, Helmholtz's work opened the door for measuring the speed of mental processes through reaction time experiments.
Section reference: 1.2 The Precursors to Cognitive Psychology

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8. The intensity of the subjective experience of a stimulus is proportional to the intensity of that stimulus. This statement describes _______ Law.

Weber's incorrect

Fechner's correct

Helmholtz's incorrect

Donders's incorrect

Feedback: This is the definition of Fechner's law, which was built on the work of Weber.
Section reference: 1.2 The Precursors to Cognitive Psychology

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9. Wundt argued that introspection as a way to study cognition was valid only if the researcher

is being supervised. incorrect

could be completely objective. incorrect

had been properly trained. correct

performed introspection in complete silence. incorrect

Feedback: Because of its highly subjective nature, this is the only way he believed the responses could really be considered valid.
Section reference: 1.2 The Precursors to Cognitive Psychology

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10. A hallmark of Ebbinghaus's unique approach to research on memory was that he

employed more rigor in his experiments than psychophysicists like Fechner did. incorrect

was more interested in failures of memory than in successful memory. incorrect

avoided the use of nonsense syllables, preferring instead to test memory for meaningful events. incorrect

used himself as his primary test subject. correct

Feedback: In contrast to most researchers who study memory, who test many participants, Ebbinghaus ran thousands and thousands of trials on himself.
Section reference: 1.2 The Precursors to Cognitive Psychology

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11. Evidence suggesting the existence of cognitive maps came from

rats' ability to learn a maze without rewards and to complete a maze from different starting points. correct

the first computer demonstration of artificial intelligence. incorrect

classical conditioning with pigeons. incorrect

language acquisition in children. incorrect

Feedback: Edward Tolman's work with rats was foundational for the concept of cognitive maps. In one study, rats learned the spatial layout of a maze without being rewarded, suggesting that they had built up a spatial representation while simply exploring the maze. In another study, rats correctly navigated towards the learned location of a reward despite starting in a new location, suggesting that they weren't simply executing learned motor responses.
Section reference: 1.3 The Cognitive Revolution

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12. How did the field of artificial intelligence contribute to the emergence of the Cognitive Revolution?

Experimenting with artificial intelligence didn't require ethical approval and so was easier to conduct. incorrect

It discredited much of the research of the field of Behaviorism. incorrect

It demonstrated that an understanding of information-processing rules and algorithms could be used to model and generate human-like behavior. correct

Computer modelling was more accurate at predicting behavior than classical or operant conditioning used by behaviorists. incorrect

Feedback: Artificial intelligence achievements like the development of the General Problem Solver showed that an approach that focused on information processing could generate human-like behavior (e.g., playing chess, solving math problems). This suggested that an information-processing approach could yield insights into the inner workings of the human mind.
Section reference: 1.3 The Cognitive Revolution

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13. Inspired by notions of the mind as an information processor, Broadbent's filter model of attention was an attempt to model how we

process information. incorrect

pay attention to only some stimuli while ignoring others. correct

pay attention to all stimuli. incorrect

reinforce memories. incorrect

Feedback: Broadbent's model of attention attempted to explain the steps whereby some information gets selected for further processing and other information gets filtered out.
Section reference: 1.3 The Cognitive Revolution

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14. Some of the major contributors to the Cognitive Revolution, such as Ulric Neisser and Jerome Bruner, also came to criticize aspects of the emerging field of cognitive psychology. Among their concerns were that

researchers needed to pay more attention to how meaning shapes cognition. incorrect

the intoxicating ability to manipulate and measure cognitive processes through minor tweaks might lead studies of cognition to become increasingly irrelevant to most people. incorrect

highly controlled lab experiments might not capture the complexity of how cognition works in the real world. incorrect

All of the above correct

Feedback: All of these are correct. Psychologists such as Neisser and Bruner worried that the zeal with which cognitive researchers focused on minor (but measurable) tweaks within the lab risked losing touch with the relevance of cognition in everyday life. In the decades since then, cognitive researchers have increasingly built bridges between lab-based insights and their implications in the real world.
Section reference: 1.4 Cognitive Psychology in Relation to Other Areas

15. Which of the following statements best describes an argument in favor of regarding emotion as an important focus of research in cognitive psychology?

Emotions are perceived in the same way by everyone. incorrect

Distinguishing between the brain areas involved in emotion and cognition is simple. incorrect

Fluctuating emotions can profoundly affect cognitive processing. correct

Particular cognitions always lead to the same emotions. incorrect

Fluctuating emotions can profoundly affect cognitive processing.
Feedback: There is substantial experimental evidence that fluctuations in emotion can affect cognitive functions such as attention, memory, and decision making. The link between emotion and cognition is tight enough that some researchers regard emotion as a form of cognition and have questioned whether cognition and emotion can be meaningfully disentangled.
Section reference: 1.4 Cognitive Psychology in Relation to Other Areas