Cognitive Psychology - Chapter 2 Review

1. The visual information registered by the sensory receptors of the retina is known as the:

a) distal stimulus.

b) wavefront.

c) dorsal stream.

d) proximal stimulus.

2. The study of object recognition or pattern recognition focuses on ways in which:

a) sensory processes transform and organize raw information provided by sensory receptors.

b) previous knowledge always gives rise to accurate perception of environmental stimuli.

c) template-matching processes underlie the direct perception of objects and patterns.

d) sensory receptors use a proximal stimulus to manufacture a new distal stimulus in the external world.

3. The way people recognize simple visual patterns (such as letters of the alphabet) is partially explained by a feature-analysis process, which involves the analysis of combinations of distinctive features. Similarly, the way people recognize complex objects (such as coffee cups) is partially explained by a recognition-by-components process, which involves the analysis of combinations of:

a) templates.

b) perceptrons.

c) figure–ground relationships.

d) geons.

4. Suppose that you are looking at an advertisement that features a large figure. At first, you think you are looking at a star. However, when you look closer, you realize that some of the star’s edges are not actually shown on the paper, yet they seem to be physically present. This perceptual experience is called:

a) a template.

b) an example of bottom-up processing.

c) a distinctive feature.

d) an illusory contour.

5. Feature-analysis approaches:

a) state that we store a template for each letter of the alphabet.

b) cannot explain how we manage to recognize handwritten letters of the alphabet.

c) are contradicted by neuroscience research.

d) make predictions about why an R would be confused with a P, rather than a W.

6. The word superiority effect is related to the finding that people can identify:

a) a word better when it appears in isolation than when it appears at the end of a meaningful sentence.

b) a word better when it appears in uppercase (capital) letters than when it appears in lowercase (small) letters.

c) a single letter better when it appears in a meaningful word than when it appears by itself or in a meaningless string of letters.

d) a single letter better when it appears by itself than when it appears in the middleof a meaningful word.

7. The same stimulus (e.g., “beans” or “bears”) may be perceived in a different way depending on the sentence context (e.g., “The farmer raised . . .” vs. “The zookeeper raised . . .”). This supports the view that word recognition involves:

a) bottom-up processing.

b) top-down processing.

c) both bottom-up and top-down processing.

d) processes in addition to bottom-up and top-down processing.

8. Research on change blindness and inattentional blindness reveal that people:

a) tend to make cognitive errors because they do not use a rational information-processing strategy.

b) often fail to notice when an object in a scene has changed or when a new object has appeared.

c) will usually notice the appearance of a new object only if they are attending closely to another object.

d) All of the above are correct.

9. People recognize features of human faces relatively better (compared to features of other complex objects, such as houses) if the features appear in the context of a whole face, rather than in isolation. This kind of finding supports the view that face recognition:

a) is “special.”

b) involves holistic processing.

c) has a special status in the human visual system.

d) All of the above are correct.

10. Imagine that you are reading an article on face recognition. The article argues that people use holistic processing when they look at a face. Which of the following sentences would you be most likely to see in this article?

a) “People with prosopagnosia are especially likely to use holistic processing.”

b) “Brain lesions typically encourage the use of holistic processing in face recognition.”

c) “People perceive faces by holistic processing, in terms of a gestalt, rather than separate elements.”

d) “Infants tend to use holistic processing, whereas adults use gestalt processing.”

11. A person with prosopagnosia would be likely to:

a) perform better than other people on a change-blindness test.

b) have difficulty recognizing fruits and vegetables.

c) fail to recognize letters of the alphabet.

d) have trouble recognizing faces.

12. Which of the following students provides the best summary of the research about using a video security system to recognize faces?

a) Alex: “Humans are skilled at face recognition; with these video systems, their face recognition is even more accurate.”

b) Magali: “With these video systems, people are accurate in recognizing familiar faces, but not unfamiliar faces.”

c) Emmanuel: “With these video systems, people are accurate in recognizing unfamiliar faces, but not familiar faces.”

d) Rose: “Unfortunately, the videos are typically so blurry that people have difficulty recognizing both familiar and unfamiliar faces.”

13. In most ordinary conversations, the acoustical boundaries between adjacent words are:

a) clear and distinct.

b) not usually very distinct.

c) separated by pauses in which the speaker takes a breath.

d) marked by distinct facial expressions.

14. Speech sounds provide information to a listener that is less than perfect. A major finding on speech perception is that people:

a) nevertheless perceive speech with remarkable accuracy.

b) are remarkably inaccurate in identifying speech sounds.

c) must receive extensive training in order to perceive speech accurately.

d) are able to identify ambiguous speech sounds only if no contextual or visual cues are provided.

15. According to your textbook, the McGurk effect:

a) demonstrates that visual information can influence our speech perception.

b) is similar to an illusory contour, except that it occurs during speech perception.

c) illustrates that we often think we hear a boundary between words, even when the words are run together.

d) shows that phonemes are not pronounced in a consistent fashion.

16. According to the special mechanism approach to speech perception:

a) the motor cortex of the brain is especially active during speech perception.

b) context is particularly important in speech perception.

c) we perceive speech the same way we perceive other auditory stimuli.

d) speech perception requires a phonetic module, in addition to our general cognitive processes.