PS 205: COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW & EDUCATION

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Final Examination

Semester 2 2018

Online
Duration of Exam: 3 hours + 10 minutes
Reading Time: 10 minutes
Writing Time: 3 hours
Instructions:
1. This exam has three sections:
 Section A: 40 Marks- Multiple Choice Questions
 Section B: 30 Marks – Paragraph Questions
 Section C: 30 Marks – Essay Questions

2. Answer all questions in section A on the separate answer sheet, three questions in
section B and two questions in section C.

3. Write your answers in the answer sheet and booklet provided.

4. This exam is worth 30 % of your overall mark. The minimum exam mark required
is 15/30.

PLEASE WAIT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS

SECTION A: MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS 40 MARKS
Write your answer on the answer sheet provided. Attached the Answer
Sheet for section A to the booklet. Each question is worth 1 Mark.
Suggested time allocated is 40 minutes.

1. Which of the following statements best captures the scope of cognition?

A. Cognition includes every internal experience that humans have.

B. We use cognition when we store, transform, and use information about the
world.
C. Cognition primarily focuses on the higher mental processes, such as problem
solving and decision making.
D. Cognition is more concerned with visible actions, such as motor activities, than
with activities that cannot be seen by an outside observer.

2. Suppose that you are writing a paper about cognitive processes in elderly
adults. Which of the following topics would be most relevant for your paper?

A. Observations about their social interactions

B. The effects of vitamin supplements on their activity level
C. Their ability to remember people’s names
D. The relationship between their childhood experiences and current adjustment.

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3. According to the discussion at the beginning of Chapter 1, behaviorism places
the most emphasis on:

A. Interpersonal relationships.
B. Observable actions.
C. Unconscious emotions.
D. Mental processes.

4. Which most appropriately describes the approach of William James?

A. He emphasized prior experimentation on animals.

B. He asked research participants to report their sensations only using written
materials.
C. He emphasized the kinds of psychological experiences that people encounter in
their everyday lives.
D. He emphasized that we must look for the unconscious forces that underlie
cognitive activities.

5. George Miller's classic article, on the magical number seven, introduced the
concept of a chunk. According to Miller, a chunk:

A. Should be measured in terms of the number of items that can be spoken within a
30-second interval.
B. Is the basic unit in short-term memory.
C. Is the portion of the brain in which short-term memories are stored.
D. Is the maximum limit of your short-term memory.

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6. According to the Baddeley’s revised model of working memory, the episodic
buffer’s major purpose is to:

A. Store musical information (such as pitch and tones) for brief periods of time.
B. Manage the decisions that are too complicated for the central executive.
C. Coordinate the meaning and the visual appearance of written text.
D. Provide temporary storage for information from long-term memory, the
phonological loop, and the visuospatial sketchpad.

7. A friend has just told you his cell phone number, and you repeat it to yourself
several times as you search for a pen to record it. The technique you are using
to remember the number is called:

A. Rehearsal.
B. The serial position effect.
C. Release from proactive interference.
D. The working-memory approach.

8. Suppose that you are having trouble recalling the information for a question
about Baddeley's theory because the information about Atkinson and
Shiffrin's theory (which you learned earlier) keeps interfering. This
phenomenon is called:

A. Proactive interference.
B. The recency effect.
C. The primacy effect.
D. Chunking.

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9. Which of the following is an example of an implicit memory task?

A. Recognizing which advertisements had been presented one hour ago, and which
ones are new.
B. Recalling the names of popular fairy tales.
C. Matching French vocabulary words with their English translations.
D. Completing a word for which the first and last letter have been supplied.

10. Which of the following is an example of an explicit memory task?

A. You are shown a set of photos, and you are asked which ones are familiar
because you have seen them before.
B. You supply free associations more quickly to words that you have recently seen
than to words you have not recently seen.
C. You are shown some word fragments, and you complete the words more quickly
if you have seen them before.
D. You dial a familiar phone number more quickly than an unfamiliar phone
number.

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11. The encoding specificity principle suggests that:

A. We recall something better if we are in the same context in which we originally

learned the material
B. We recall something better if we are in a context that is moderately different
from the original learning context—not too similar, and not too different.
C. Recall depends upon how specific the instructions are; vague instructions lead to
poor recall.
D. It is more effective to encode material during learning than to decode the
material during recall.

12. The term autobiographical memory generally refers to:

A. Research conducted in the laboratory.

B. Memory for issues and events from your own life.
C. Remembering that you must do a specific task in the future.
D. Memory for the events that have occurred in the lives of relatives and close
friends.

13. The method of loci is:

A. A method in which people code numbers into letters.

B. Another phrase for rote memory.
C. A method of associating items to be learned with physical locations.
D. The method of creating bizarre mental images.

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14. Which of the following students provides the best definition of the
term mnemonics?

A. Alfredo: "Mnemonics is the use of imagery to assist our memory."

B. Julia: "Mnemonics is the use of external memory aids to improve our memory."
C. Cynthia: "Mnemonics refers to using a strategy to improve our memory."
D. Cynthia: "Mnemonics refers to using a strategy to improve our memory."

15. Rebekah has been studying all evening for a test in her health psychology
class. It’s now 10:00 p.m., and her test is scheduled for 10:00 a.m., tomorrow
morning. She is confident that she will do extremely well on that
exam. However, she should be aware that many students make a potential
error called:

A. Implicit memory.
B. The self-reference effect.
C. Metacomprehension.
D. The foresight bias.

16. Sean is studying for his philosophy final exam. He knows that the test will be
all essays, and he knows that the professor often asks students to compare two
philosophical approaches. As part of his studying, he writes several practice
essays in which he compares some philosophical approaches. Sean's study
method makes use of the cognitive principle called:

A. Implicit memory.
B. The hierarchy technique.
C. Encoding specificity.
D. Method of loci.

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17. Divergent production:

A. Is one kind of means-end strategy.

B. Involves making a number of different responses to a variety of test items.
C. Is the most valid measure of creativity.
D. Tends to be highly correlated with other measures of creativity.

18. In problem solving, heuristics:

A. Are relatively unsophisticated strategies.

B. Are bound to produce a solution, if you apply them rigorously.
C. Are strategies that examine only some of the alternatives.
D. Are seldom as useful as algorithms.

19. An ill-defined problem is:

A. A problem where the goal of the problem is not obvious.

B. A problem that can be most effectively solved by means-ends analysis.
C. A situation in which a group cannot agree about the initial state of the problem
that they must solve.
D. A variant of a problem that can be solved by the hill-climbing heuristic.

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20. Suppose that you learned to make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches by
spreading peanut butter on one piece of bread, jelly on the other, and then
placing the two pieces together. You are now making sandwiches for a crowd,
and you use this same strategy. However, it would be more efficient to first
spread peanut butter on half the pieces, and then to spread jelly on the other
half. Your inefficient problem solving illustrates the concept called:

A. Parallel processing.
B. Insight
C. Mental set.
D. Problem isomorphs.

21. During the late 1960s, psychologists began to favour the cognitive approach
because they felt that the behaviourist approach:

A. Emphasized unobservable cognitive processes.

B. Overused Wundt’s technique of introspection.
C. Placed too much emphasis on observable responses.
D. Devoted too much research to the organization of memory.

22. You have set aside two hours to study for an exam in this course, and you are
currently deciding to review the new terms, writing down any terms that you
cannot define. This planning activity is handled by which feature of Alan
Baddeley's theory?

A. The phonological loop

B. The visuospatial sketchpad
C. The episodic buffer
D. The central executive

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23. The encoding specificity principle suggests that:

A. We recall something better if we are in the same context in which we originally

learned the material.
B. We recall something better if we are in a context that is moderately different
from the original learning context—not too similar, and not too different.
C. Recall depends upon how specific the instructions are; vague instructions lead to
poor recall.
D. It is more effective to encode material during learning than to decode the
material during recall.

24. According to research on the testing effect:

A. Although testing can improve recall, it is not as helpful as spending the same
amount of time studying.
B. Testing consistently improves recall, no matter whether the retention interval is
short or long.
C. The testing effect operates only when students receive feedback on their test
scores.
D. One explanation for the testing effect is that test-taking creates desirable
difficulties.

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25. A major problem with using the analogy approach to problem solving is
that:

A. People pay too little attention to structural features.

B. People pay too little attention to surface features.
C. People select an inappropriate matrix to represent their understanding of the
problem.
D. People perform an exhaustive search, which is a time-consuming approach to
problem solving.

26. Imagine that you are about to utter a sentence. If you are currently struggling
with the linearization problem, you will have difficulty:

A. Deciding which words to put first and which to put last.

B. Assigning a linear order to the actor and the person who is acted.
C. Discovering the deep structure from the surface structure.
D. Deciding whether to use the active or the passive voice.

27. Jason is an infant whose parents speak English in the home; when his parents
are at work, Jason stays in a family day care home where all the employees
speak only Spanish. Jason is experiencing:

A. Multilingualism.
B. Lexical entrainment.
C. Sequential bilingualism.
D. Simultaneous bilingualism.

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28. When people speak to a young baby, their voices show great variation in both
pitch and stress. This aspect of speech production is called:

A. Linearization.
B. Lexical entrainment.
C. Syntax.
D. Prosody.

29. You are trying to say the phrase "big blue bird," and it comes out "big blue
bird." You have made a:

A. Linearization error.
B. Pragmatic error.
C. Slip-of-the-tongue.
D. Prosody error.

30. According to Dell's theory of speech errors:

A. Slips of the tongue occur because each sound can be activated by several different
words.
B. Slips of the tongue tend to involve words from different syntactic categories.
C. Slips of the tongue occur because people focus too closely on the pragmatics of
language.
D. Slips of the tongue occur because we pay too much attention to word choice.

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31. Joan is eating lunch, and she says to Brad, "Can you pass the salt?" Brad
replies "Yes, I can"; however, he doesn't actually pass the salt. What kind of
miscommunication does this brief conversation suggest?

A. A slip-of-the-tongue.
B. A syntactic error.
C. A pragmatic problem
D. Lexical entrainment.

32. Which of the following topics examines the pragmatic aspects of language?

A. The problem of understanding ambiguous sentences.

B. Whether we talk differently to a child than to an adult.
C. Whether the verb agrees with the appropriate noun.
D. The problem of slips-of-the-tongue.

33. Sara has spoken English all her life. In high school and college, she takes
French and eventually becomes fluent in that language. This is an example of:

A. Simultaneous bilingualism.
B. Sequential bilingualism.
C. Lexical entrainment.
D. Multilingualism.

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34. The well-organized knowledge that you have about the world is called:

A. Declarative memory.
B. Implicit memory.
C. Explicit memory.
D. Semantic memory.

35. The exemplar approach to semantic memory proposes that:

A. Exemplars are stored at the basic level; no exemplars are stored at the subordinate
level.
B. An exemplar is an idealized example of a category, derived by taking an average
of the members of that category.
C. Experts make better use of exemplars, whereas novices make better use of
prototypes.
D. We store a number of examples for each concept; to classify a new stimulus, we
compare it with this set of examples.

36. Cats chase birds. According to the feature comparison model of concepts,
"bird chasing" would be a ______________ for the concept "cat."

A. Defining feature.
B. Schema.
C. Prototypical feature.
D. Characteristic feature.

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37. Suppose that a young child has just asked you whether a potato is a vegetable;
you quickly answer "yes." Then the child asks whether eggplant is a vegetable,
and you answer "yes" more slowly. You have just demonstrated:

A. The priming effect.

B. The typicality effect.
C. The feature-comparison effect.
D. Parallel distributed processing.

38. According to the prototype approach:

A. Every item that meets the specified requirements of a category belongs to that
category.
B. A prototype is an example of the category that is neither the best example, nor the
worst example.
C. We judge whether an item is similar to the prototype in order to decide whether it
belongs to a category.
D. Nonprototypes are items that do not belong to any category.

39. Which of the following statements about priming and prototypes is correct?

A. Priming gives a bigger advantage to nonprototype items than to prototype items.

B. Priming speeds up judgments for prototype items, but it slows down judgments
for nonprototype items.
C. Priming is particularly helpful for subordinate categories.
D. Priming is only helpful when the items are seldom supplied as examples of a
category.

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 40.Family resemblance means that:

A. The prototype theory is not correct.

B. Each example shares at least one attribute in common with some other example of
the concept.
C. All examples of a concept meet one specific criterion.
D. Defining features and characteristic features are closely intertwined.

SECTION B: PARAGRAPH QUESTIONS 30 MARKS

Choose any three (3) questions from this section. Write approximate 1
page per question. All questions are equal marks (10 x 3 = 30 marks).
Suggested time allocated is 1 hour.

41. What are the similarities and differences between associationism and
behaviorism?

42. Why is the experimental method uniquely suited to drawing causal inferences?

43. Why do researchers believe that the brain exhibits some level of hemispheric
specialization?

44. In the investigation of the structure and functions of the brain, describe which
methods are only used to study nonhuman animals, and which are appropriate for
humans.

45. Describe the Model of Economic Man and Woman and justify its relevance in
cognitive psychology.

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SECTION C: ESSAY QUESTIONS 30 MARKS
Choose any two (2) questions. Write approximate two pages. Suggested
time allocated 1 hour 20 minutes.

46. What are the characteristics of creative people? Write at least about three
people as mentioned in the course textbook.

47. How have developmental psychology, social psychology, and health psychology
contributed to theory and research in cognitive psychology?

48. What are some of the tasks used for studying memory, and what do various
tasks indicate about the structure of memory?

THE END OF EXAMINATION

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