Download Midterm 1 with answer key

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John Miyamoto (email: [email protected])
Psych 355: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
Course website: https://faculty.washington.edu/jmiyamot/p355/p355-set.htm
Midterm Exam 1 ** Form A
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Spring 2015
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Cognitive psychology tries to explain:
a) how humans perform everyday tasks like perceiving faces, identifying objects in a visual scene,
reading, and driving in traffic.
b) how humans reason about the world, e.g., deciding who to vote for or what career to pursue.
c) how students learn complex subjects like physics and economics.
d)  all of the above.
What year is usually cited as the "birthday" of cognitive science (pick the closest year)?
Answer (a) is incorrect but it will be scored as correct.
a) 1879
Lecture notes and the textbook were not clear on this point.
b) 1945
c)  1956
d) 1969
3. John Watson believed that psychology should focus on the study of
a)  observable behavior.
b) mental processes.
c) consciousness.
d) attention.
4.
Which of these statements best describes the origins of experimental cognitive psychology?
a) The first cognition experiments were carried out by ancient Greek philosophers, especially
Aristotle.
b)  The first cognition experiments were carried out by 19th century Europeans, especially Donders,
Ebbinghaus, Helmholtz and Wundt.
c) The first cognition experiments were carried out by early 20th century Americans like Watson and
Hull.
d) The first cognition experiments were carried out by mid-20th century Americans like Simon and
Chomsky.
5.
Evidence that it is possible for animals to learn without responding, e.g., a temporarily paralyzed rat
can learn the layout of a maze if it is pushed through the maze on a small mobile stretcher, is difficult
for behaviorists to explain because ....
a) behaviorist theories hypothesize that responses trigger the encoding of memories.
b) behaviorist theories hypothesize that animals do not retain information for durations longer than a
few minutes.
c) behaviorist theories hypothesize that learning is based on neurochemical secretions that are
produced during responding.
d)  behaviorist theories hypothesize that learning involves associations between stimuli and
responses or between responses and rewards.
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6.
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In a cognition experiment, what does "response time" (a.k.a. "reaction time") refer to?
a) the time difference beween the presentation of the stimulus and the perception of the stimulus.
b)  the time difference between the presentation of the stimulus and the completion of the response
c) the time difference between the presentation of the stimulus and the decision as to which is the
correct response.
d) the time difference between the presentation of the stimulus and the initiation of a response.
7.
By comparing reaction times across different tasks, Donders was able to conclude how long the mind
needs to perform a certain cognitive task. Donders interpreted the difference in reaction time
between the simple and choice conditions of his experiment as indicating how long it took to do
what?
a) perceive the stimulus.
b) process the stimulus.
c) attend to the stimulus.
d)  make a decision about the stimulus.
8.
From a theoretical standpoint, the biggest difference between behaviorist theories and cognitive
theories is:
a) Behaviorist theories predict the behavior of rats; cognitive theories predict the behavior of
humans.
b) Behaviorist theories attempt to explain how learning occurs; cognitive theories attempt to explain
how perception, attention, memory, and reasoning occurs.
c)  Behaviorist theories avoid hypotheses about mental processes that cannot be directly
observed; cognitive theories include hypotheses about mental processes that cannot be directly
observed.
d) Behaviorist theories are incorrect theories; cognitive theories are correct theories.
9.
The great Spanish physiologist, Ramon y Cajal, argued for a neuron doctrine that is central to
modern theories of neural information processing. What is the main hypothesis of the neuron
doctrine?
a) Increasing the stimulus intensity produces an increase in the magnitude of the action potentials
(spikes) that signal the presence of the stimulus.
b)  Neural networks are not made up of a single continuous anatomical structure but rather they
are composed of many separate cells that influence each other across tiny gaps called synapses.
c) The action potential of a neuron passes along a projection from the cell body called an axon.
d) Different parts of the brain are specialized for different functions, e.g., vision and audition are
processed in different parts of the brain.
10. What is a major limitation of using single cell recordings to determine brain function?
a) There is poor temporal resolution.
b) There is poor spatial resolution.
c) The recordings are not easily understood.
d)  Single cell recording can only observe the functioning of a small proportion of the neurons
that respond to a stimulus.
11. Information is transmitted from one neuron to a contiguous neuron by what process?
a) Electricity is transmitted from one neuron to another at places where they touch each other.
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b) Electricity that is flowing through one neuron creates a magnetic field that induces an electrical
current in adjacent neurons.
c)  Chemicals called neurotransmitters are released by one neuron and absorbed by contiguous
neurons at specialized neural structures called synapses.
d) Neurons influence adjacent neurons by a process called lateral inhibition.
12. If the intensity of a stimulus that is presented to a touch receptor is increased, this tends to increase
the _____ in the receptor’s axon.
a)  rate of nerve firing
b) size of the nerve impulses
c) speed of nerve conduction
d) all of these
13. Studies have shown the visual systems of kittens who are raised in an environment that has only
vertical lines tend to lack neurons that are sensitive to horizontal lines. Furthermore, Gauthier found
that subjects who were trained to identify individual "greebles" (odd looking dolls with inhuman
faces) developed brain activity in the fusiform face area (FFA) that was similar for human faces and
greeble dolls. The brain activity in the FFA in response to greeble images was quite different from
the brain activity observed before the subjects were trained to identify greebles. These findings are
all examples of what?
a) double dissociation
b) localization of function
c) feature detectors
d)  experienced-based plasticity
14. Groups of neurons or structures that are connected within the nervous system are called
a) synaptic vesicles
b) neuronal bridges
c)  neural networks
d) fused conduits
15. Figure 1 to the right shows a small version of the
Hermann grid. Especially if you looked at a larger,
brighter version of the Hermann grid, you would see
dark spots at the intersections of the white lines. These
dark spots disappear when you look directly at them, but
reappear when you look away. The perception of these
dark spots in the Hermann grid is thought to be caused
by what?
a) adaptation
b) the Gestalt principle of figure/ground
c) the light-from-above heuristic
d)  lateral inhibition
.
Figure 1.
16. What do event-related potentials (ERPs) refer to?
a) Changes in the size of action potentials that correspond to particular patterns of stimulation.
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b)  Patterns of electrical potential that are measured on the scalp while a person is exposed to a
stimulus or is performing a cognitive task.
c) Changes in the magnetic properties of neurons at different places within the brain.
d) Changes in neurotransmitters within specific groups of neurons.
17. What does fMRI measure when it is used to measure brain activity while a subject performs a
cognitive task?
a)  fMRI measures the amount of deoxygenated blood in different areas of the brain. Increased
brain activity in an area causes a reduction in deoxygenated blood in that area.
b) fMRI measures the electrical activity on the surface of the skull while a subject engages in some
kind of cognitive activity.
c) fMRI measures the rate at which individual neurons fire in particular parts of the brain.
d) fMRI measures the size (amplitude) of action potentials of individual neurons in particular parts
of the brain.
18. Suppose you want to discover what part of the human brain becomes active when the subject views
particular types of stimuli, e.g., images of tools like hammers and saws, but you are less concerned
with the time course of brain activity. In other words, you are very interested in the exact location of
brain activity and you are less concerned to know the precise timing of the brain activity. Which
method is best suited to your interests?
a) The method of subtraction applied to response time data
b) Event-related potentials (ERP)
c)  Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
d) Single cell recordings
19. The human ability at pattern recognition is required to perform which of the following activities:
a) reading a newspaper.
b) watching and understanding the action in a movie.
c) recognizing faces.
d)  all of the above.
20. In perception, top-down processing refers to what?
a) It refers to the fact that the perceptual system assumes that the light source is above the objects in
a scene.
b)  It refers to the influence of prior beliefs, expectancies and concepts on the processing of
perceptual input.
c) It refers to the tendency for features that are closest to the top of the visual field to be processed
before features that are closest to the bottom of the visual field.
d) It refers to the sequential order in which low level features are combined into increasingly
complex higher order perceptual objects like geons.
21. Which of the following provided the earliest evidence for feature detectors in human perception?
("Earliest" means the first evidence to be discovered.)
a)  Single-cell recordings found that individual cells in visual cortex are sensitive to such features
as edges, bars, colors and directions of motion.
b) fMRI measurements found that areas of the brain become active when a person is presented with a
stimulus that alternates between the presence and absence of a feature.
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c) Event-related potentials (ERP) were found to exhibit distinctive peaks when a subject is presented
with particular shapes like a vertical bar.
d) Drugs were developed which, if injected into an awake animal, could cause it to lose the ability to
discriminate particular features, like the difference between vertical and horizontal motion.
22. Which statement best summarizes the focus of the Gestalt psychologists?
a) We must identify the sensations from which perceptions are constructed.
b) We need to identify the information processing stages that occur during visual perception.
c)  We need to understand how patterns of visual elements cause us to see meaningful
relationships among the elements.
d) We need to identify the neurons that active during the process of perception.
23. What is a perceptual heuristic?
a) A perceptual heuristic is a neural network that computes inferences about the spatial layout of
scenes, e.g., relations of relative depth or relations of size.
b)  A perceptual heuristic is an information processing strategy that is helpful in inferring the
objective reality that produced the immediate perceptual information.
c) A perceptual heuristic is an experimental design that can be used to infer the duration of
perceptual processes, e.g., the duration of the decision stage in a perceptual choice experiment.
d) A perceptual heuristic is a combination of perceptual features that signals the boundary of an
object.
24. What does the Gestalt Principle of Similarity predict
that people will see in Figure 2 to the right?
a) People should notice the outline of the square.
b) People should see that the letters are written in rows
of text.
c) People should notice that the letters are lined up in
columns.
d)  People should notice that the same letter appears
along diagonal lines from the upper left to the lower
right side of the figure.
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25. When we view a disk that is shaded more lightly towards the top
of the disk and more darkly towards the bottom of the disk, we
perceive the disk to be a convex surface (pushing out towards
us). Figure 3 shows an example of this. The perception that the
disks are convex, has been attributed to:
a) feature detectors for convex disks.
b)  the light-from-above assumption (a.k.a. the light-fromabove heuristic)
c) illusory conjunctions.
d) the Gestalt law of common fate.
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Figure 3.
26. Suppose it is found that stimulus A (e.g., the word "doctor")
primes the discrimination of word versus non-word for the stimulus X (e.g., X is the word "nurse").
What is the usual interpretation of a priming effect in cognitive psychology?
a)  Stimulus A activates many of the same neural centers or pathways as does stimulus X (i.e.,
"doctor" activates many of the same neural centers or pathways as does "nurse").
b) Stimulus A increases the accuracy of the word versus non-word discrimination because it is
predictive of the correct response (i.e., "doctor" is predictive of the fact that "nurse" is a word).
c) Stimulus A decreases the accuracy of the word versus non-word discrimination because it is
somewhat confusable with stimulus X (i.e., "doctor" is somewhat confusable with "nurse").
d) Stimulus A slows down the response to stimulus X because it draws attention away from the
critical stimulus X ("doctor" draws attention away from "nurse").
27. According to Biederman's Recognition-by-Components model, what is the role of the geon in
perception?
a) Geons are brain circuits that encode perceptual patterns in a scene.
b)  Geons are shapes that occur often as parts of objects. In order to perceive an object, e.g., a
hammer, the perceptual process first identifies the geons of which the object is composed.
c) The geon is a measure of the activation level that a concept must achieve in order for the person to
recognize an instance of the concept. E.g., in order to recognize an object as a hammer, the
concept of "hammer" must achieve a level of activation that is measured in geons.
d) The geon is a typical version of an object that has been abstracted from numerous experiences with
that object. E.g., if we have seen many dogs in our lives, then we have a geon representing the
perceptual features of a typical dog.
28. What was the main purpose of Biederman's geon priming experiment? In other words, what does
this study show about human object perception?
[In stating the following answer choices, I will assume that the stimulus in block 1 was the 50% deletion of a particular
lock; I will refer to this as the initial stimulus. In the actual experiment, a number of different objects, not just locks, were
used as stimuli.]
a) This experiment showed that the geons that are part of the image of the lock could be primed; this
implied that different 50% deletions of the same object share many perceptual features.
b) This experiment showed that the geons that are part of the image of the lock could be primed; this
implied that Gestalt principles play an important role in objects recognition.
c) This experiment showed that the geons that are part of the image of the lock could be primed; this
implied that object recognition requires a search for non-accidental features in the visual scene.
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d)  This experiment showed that the geons that are part of the image of the lock could be primed;
hence, the perceptual representations of objects include representations of the geons from which
they are constructed.
29. Milner and Goodale (1995) studied a patient, D.F., who had suffered damage to her temporal lobe.
D.F. performed poorly at a task where she had to hold an envelope at the same angle (orientation) as
a slot on the wall (orientation matching task). Nevertheless, if D.F. was asked to put the envelope
through the slot (active mailing task), she did very well. Superficially, this finding seems
contradictory because putting the envelope through the slot required D.F. to turn the envelope so that
its orientation matched the orientation of the slot. How did Milner and Goodale (1995) interpret
D.F.'s performance on these two tasks?
a)  The "what pathway" should be interpreted as a "perception pathway." The "where pathway"
should be interpreted as an "action pathway."
b) The orientation of the slot is processed along the "what" pathway and the location of the slot is
processed along the "where" pathway.
c) D.F. has difficulty learning to follow new instructions but she can continue to perform actions that
she has learned in the past.
d) The results indicate a double dissociation between processing category information and location
information.
30. Suppose that a subject is listening to two different speakers in each ear. If he is told to shadow the
message that is spoken into the left ear, what is the subject supposed to do?
a) The subject should disregard the message in his left ear.
b) The subject should prevent others from hearing the message that is being presented to his left ear.
c)  The subject should repeat the message in his left ear word for word as he hears the message.
d) The subject should do the actions that the message in his left ear tells him to do.
Consider Broadbent's early selection model of attention. For each of the following pieces of evidence,
answer "pro" if this piece of evidence supports the early selection hypothesis and "con" if it conflicts with
the early selection hypothesis.
31. Suppose the subject listens to different messages presented over headphones to the two ears. If the
subject is instructed to attend only to the left ear and repeat back the exact words of the message in
the left ear, the subject will typically have no memory for the content of the message in the right ear.
a)  PRO: This evidence supports the early selection hypothesis.
b) CON: This evidence conflicts with the early selection hypothesis.
32. Suppose the subject listens to different messages presented over headphones to the two ears. If the
subject is instructed to attend only to the left ear and repeat back the exact words of the message in
the left ear, the subject will still hear his or her own name if it is presented in the unattended ear
(right ear).
a) PRO: This evidence supports the early selection hypothesis.
b)  CON: This evidence conflicts with the early selection hypothesis.
33. Suppose the subject is instructed to attend only to the left ear and is presented with an ambiguous
sentence in the left ear ("He caught the fly with his left hand"). A word presented concurrently to the
unattended right ear ("insect" or "baseball") can influence the interpretation of the ambiguous
sentence.
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a) PRO: This evidence supports the early selection hypothesis.
b)  CON: This evidence conflicts with the early selection hypothesis.
34. Corteen and Wood (1972) did the following experiment. Using electrical shock, subjects were
conditioned to produce a galvanic skin response (GSR) whenever they heard the names of particular
cities. Later the subjects wore headphones and different messages were played into the two ears of
the headphones. Subjects were instructed to shadow the message in the left ear. Occasionally one of
the shock-conditioned city names would occur in the message that went to the right ear (nonattended
ear). It was found that subjects produced a higher GSR to the shock-conditioned city names even
though they were unable to report any of the content of the message to the unattended ear. Whose
theory found this result hard to explain?
Hint: This experiment was not discussed in lecture or the textbook - you must figure out what you think based on the
description of the experiment given here.
a)
b)
c)
d)
 Broadbent's early selection model of attention.
Treisman's attenuation model of attention.
MacKay's late selection model of attention.
All of these theories found it difficult to explain this result.
35. It is known that people can switch attention between two
positions in the same object faster than they can switch attention
between two positions in different objects, even if the positions
in different objects are closer together. For example, consider
the stimulus that is displayed in Figure 4. If a cue indicates that
the target is most likely to appear at position A, the subject will
be faster to detect a target that appears at position B than one
that appears at position C. Which of the following is the best
Figure 4.
interpretation of this finding?
a) The result is consistent with object-based attention. It
conflicts with the hypothesis of late attentional selection (selection after the meaning of inputs has
been processed).
b) The result is inconsistent with object-based attention because the objects are static, i.e., they are
not in motion. The result is consistent with other attentional theories, but does not directly
support any of them.
c)  The result is consistent with object-based attention. It conflicts with assumption that visual
attention is always location-based.
d) The result is consistent with location-based attention. It conflicts with the hypothesis that visual
attention is always object-based.
36. Suppose that a patient has suffered a stroke that caused damage to his right parietal lobe. If this
patient suffers from left unilateral neglect, he will exhibit what symptoms?
a) He can track objects with his right eye but not his left eye.
b)  He overlooks objects that are in his left visual field, but not objects that are in his right visual
field.
c) He has very poor depth perception because he does not process visual information that is
presented to his left eye.
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d) He has trouble remembering information that was presented to his left eye, but not information
that was presented to his right eye.
37. Which of the following is an example of a controlled process?
a) Noticing that someone has called out your name while you are waiting in a waiting room.
b) While looking at your friend's face, you see her smile and you think, "she looks happy." Is your
identification of her emotion a controlled process?
c)  Deciding which pair of shoes to buy (assuming that you are at a shoe store and you have many
different pairs of shoes in front of you).
d) You are watching a child play on a playground. Is the control of the eye movements that let you
keep the child in view a controlled process?
38. Which of the following is an example of an automatic process (for a typical adult American)?
a)  While you are driving, a traffic light in front of you turns red so you break to a stop.
b) You have to attend a party that your boss is giving for an important client, so you spend 10
minutes deciding what you ought to wear.
c) Multiplying 13 times 16.
d) Explaining to someone how to find your house.
39. According to Treisman's (1986) feature integration theory, illusory conjunctions occur because ....
a) some perceptual features often occur together whereas other perceptual features rarely occur
together.
b)  at the beginning of the perceptual process, the features of objects are not yet associated with
specific objects, and therefore the features can combine with the wrong object if processing is cut
short by a following mask.
c) expectations (top-down processes) can override bottom up acquisition of perceptual features.
d) errors in feature integration occur when mismatched features are presented in the same display.
40. The "binding problem" refers to what aspect of perceptual processing? The binding problem is the
problem of explaining ....
a) why perceptual processing becomes stalled when it is overloaded with many simultaneous
stimulus inputs.
b) how neural inputs from many on-off or off-on ganglion cells are combined into edge and bar
detectors in visual cortex.
c) why letter recognition is faster when letters are presented in the context of words rather than in
isolation.
d)  how the brain decides which perceptual features go together as features of a single object.
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