Cognitive Psychology Exam Practice Tests
Course Introduction
Cognitive Psychology explores the mental processes that underlie human behavior, including perception, attention, memory, language, problem-solving, and decision-making. This course examines how people acquire, process, and store information, drawing on research and theories from both classic and contemporary studies. Students will learn about foundational concepts such as information processing, cognitive development, and the neural mechanisms supporting cognition, as well as applications of cognitive psychology in everyday life, technology, and clinical settings.
Recommended Textbook
Sensation and Perception 9th Edition by E. Bruce Goldstein
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15 Chapters
750 Verified Questions
750 Flashcards
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2
Chapter 1: Introduction to Perception
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49 Verified Questions
49 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is a reason for studying perception?
A) To become more aware of your own perceptual experiences.
B) To provide information that may help with a future career.
C) To apply perception to everyday problems, such as highway sign visibility.
D) All of these.
Answer: D
Q2) Trying to find your friend's face in a crowd is related to the method of A) visual search.
B) limits.
C) constant stimuli.
D) adjustment.
Answer: A
Q3) The physiological level of analysis involves the relationship between A) stimulus-and-physiology.
B) physiology-and-perception.
C) stimulus-and-perception.
D) both stimulus-and-physiology and physiology-and-perception.
Answer: D
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3
Chapter 2: The Beginnings of Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) (a) What are the basic properties of action potentials?
(b) How do these properties relate to perception?
Answer: (a) The basic properties of action potentials include their all-or-nothing nature, their ability to be propagated down the length of an axon, and their role in transmitting signals between neurons.
(b) These properties relate to perception in that action potentials are the fundamental unit of communication within the nervous system. The all-or-nothing nature of action potentials means that they either occur at full strength or not at all, which allows for precise and reliable transmission of signals. The ability of action potentials to be propagated down the length of an axon allows for rapid transmission of signals over long distances, which is essential for the perception of sensory stimuli and the coordination of motor responses. Overall, the properties of action potentials play a crucial role in shaping our perception of the world around us and our ability to interact with it.
Q2) Describe how preferential looking and visual evoked potentials technique have been used to study infant perception.
Answer: Answer not Answer.
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Neural Processing and Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) Lateral inhibition has been used to explain
A) the Hermann Grid.
B) Mach bands.
C) simultaneous contrast.
D) the Hermann Grid, Mach bands, and simultaneous contrast.
Answer: D
Q2) The inability of lateral inhibition to explain White's illusion suggests that some contrast effects are based in
A) the retina.
B) the cortex.
C) the lateral plexus.
D) the macula.
Answer: B
Q3) The difference in intensity between the light bars and the dark bars is called A) orientation.
B) wave form.
C) phase.
D) contrast.
Answer: D
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Cortical Organization
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Sample Questions
Q1) A researcher finds that damage to Area A of the brain results in the loss of Function A but not Function B. In another individual, damage to Area B results in the loss of Function B but not Function A. These results are best described as a/an A) associative link.
B) double dissociation.
C) single dissociation.
D) differential assessment.
Q2) One neuron studied by Quiroga et al. responded preferentially to A) drawings of Halle Berry.
B) a picture of Halle Berry dressed as Catwoman.
C) the words "Halle Berry" presented visually.
D) All of these caused the cell to fire.
Q3) Describe how an object such as a tree is represented in the striate cortex.
Q4) Describe the procedure, results, and implications of the Quiroga et al.'s (2005) "Halle Berry neuron" study.
Q5) Describe research on brain damaged and non-brain damaged people that support the idea that the dorsal stream is the "how" pathway.
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Page 6
Chapter 5: Perceiving Objects and Scenes
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Sample Questions
Q1) Border ownership means that when figure-ground segregation occurs, the border between the figure and background
A) seems to change color.
B) is perceived to be associated with the background.
C) is perceived to be associated with the figure.
D) seems to disappear.
Q2) The ___________ problem shows that numerous physical stimuli can create exactly the same image on the retina.
A) correspondence
B) inverse projection
C) occlusion
D) ambiguity
Q3) Gestalt psychologists used the example of illusory contours to support the claim that A) perceptions are formed by combining sensations.
B) vision can be modeled on computer processing.
C) the whole is different than the sum of its parts.
D) experience determines perceptual interpretation.
Q4) Name and describe five "global image features".
Q5) Discuss three reasons why object perception is difficult for computer vision.
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Chapter 6: Visual Attention
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Sample Questions
Q1) According to feature integration theory, the color, orientation, and other features of objects are initially processed in the _________ stage of processing.
A) preattentive
B) postattentive
C) focused attention
D) tertiary
Q2) When a person scans a visual scene, he/she usually makes about ____ fixation(s) per second.
A) one
B) three
C) nine
D) twelve
Q3) "Learning from past experience" as a factor involved in attention was demonstrated by Shinoda et al. (2001), who showed that drivers are more likely to detect stop signs when they were positioned
A) at the middle of a block.
B) 75 feet from the intersection.
C) at the intersection.
D) all of these locations were equally detected.
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Page 8
Chapter 7: Taking Action
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Sample Questions
Q1) Britten and vanWezel used __________ to show that MST neurons help determine perception of the direction of movement.
A) electrical stimulation of neurons
B) ablation
C) fMRI recordings
D) transcranial magnetic stimulation
Q2) Using the visual direction strategy, walkers stay on target by
A) using flow information to estimate the destination point.
B) going toward the focus of expansion.
C) keeping their body pointed toward the destination.
D) keeping their eyes fixated on the destination.
Q3) "Optical flow neurons" have been found in the monkey's
A) medial temporal (MT) cortex.
B) medial superior temporal (MST) area.
C) striate cortex.
D) superior temporal sulcus.
Q4) Describe how wayfinding is affected by retrosplenial cortex and hippocampal damage.
Q5) Discuss research that shows how vision is important in performing a somersault.
Page 9
Q6) Name and discuss two characteristics of optic flow.
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Chapter 8: Perceiving Motion
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is not a signal used posited in the Corollary Discharge Theory?
A) Image displacement signal
B) Ciliary signal
C) Motor signal
D) Corollary discharge signal
Q2) In monkeys, real-motion neurons have been located in
A) the extrastriate cortex.
B) the striate cortex.
C) the retina.
D) the brain stem.
Q3) The real world contains instances of continuous motion that somehow are divided up into meaningful units. The point in time when one unit ends and another begins is referred to as the
A) breaking point.
B) segment marker.
C) event boundary.
D) transition period.
Q4) What is the aperture problem? How does the visual system "solve" this problem?
Q5) Review the evidence for the physiological basis of perceiving biological motion.
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Chapter 9: Perceiving Color
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Sample Questions
Q1) By changing _______, we can create about a million (or more) discriminable colors.
A) saturation
B) intensity
C) wavelength
D) saturation, intensity, and wavelength
Q2) The trichromatic theory of color vision is also known as the _________ theory.
A) Seurat-Signac
B) Hering
C) Young-Helmholtz
D) Young-Adhart
Q3) Which of the following is phenomenological support for the "opponent-process theory" of color vision?
A) color afterimages
B) visualizing color combinations
C) simultaneous color contrast
D) all of these
Q4) Discuss the methods and results of Uchikawa et al.'s (1989) research on chromatic adaptation and color constancy.
Q5) Evaluate Newton's claim that the light "rays are not coloured."
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Perceiving Depth and Size
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52 Verified Questions
52 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) What depth cue could be classified as a binocular cue and an oculomotor cue?
A) accommodation
B) accretion
C) stereopsis
D) convergence
Q2) Of the oculomotor depth cues, convergence is ___________ than accommodation.
A) less effective
B) more effective
C) equally effective
D) less automatic
Q3) Blake and Hirsch (1975) use selective rearing of kittens to show that
A) kittens are born with fully developed binocular cells.
B) binocular neurons are not necessary for stereopsis.
C) disparity-selective neurons are responsible for stereopsis.
D) severing the optic chiasm increases the number of binocular cells.
Q4) Deletion and accretion are
A) especially effective when viewing non-moving displays.
B) only important when both eyes are open.
C) effective for detecting depth at an edge.
D) ineffective for judging depth in natural environments.
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Chapter 11: Hearing
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Sample Questions
Q1) The outer hair cells respond to sound by slightly tilting and changing length. Because of the consequence of this, the action of the outer hair cells is called the A) the tuning response.
B) the cochlear amplifier.
C) phase lock mechanism.
D) the traveling wave.
Q2) Discuss how noise-induced hearing loss can occur, and what can be done to reduce the chances of noise-induced hearing loss.
Q3) A human tonotopic map shows that a receptor close to the apex will respond to a tone of ___ Hz.
A) 60
B) 800
C) 7,000
D) 30,000
Q4) The unit of measurement for sound wave frequency is A) bels.
B) decibels.
C) Hertz. D) degrees.
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Chapter 12: Auditory Localization and Organization
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Sample Questions
Q1) Warren et al. presented listeners with tones that were either (1) interrupted with silent gaps; or (2) interrupted with silent gaps with noise. The results showed
A) both conditions resulted in listeners hearing a continuous tone.
B) both conditions resulted in listeners hearing bursts of separate tones.
C) the noise condition resulted in listeners hearing a continuous tone.
D) the silent gap condition resulted in listeners hearing a continuous tone.
Q2) If there is an interaural time difference, we interpret the sound as coming from A) directly in front of us.
B) directly behind us.
C) the side.
D) directly above us.
Q3) Describe the Jeffress model of auditory localization. What evidence supports the theory and what evidence poses a challenge for this theory?
Q4) The ventriloquism effect is
A) a veridical representation of the physical stimuli.
B) an example of how vision influences auditory perception.
C) a strictly physiological effect.
D) when dummy variables are used in statistical analyses.
Q5) Define visual capture and give examples of this concept.
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Chapter 13: Speech Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) A fan of science fiction television shows would be more likely to make sense of the phrase "Start Wreck In Tore Prize." This demonstrates the importance of
A) the McGurk effect on speech perception.
B) bottom-up processing on phomenic boundaries.
C) Tadoma on speech production.
D) meaning on segmentation.
Q2) Damage to Broca's area in the frontal lobe results in difficulty
A) in speaking.
B) in understanding speech.
C) in lip reading.
D) in determining phonetic boundaries.
Q3) Discuss the methods and results of two studies of the phonemic restoration effect.
Q4) Listening to someone speak a foreign language you are not familiar with can lead to A) the correspondence problem.
B) the segmentation problem.
C) the formant transition effect.
D) acoustic signaling.
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15
Chapter 14: The Cutaneous Senses
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Sample Questions
Q1) In most of our daily experience of touch, we are using
A) passive touch.
B) active touch.
C) two-point touch.
D) two-hand touch.
Q2) The phrase "multimodal nature of pain" refers to
A) pain that occurs from too much heat or too much cold.
B) pain that occurs from sounds that are too loud and skin stimulation that is too intense.
C) sensory and emotional components of pain.
D) real and imagined sources of pain.
Q3) The function of the skin is
A) warning the individual of possible injury.
B) preventing body fluids form escaping.
C) protecting the organism from bacteria and chemical agents.
D) all of these are functions of the skin
Q4) Discuss how cortical magnification and plasticity are related to the cortical mapping of area S1.
Q5) Discuss four ways that cognitive factors can influence pain perception.
Q6) Explain how haptic exploration is used to identify objects.
Page 16
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Chapter 15: The Chemical Senses
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Sample Questions
Q1) In regard to specificity vs. distributed coding , most researchers conclude A) distributed coding has the most research support.
B) specificity coding has the most research support.
C) basic taste qualities are determined by specificity coding, and distributed coding is important for discriminating subtle differences.
D) basic taste qualities are determined by distributed coding, and specificity coding is important for discriminating subtle differences.
Q2) Compare three different methods for studying the physiology of olfaction.
Q3) Flavor is the impression a person gets from A) taste only.
B) the combination of olfaction and kinesthesis.
C) the combination of olfaction and taste.
D) the combination of olfaction, taste, and vision.
Q4) Does distributed coding or specificity coding occur in taste? Support your answer with research.
Q5) Discuss the research on odor identification. Relate Goldstein's anecdote about smelling "Aquavit" to odor identification (or better yet, describe a similar situation that happened in your life).
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