Cognitive Psychology Practice Questions
Course Introduction
Cognitive Psychology explores the fundamental mental processes that underlie human behavior, including perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making. This course examines how people acquire, process, and store information, drawing on experimental research and theoretical models to understand how the mind works. Emphasis is placed on the application of cognitive theory to real-world contexts, as well as the biological bases of cognition and the impact of cognitive development throughout the lifespan. Students will engage with classic studies and contemporary findings to build a comprehensive understanding of human thought processes.
Recommended Textbook
Cognitive Psychology Connecting Mind Research and Everyday Experience 5th Edition by E. Bruce
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Chapter 1: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following events is most closely associated with a resurgence in interest in the mind within the study of psychology?
A) Watson's "Little Albert" experiment
B) Skinner's publication of the book, Verbal Behavior
C) Development of the technique of analytic introspection
D) Tolman's proposal of cognitive maps
Answer: B
Q2) Colin Cherry's experiment in which participants listen to two messages simultaneously, one in each ear, found all but which of the following?
A) People can focus on one message and ignore the other one.
B) People can focus on the message they were repeating.
C) People take in very little information about the ignored message.
D) People who are deaf process auditory information on a nonconscious level.
Answer: D
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3
Chapter 2: Cognitive Neuroscience
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which part of the nervous system picks up information from the outside environment?
A) Dendrites
B) Axons
C) Synapses
D) Receptors
Answer: D
Q2) Neurons that respond to specific qualities of objects, such as orientation, movement, and length, are called A) retinal cells.
B) feature detectors.
C) dendrites.
D) receptors.
Answer: B
Q3) Groups of interconnected neurons are referred to as A) myelin sheaths.
B) potentiated somas.
C) neural circuits.
D) spreading activations.
Answer: C
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Chapter 3: Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) The perception pathway corresponds to the _____ pathway, while the action pathway corresponds to the _____ pathway.
A) where; what
B) what; where
C) size; distance
D) distance; size
Answer: B
Q2) Maria took a drink from a container marked "milk." Surprised, she quickly spit out the liquid because it turned out that the container was filled with orange juice instead. Maria likes orange juice, so why did she have such a negative reaction to it? Her response was most affected by
A) reception of the stimulus.
B) bottom-up processing.
C) top-down processing.
D) focused attention.
Answer: C
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Chapter 4: Attention
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Sample Questions
Q1) The difficulty we have in recognizing even an obvious alteration in a scene is called __________ blindness.
A) covert
B) exogenous
C) endogenous
D) change
Q2) The use of a machine that tracks the movement of one's eyes can help reveal the shifting of one's __________ attention.
A) overt
B) covert
C) divided
D) dichotic
Q3) A high threshold in Treisman's model of attention implies that A) weak signals can cause activation.
B) it takes a strong signal to cause activation.
C) all signals cause activation.
D) no signals cause activation.
Q4) Define selective attention, divided attention, and attentional capture. Give an example of each to support your thinking.
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Chapter 5: Short-Term and Working Memory
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is not a stage in the information processing model of memory?
A) Sensory memory
B) Short-term memory
C) Long-term memory
D) Episodic memory
Q2) A task with the instructions "Read the following words while repeating 'the, the, the' out loud, look away, and then write down the words you remember" would most likely be studying
A) articulatory suppression.
B) the visuospatial sketch pad.
C) echoic memory.
D) the central executive.
Q3) According to the model of working memory, which of the following mental tasks should LEAST adversely affect people's driving performance while operating a car along an unfamiliar, winding road?
A) Trying to imagine how many cabinets are in their kitchen
B) Trying to remember a map of the area
C) Trying to remember the definition of a word they just learned
D) Trying to imagine a portrait from a recent museum exhibit
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Chapter 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure
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Sample Questions
Q1) Ming is taking a memory test. She is more likely to recall the name of a popular singer if she had
A) just read about the singer in a magazine.
B) just seen the singer on TV.
C) recently seen the singer on TV and read about the singer in a magazine.
D) attended the singer's concert last year with her boyfriend.
Q2) The coding of a stimulus into memory refers to which of the following?
A) Consciousness
B) Location
C) Process
D) Form
Q3) When investigating the serial position curve, delaying the memory test for 30 seconds
A) has no effect on the curve.
B) increases the primacy effect.
C) decreases the recency effect.
D) increases both the primacy and the recency effects.
Q4) Explain how research on brain-damaged individuals informs our understanding of priming in implicit memory.
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Chapter 7: Long-Term Memory: Encoding, Retrieval, and Consolidation
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Sample Questions
Q1) Katie and Alana are roommates taking the same psychology class. They have a test in four days during a 10:00-11:00 AM class period. Both women intend to study for three hours, but because of different work schedules, Katie will study one hour for each of the next three days, while Alana will study three hours the day before the exam. What could you predict about their performances?
A) Katie and Alana should perform equally well, because each studied the same time overall (supporting the equal-time hypothesis).
B) Alana will perform better because of a long-term memory recency effect.
C) Katie should perform better because of the spacing effect.
D) State-dependent learning predicts that Katie should perform better, because the exam takes place during a one-hour class period.
Q2) In the experiment conducted by Viskontas and coworkers using picture pairs, a participant's later experience of familiarity with a particular pair was coded as
A) "sense."
B) "know."
C) "think."
D) "remember."
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Chapter 8: Everyday Memory and Memory Errors
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Sample Questions
Q1) The other day, Thuy experienced a Proustian effect memory. What did Thuy likely do to trigger this experience?
A) Recall abuse
B) Hear a song
C) See a weapon
D) Smell perfume
Q2) Autobiographical memory research shows that a person's brain is more extensively activated when viewing photos
A) the person has seen before.
B) of familiar places.
C) the person took himself or herself.
D) the person has never seen before.
Q3) Extrapolating from the cultural life script hypothesis, which of the following events would be easiest to recall?
A) Retiring from work at age 40
B) Marrying at age 60
C) Graduating from college at age 22
D) Having a child at age 45
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Chapter 9: Conceptual Knowledge
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Sample Questions
Q1) Not all of the members of everyday categories have the same features. Most fish have gills, fins, and scales. Sharks lack the feature of scales, yet they are still categorized as fish. This poses a problem for the ___________ approach to categorization.
A) prototype
B) exemplar
C) definitional
D) family resemblance
Q2) The semantic network model predicts that the time it takes for a person to retrieve information about a concept should be determined by
A) the amount of information contained in each concept.
B) the distance that must be traveled through the network.
C) the typicality of the information contained in each concept.
D) the representativeness of the information contained in each concept.
Q3) Learning in the connectionist network is represented by adjustments to network A) connection weights.
B) nodes.
C) hidden units.
D) output units.
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Chapter 10: Visual Imagery
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Sample Questions
Q1) The "imagery debate" is concerned with whether imagery
A) actually exists.
B) can be used to inform nonvisual sensory systems.
C) is identical for all people.
D) is based on spatial or language mechanisms.
Q2) The key difference between depictive representation and propositional representation is based on which of the following?
A) Longevity
B) Neural response
C) Validity
D) Content
Q3) Compare and contrast spatial and propositional representation. Give an example of each based on the same stimulus.
Q4) A spatial imagery test measures a person's capacity with imaging which of the following?
A) Texture
B) Distance
C) Layout
D) Detail
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Chapter 11: Language
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Sample Questions
Q1) In the lexical decision task, participants are asked to
A) separate a sentence into individual words.
B) decide which meaning of an ambiguous sentence is correct in a specific situation.
C) identify words that are contained in sentences.
D) decide whether a string of letters is a word or a nonword.
Q2) In the context of language, another term for "heuristics" is ________.
A) phrases
B) rules
C) meanings
D) turns
Q3) Which of the following is a nonverbal component of communication?
A) Anaphoric inference
B) Causal inference
C) Theory of mind
D) Syntactic priming
Q4) Compare and contrast Skinner's and Chomsky's views on language acquisition. Give examples of each perspective to support your ideas.
Q5) Explain how language and music are both similar and different.
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Chapter 12: Problem Solving
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Sample Questions
Q1) Kaplan and Simon's experiment presented different versions of the mutilated checkerboard problem. The main purpose of their experiment was to demonstrate that
A) people arrive at the solution to an insight problem suddenly, but proceed more methodically toward the solution of a non-insight problem.
B) a person's mental set can hinder finding a solution to a problem.
C) people often have to backtrack within the problem space to arrive at an answer to a problem.
D) the way the problem is represented can influence the ease of problem solving.
Q2) Which of the following correctly pairs a problem-solving stage with a process under Basadur's model?
A) Problem Formulation: Fact Finding
B) Solution Implementation: Idea Finding
C) Problem Generation: Evaluation and Selection
D) Problem Solving: Planning
Q3) Describe in detail the differences between the way experts and nonexperts go about solving problems. In your answer, highlight the advantages and disadvantages to being an expert in a field.
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Chapter 13: Judgment, Decisions, and Reasoning
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Sample Questions
Q1) Rosa is in a convenience store considering which soda to buy. She recalls a commercial for BigFizz she saw on TV last night. BigFizz is running a promotion where you look under the bottle cap, and one in five bottles has a voucher for a free soda. If Rosa decides to purchase a BigFizz based on this promotion, which is framed in terms of _________________ , she will use a _________________ strategy.
A) losses; risk-taking
B) gains; risk-taking
C) losses; risk-aversion
D) gains; risk-aversion
Q2) Making probable conclusions based on evidence involves_________________reasoning.
A) deductive
B) syllogistic
C) inductive
D) connective
Q3) Why might training in media literacy be important for young people? Ground your argument in cognitive psychology concepts, and provide examples from the current media landscape to support your opinion.
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