Exam 8: Cognition and Language

Under what circumstances is an expert chess player more successful than an unskilled player at memorizing the positions of chess pieces on a board?

In certain experiments,expert chess players and beginning players have tried to memorize patterns of chess pieces on a board,sometimes examining pieces arranged randomly and sometimes examining pieces arranged as they might appear in a well-played game.What conclusion emerged from those experiments?

The underlying logic of the language is called the

The Stroop effect occurs because

Becoming an expert in a given field (whether playing chess or the violin)takes about ten years of concentrated practice.

Some people believe Friday the 13th is unlucky because they can remember times when they had bad experiences on that day but tend to forget times when nothing bad happened.Their reasoning is an example of illusory correlations.It is also an example of the use of

The "attentional blink' is the brief period of time

People who look at real words find it difficult to say the color of ink of each word,instead of reading the words themselves.This result is known as the

Which of the following would probably be the best prototype of "bird"?

Students were asked difficult questions (e.g. ,How long is the Nile River?)and asked to give a range of answers they were 90% confident included the correct answer.On difficult questions,students tend to be more confident than correct.

In general,it is easier to learn a second language during high school once you have mastered grammar for your primary language.

Movie directors discovered that they can film different parts of the same scene on different days,and most viewers would not detect that the extras (background actors)had changed clothes or appearance.Psychologists call this failure to notice such differences

Deciding what you heard when you heard a word that contained an ambiguous sound (e.g. ,it could have been either "dent" or "tent")is influenced by

The availability heuristic is based on the assumption that

You are given a candle,a box of matches,a few thumbtacks,and a very short piece of string with the instruction to mount the candle on a wall.It never occurs to you that you could empty the matchbox and tack it to the wall as a platform for the candle because of

"Mary chased the man" and "The man was chased by Mary" have

Psychologists use the term __________ to refer to your tendency to respond to or to remember some stimuli more than others at any given time. attention

Research on shifting attention demonstrates that cell phone conversations do NOT distract drivers' attention.

You have bought a $500 ticket package to take all of your family to Sea World on the first weekend in June.Your spouse has free passes to an IMAX viewing of Jaws for the same day.The morning of your outing,you notice storm clouds coming in and the weatherman says that there is a 95% chance of rain and lightning.You think that it might make more sense to go to the IMAX showing,but you paid significantly more for Sea World.Where would you be more likely to go? Name this phenomenon and briefly describe the premise of this type of cognitive error.

You are looking for a well-camouflaged animal in an exhibit at the zoo.Finding it will require