Deck 3: Attention and Consciousness

Question 1

Multitasking is a form of

A) divided attention
B) selective attention
C) dichotic listening
D) shadowing

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Suppose that you are sitting in a cafeteria, trying to focus on a comment from a student on your left, while a student on your right is talking to a friend. This situation resembles the laboratory setup known as

A) the Stroop task.
B) dichotic listening.
C) bottom-up processing.
D) the feature-integration theory approach.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Imagine that you are listening to a friend complaining about a course assignment, but you are simultaneously trying to read the newspaper. This is an example of

A) top-down processing.
B) divided attention.
C) selective attention.
D) the binding problem.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

On a dichotic listening task,

A) people can accurately monitor two tasks at the same time.
B) people can accurately monitor two tasks at the same time, except when the tasks are both auditory.
C) people notice little about the message that they are supposed to ignore.
D) experts tend to process the message that they are supposed to ignore, but novices don't process an irrelevant message.

Question 5

Which of the following would be least interested in the topic of attention?

A) William James
B) Early behaviorists
C) Modern-day cognitive psychologists
D) Neuroscientists

Question 6

Suppose that you are sitting in a classroom, trying to follow your professor's lecture while trying to ignore a loud conversation out in the hallway. This situation most closely resembles

A) parallel processing.
B) holistic processing.
C) a divided-attention task.
D) a dichotic listening task.

Question 7

Suppose that Lori is taking the Stroop test. Research suggests that, when shown the word "yellow" printed in green ink, Lori will

A) be more likely to slow down or make an error when asked to read the word "yellow" than if the word had been printed in yellow ink.
B) be more likely to slow down or make an error when asked to name the ink color (green) than if the word had been "green."
C) read the word more quickly than if it had been printed in black ink.
D) show no difference in reaction time to this item, for either reading the word or naming the ink color, than to the word "blue" printed in blue ink.

Question 8

Suppose that a friend at your college says that she can multitask very effectively, even when two tasks are challenging. Based on the information in Chapter 3, you would conclude that

A) she may be one of the 20-25% of college students who actually does manage to multitask quickly and accurately.
B) she may be able to perform two tasks very quickly, but the research shows that she would make about 5% more errors than if she performs just one task.
C) she may be able to perform two tasks very accurately, but the research shows that she would take about 10% longer than if she performs just one task.
D) she may believe that she can multitask effectively, but the research does not support this belief.

Question 9

Research on dichotic listening shows that

A) most people have great difficulty attending to one task while ignoring another task.
B) when people pay attention to one task, they typically notice little about other tasks.
C) selective attention is an unfortunate problem that limits our performance enormously.
D) we can usually shadow one series of items and process another series very accurately.

Question 10

Shawn claims that he multitasks very effectively, and also says that he actually performs better while multitasking than when doing a single task. You ask Shawn to test this claim. Shawn reads a newspaper article while listening to a baseball game, and then reads another article in silence. Based on research on multitasking, when you time Shawn's reading speed and test his comprehension, you are likely to find that his reading is

A) faster but less accurate when listening to the game.
B) slower but more accurate when listening to the game.
C) both slower and less accurate when listening to the game.
D) both faster and more accurate when listening to the game, just as he claimed it would be.

Question 11

Lin has a high working memory capacity, whereas Emily has a low working memory capacity. Both Lin and Emily are trying to listen to a recording of a lecture for an online class. When their friend Chris mentions their names from across the room,

A) both Lin and Emily are likely to hear their names.
B) neither Lin nor Emily will be likely to hear their names.
C) Lin is likely to hear his name, but Emily will not hear her name.
D) Emily is likely to hear her name, but Lin will not hear his name.

Question 12

The Stroop effect is related to selective attention because

A) people are required to pay selective attention to the shape of the object, rather than its meaning.
B) people are required to pay selective attention to the color of the stimulus, rather than the name of the stimulus.
C) the stimuli elicit selective parallel distributed processing.
D) attention involves only bottom-up processing.

Question 13

Suppose that Susan is taking the Stroop test, and the first item shows the word "red," printed in blue ink. According to your textbook, one reason that she will have trouble reporting the ink color (blue) for this item is that

A) she has had more experience in reading words than in identifying ink colors.
B) colors have more emotional meaning than words do.
C) colorful arrangements of visual stimuli can actually facilitate an adult's reading ability.
D) the left eye processes word meaning and the right eye processes the color of a stimulus.

Question 14

Imagine that you are trying to concentrate on a Sudoku puzzle, but your little sister is simultaneously asking you questions about the latest Disney movie. This is an
Example of

A) bottom-up processing.
B) selective attention.
C) object recognition.
D) divided attention.

Question 15

According to your textbook's introduction to Chapter 3, attention

A) relies exclusively on bottom-up processing.
B) uses both top-down and bottom-up processing.
C) is a time-consuming but highly accurate cognitive process.
D) is a quick process that is highly inaccurate.

Question 16

Chapter 3 discussed a study in which people in a laboratory setting were instructed to pay close attention to one message and to ignore a second message that mentioned their own name. According to your textbook,

A) about one-third of the time, people noticed their name in the irrelevant message.
B) people almost always noticed their name in the irrelevant message.
C) people almost always noticed their name in the relevant message, but they almost never noticed their name in the irrelevant message.
D) people were much more likely to notice their name in the irrelevant message than they would in a situation that has high ecological validity.

Question 17

Which of the following students provides the best summary of the research about using a cell phone and paying attention while driving?

A) Hans: "As long as you talk on a hands-free cell phone, you can still pay full attention to driving."
B) Gail: "As long as you are an experienced driver, talking on a hand-held cell phone or a hands-free cell phone will not distract your attention."
C) María Luisa: "Talking on a hands-free cell phone can distract your attention."
D) Josh: "Fortunately, drivers are not distracted when a passenger is having a conversation on a phone."

Question 18

Which of the following students provides the most accurate summary about phone use when someone is driving?

A) Henri: "As long as someone other than the driver is talking on the phone, there's no problem."
B) Edith: "As long as a driver uses a hands-free phone, there's no problem."
C) Charles: "When drivers are talking on the phone, they pay less attention to objects that appear in the middle of their visual field."
D) Jeanne: "When drivers are talking on the phone, the passengers can carry on a continuous conversation without affecting the driver."

Question 19

According to your textbook, _______ is an important "gatekeeper" that allows you to diret your mental effort toward thoughts and environmental stimuli that are most important to you at a given time.

A) object recognition
B) speech perception
C) attention
D) problem solving

Question 20

Suppose that some students are participating in a dichotic listening task. Which of the following kinds of students would be most likely to notice their names in the irrelevant message?

A) Students with high working-memory capacity
B) Students with low working-memory capacity
C) Students who hear both messages presented quickly
D) Students who make many errors on the Stroop task

Question 21

In making a saccadic eye movement in reading a sentence in English, you are most likely to move to

A) a blank space between words
B) the word "the"
C) a word that is highly predictable from the context of the sentence
D) the middle of a long word

Question 22

Psychologists have conducted studies in which the participants must detect a stimulus in a display of many other objects. According to this research, people usually detect

A) a combined feature more quickly than an isolated feature.
B) a feature that is present more quickly than a feature that is absent.
C) a stationary object more quickly than a moving object.
D) a small object more quickly than a large object.

Question 23

Imagine that your friend Pete has an intense fear of spiders. If he tries the emotional Stroop test, he would be most likely to

A) report the ink color slowly if the words were related to spiders.
B) report the ink color quickly if the words were related to spiders.
C) report the ink color more accurately if the words were related to spiders.
D) respond the same as people without a fear of spiders.

Question 24

Compared to a good reader, a poor reader is likely to

A) make larger saccadic eye movements.
B) make more regressions to earlier material.
C) stop for less time during a fixation pause.
D) have a larger perceptual span.

Question 25

Imagine that you need to meet someone at the airport. You would notice him more quickly if he had told you "Look for the only person wearing a hat" than if he told you, "Look for the only person not wearing a hat." This situation is most similar to

A) the Stroop effect.
B) the isolated-feature/combined-feature effect.
C) the feature-present/feature-absent effect.
D) Wolfe's finding that we detect a target more accurately if the target appears frequently, rather than rarely.

Question 26

Clinical psychologists have conducted research on the Stroop effect. This research shows that

A) individuals who have a phobia have trouble reporting the color of words related to their phobia.
B) individuals who have a phobia want to avoid words related to their particular phobia, so they report the ink color of these words quickly and accurately.
C) individuals who are depressed perform more accurately on the Stroop task than do nondepressed individuals.
D) the performance of individuals with psychological disorders does not differ significantly from the performance of control-group individuals.

Question 27

Saccadic movements are

A) the miniature eye movements our eyes make when they are attempting to identify the features of the individual letters in a word.
B) the very rapid movements of the eye from one location to another.
C) the eye movements made to change our focus from a distant object to a nearby object.
D) eye movements made only when we are asleep; they accompany dreams.

Question 28

What is the function of saccadic eye movement?

A) It moves the eye backwards or forward in a very small amount so that the image does not fade on the retina.
B) It keeps an image stable on the retina while we move around in the environment.
C) It tracks objects that are moving at a smooth, regular speed.
D) It focuses the area of greatest visual accuity over the material to be seen.

Question 29

You need saccadic eye movements when you are reading this sentence in order to

A) focus on the consonants, rather than the vowels.
B) increase the size of your perceptual span.
C) decrease the number of fixations necessary for accurate reading.
D) move your eye so that the next words are registered in the fovea.

Question 30

Suppose that you are looking for a dark-colored car in a row of parked cars. Among them, 11 are light colored and one is dark colored. The dark-colored car seems to pop out. In this example,

A) you are using focused attention.
B) you are using bottom-up processing.
C) you are demonstrating the feature-present/feature-absent effect.
D) a dark-colored object is more likely to stimulate the movement-detection cells in the retina.

Question 31

The series of little jumps made by your eyes as they move across a page during reading is called

A) fixation.
B) saccadic eye movement.
C) perceptual span.
D) parafoveal preview.

Question 32

Right now, you are moving your eyes as you read this question on your exam. The letters that you can see at any given moment-in between eye movements-would be called

A) a fixation.
B) the perceptual span.
C) a saccadic eye movement.
D) the fovea.

Question 33

When people are asked to describe how they move their eyes when reading, they often report that they _____. In reality, their eyes actually _____.

A) move their eyes smoothly and continuously across a line of text; make a series of little jumps.
B) move their eyes smoothly and continuously across a line a text; move smoothly and continuously, just as reported.
C) make a series of little jumps with their eyes; make a series of little jumps, just as reported.
D) make a series of little jumps with their eyes; move smoothly and continuously across a line of text.

Question 34

The fact that English-speaking readers can access information about upcoming words, even though they are currently fixated on a word to the left, is referred to as

A) fixation.
B) the fovea.
C) a saccadic eye movement.
D) parafoveal preview.

Question 35

Suppose that Jessica has a phobic disorder, a fear of snakes. A clinical psychologist gives her the appropriate version of an emotional Stroop task. Jessica would be likely to:

A) respond more quickly to items related to snakes than to other items.
B) show an attentional bias, so that she pays less attention to the color of the ink, when the word is related to snakes.
C) identify the colors more accurately for items related to snakes.
D) ignore the meaning of the word itself and focus exclusively on the color of the ink.

Question 36

According to the research on saccadic eye movements,

A) people reading English are likely to see more letters to the left side of the central letter, rather than to the right side.
B) poor readers tend to make more regression movements than good readers do.
C) good readers tend to wait longer during the fixation pauses than poor readers do.
D) good readers are more likely than poor readers to stop on a white space between two words.

Question 37

Suppose that you are searching a cast list for a play to determine whether or not you received a role after auditioning. The system in your brain that is most involved in this search is the

A) cerebral blood flow system.
B) executive attention network.
C) frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex.
D) orienting attention network.

Question 38

Chinese readers make saccadic eye movements when they are reading a book written in Chinese script. Compared to English readers, the Chinese readers

A) move their eyes only two-three characters in a saccade, because each Chinese character contains more information.
B) move their eyes a greater distance in a saccade, because each Chinese character provides less information.
C) move their eyes a greater distance in a saccade, because each Chinese character provides more grammatical information.
D) move their eyes a greater distance in a saccade, because English has so many irregularities in its spelling.

Question 39

The letters Q and O differ only in the presence or absence of a single feature. Based on research on visual search, you would find it

A) easier to detect a Q in an array of Os than to detect an O in an array of Qs.
B) easier to detect an O in an array of Qs than to detect a Q in an array of Os.
C) equally easy to detect an O in an array of Qs and a Q in an array of Os.
D) easier to detect a Q in an array of three Os than a Q in an array of 10 Os.

Question 40

Suppose that researchers show you one blue X surrounded by 25 red Xs. According to the discussion of visual search, you would locate that blue X

A) significantly more slowly than if there were only three other red Xs.
B) significantly more quickly than if there were only three other red Xs.
C) just as quickly as if there were only three other red Xs.
D) significantly more quickly than if the other items were blue and red Os.

Question 41

The neuroscience research on the executive attention network shows that this system primarily activates the

A) parietal lobe.
B) temporal lobe.
C) prefrontal portion of the cortex.
D) occipital lobe.

Question 42

What is the current status of the bottleneck theory of attention?

A) It is relatively accurate in explaining the functions of the executive attention network.
B) It explains auditory attention, but not visual attention.
C) It explains attention patterns in children, but not in adults.
D) It is not flexible enough to explain human attention.

Question 43

An illusory conjunction occurs when

A) people pay selective attention to unusual features and ignore ordinary, common features.
B) people are not able to use focused attention.
C) people use bottom-up processing.
D) people use templates during object recognition.

Question 44

Suppose that you are working on a jigsaw puzzle, and you need to find a sky-blue corner piece. According to Anne Treisman's theory of attention,

A) you would find the blue corner piece equally fast, whether the puzzle has 100 piece or 500 pieces.
B) the number of other corner pieces and the number of other blue pieces would influence the time taken to find the blue corner piece.
C) you would find the blue corner piece faster than you would find any pieces that are blue.
D) it would take less time to find that the blue corner piece is not there than to find that it is there.

Question 45

The neuroscience research on the executive attention network shows that this system

A) primarily activates the prefrontal part of the cortex.
B) is fairly well developed in infants.
C) helps you search an area for a specific target.
D) helps you notice a new stimulus.

Question 46

According to Anne Treisman's feature-integration theory,

A) distributed attention uses parallel search through the visual field.
B) people first focus selective attention on important parts of the stimulus.
C) focused attention is a relatively low-level kind of attention; people can quickly perform two focused-attention tasks simultaneously.
D) people use focused attention for vision, and they use distributed attention for hearing.

Question 47

According to Anne Treisman's feature-integration theory, _____ attention is a relatively low-level kind of processing that uses parallel search through the visual field.

A) focused
B) selective
C) distributed
D) binding

Question 48

Research by Anne Treisman has demonstrated that

A) focused attention produces many more errors than distributed attention.
B) in focused attention, an unusual stimulus appears to "pop out" from the other stimuli in the display.
C) illusory conjunctions are especially likely when people perform a task at a leisurely rate.
D) when people use focused attention, they typically perceive a figure whose shape is linked with its appropriate color.

Question 49

Suppose that Silvia has had a stroke that damaged part of the left hemisphere of her brain, and a neurologist says that she has "unilateral spatial neglect." You would expect that she

A) has reduced vision for colored objects.
B) ignores objects that appear in her right visual field.
C) claims that she can see objects, even when there are no nearby objects.
D) can see objects, but she cannot name them.

Question 50

Suppose that you are looking at a jewelry counter containing dozens of red ruby pendants and one green emerald pendant. According to Anne Treisman's theory, if the emerald seems to jump out at you perceptually,

A) you probably searched all the pendants serially.
B) focused attention drew your attention to the one discrepant feature.
C) you automatically processed some features, such as the color of the jewels, during distributed attention.
D) you were searching for a conjunction of two properties.

Question 51

Which of the following is correct regarding the current status of Treisman's feature-integration theory?

A) Research indicates that there are actually more than two types of attentional processes.
B) Research indicates that distributed attention can occasionally resemble focused attention.
C) We now fully understand how visual attention helps us gather relevant information from a real-world scene.
D) Treisman's theory has been rejected because of modern neuroscience evidence against it.

Question 52

Suppose that you are running to catch a subway. You race past a large poster that shows various foods in uncharacteristic colors, such as an orange strawberry and a red carrot. However, you actually perceive a red strawberry and an orange carrot. In Anne Treisman's theory, this phenomenon would be called

A) overactive bottom-up processing.
B) attentional bias.
C) a Gestalt.
D) an illusory conjunction.

Question 53

PET scan research shows that the _________ cortex shows increased blood flow when people perform visual searches.

A) prefrontal
B) parietal
C) temporal
D) occipital

Question 54

In the chaotic aftermath of a robbery, you see a tall thin man in a red shirt and a shorter man in a black jacket running from the scene of the crime. According to research on illusory conjunctions, it would not be surprising for you to later remember seeing

A) only the tall, thin man
B) three men instead of two
C) a tall, thin man in a black jacket
D) two shorter men, both wearing red

Question 55

Which of the following visual activities would be most likely to employ the orienting attention network?

A) You notice that a red light on your car's dashboard has just started to flash.
B) You are searching for an empty seat in a crowded classroom.
C) You are reporting the color of ink for each word on the Stroop test.
D) You are looking at a doorway, ready to say "hello" when each person enters.

Question 56

The bottleneck theory is inadequate in accounting for attention because

A) it proposes that humans have many different kinds of attention, and the current research shows that they have only one kind.
B) it explains only the data gathered with the event-related potential technique and not with other neuroscience research methods.
C) it argues that people actually filter out very little irrelevant information.
D) it underestimates the flexibility of our attention.

Question 57

On the way to the grocery store, you witness a car accident on a crowded street. A red Ford pickup truck rear-ends a blue minivan and then drives away. The driver of a black Toyota Prius stops to help the driver of the blue minivan. You stop and call 911. In the chaos of the scene, according to the research on illusory conjunctions, it would not be surprising if you reported seeing

A) a pickup truck hitting a minivan; you don't remember the color.
B) a red vehicle hitting a blue vehicle; you don't remember the type of vehicle.
C) details of only the vehicle that drove away, which caught your attention more.
D) a blue pickup truck hitting a red minivan.

Question 58

Suppose that you are searching for a set of square-shaped, red earrings on a jewelry counter that has four kinds of earrings: square blue, square red, round blue, and round red. If Treisman's research on attention applies to this task,

A) you would find the square red earrings equally fast, whether there are few or many other earrings.
B) you would find the square red earrings faster than you would find any earrings that are red.
C) the number of other square earrings and the number of other red earrings would influence the time taken to find the square red earrings.
D) it would take less time to find that the square red earrings are not there than to find that they are there.

Question 59

When you try the Stroop task, you need to say the name of the colors and inhibit your automatic tendency to read the words. This kind of search typically activates

A) your executive attention network.
B) your orienting attention network.
C) your saccadic eye movements.
D) your parietal lobe.

Question 60

Imagine that you are searching your room for a specific textbook. Which portion of the cortex would be most active during this search?

A) The parietal lobe
B) The occipital lobe
C) The temporal lobe
D) The frontal lobe

Question 61

Nisbett and Wilson examined people's consciousness about their higher mental processes. According to their research,

A) we can usually provide valid introspections about conscious processes.
B) it is impossible to have access to our thought processes.
C) we are often unable to introspect accurately about our thought processes.
D) we can introspect accurately about memory and higher mental processes, but not about perception.

Question 62

Suppose that Elaine has been instructed to think freely about black cats for five minutes, whereas Kathleen has been ordered not to think about black cats for five minutes. After the initial five-minute period has passed, both Elaine and Kathleen are allowed to think about black cats. According to Wegner and his coauthors, during this second time period, what is most likely to happen?

A) Both Elaine and Kathleen will spend equal amounts of time thinking about black cats.
B) Elaine will spend more time thinking about black cats than Kathleen will.
C) Kathleen will spend more time thinking about black cats than Elaine will.
D) We cannot predict which person will spend more time thinking about black cats, because ironic effects are unpredictable.

Question 63

Research on people's consciousness of their own thought processes has taught us that

A) Cognitive psychologists can confidently rely on people's introspections when studying higher thought processes.
B) Cognitive psychologists should not rely on people's introspections when studying higher thought processes.
C) Cognitive psychologists can rely on people's introspections about their attentional processes but not about their complex decision processes.
D) The behaviorists were correct in assuming that cognition cannot be studied objectively.

Question 64

Your awareness about both the surrounding world and your cognitive processes is called

A) working memory.
B) orienting attention network.
C) attention.
D) consciousness.

Question 65

In general, consciousness is associated with

A) focused attention but not necessarily with distributed attention.
B) both focused and distributed attention.
C) distributed attention but not necessarly with focused attention.
D) neither focused nor distributed attention.

Question 66

According to your textbook, consciousness refers to

A) your ability to pay attention to two messages simultaneously.
B) your ability to suppress undesirable thoughts.
C) your awareness of the outside world and of your perceptions, images, and feelings.
D) your awareness about your automatic-processing ability.

Question 67

The phrase "ironic effects of mental control" means that

A) we have difficulty on a Stroop task, because we pay attention to meaning, rather than ink color.
B) ironically, we often make more errors on a familiar attention task than we make on an unfamiliar attention task.
C) when we try to avoid a particular thought, it may be even more likely to enter consciousness.
D) we often cannot introspect accurately about the cognitive processes we use in everyday life.

Question 68

Your verbal reports about your cognitive processes are most likely to be accurate for which of the following tasks?

A) Describing how you recalled the name of your first-grade teacher.
B) Describing how you managed to solve a particular problem.
C) Guessing which items from a list of psychology terms you would be most likely to define correctly on an examination.
D) Determining whether your attention is drifting when you should be focusing on a task.

Question 69

According to Nisbett and Wilson, we typically have access to

A) the processes of thought but not the products of thought.
B) both the products and processes of thought.
C) neither the products nor the processes of thought.
D) the products of thought but not the processes that created them.

Question 70

Which of the following students provides the most complete, accurate information about the topic called "mind wandering"?

A) Daphne: "When your mind wanders, your visual acuity actually improves."
B) Dan: "When your mind wanders, you no longer can match an object's shape with its color."
C) Evan: "Mind wandering occurs when your attention shifts from distributed attention to focused attention."
D) Karolina: "Mind wandering occurs when your thoughts shift from the outside world to your inner thoughts."

Question 71

Imagine that you have been on a strict diet for several weeks. No matter how hard you try, you can't avoid thinking about chocolate chip cookies and lemon meringue pie. You are having difficulty with

A) thought suppression.
B) divided attention.
C) illusory conjunctions.
D) shadowing

Question 72

A man is being tested in a cognitive psychology laboratory. If he has blindsight, he will

A) say he cannot see an object, even though he often points in the correct direction.
B) use parallel processing when serial processing is more appropriate.
C) make more saccadic eye movements than regression movements.
D) accurately report the color of the object, but not its shape.

Question 73

You are reading your textbook, and your eyes are moving over the page, but later you realize that you can't remember anything about the information on the page. In this phenomenon,

A) you actually process the meaning of the words subconsciously.
B) your eyes use normal saccadic movements.
C) you are actually daydreaming.
D) you are using a technique known as thought suppression.

Question 74

Which of the following is considered to be the best current explanation of the visual condition called "blindsight"?

A) In reality, the visual cortex of these individuals is not physically damaged.
B) These individuals actually underestimate the extent of their visual deficit.
C) These individuals typically have difficulties with their executive attention network.
D) Some information from the retina travels to regions of the cortex outside the visual cortex.

Question 75

Your inability to follow the instruction, "Do not think about a white bear!" is an example of

A) mindless reading.
B) mind wandering.
C) thought suppression.
D) mental control.