Deck 9: Cognitive Development

Question 1

Information-processing theorists draw an analogy between the operations of a computer and the workings of the human mind.According to this view,what is the mind's software?

A) the brain and the strategies the brain uses to solve problems
B) the brain, the sensory receptors, and their neural connections
C) the rules and strategies that specify how information is registered, interpreted, stored, retrieved, and analyzed
D) the genotype that specifies the formation of neural connections

Answer 1

the rules and strategies that specify how information is registered, interpreted, stored, retrieved, and analyzed

Question 2

When Marcos was playing backgammon the other day,his sister showed him a new strategy that he could use to win the game.If Marcos uses this new strategy in the future,what would an information-processing theorist suggest that Marcos had done?

A) increased both his mental software and his mental hardware
B) increased his mental software
C) reduced his capacity to discover new adaptive strategies on his own
D) reduced his mental software

Answer 2

increased his mental software

Question 3

Chi found that young children outperformed adolescents and adults on memory tasks when the children had extensive knowledge in a specific area.How does this finding relate to age-related differences typically found in performance on memory span tasks?

A) They are not caused solely by differences in the physical capacity of the short-term store.
B) They must result from differences in the physical capacity of the short-term store.
C) They are the result of differences in the way in which the sensory registers function.
D) They are caused by differences in the complexity of cognitive schemes.

Answer 3

They are not caused solely by differences in the physical capacity of the short-term store.

Question 4

Dylan is a 10-year-old boy who loves sharks and has a great deal of knowledge on the topic.His uncle Gerry knows nothing about sharks.Pictures of sharks are shown to them at a rate of one per second.After a delay,they are shown a set of pictures that contain both new items and old items.If Dylan performs better than Gerry on the recall task,what is the most likely explanation?

A) He has increased STM capacity.
B) He has better memory for pictures.
C) His knowledge base increased the speed of his item identification.
D) He is faster at processing pictorial information.

Question 5

Which statement best summarizes current research findings regarding the age-related difference in memory span?

A) It increases rapidly during the preschool years and then levels off.
B) It shows a slow steady increase from toddlerhood through to adolescence.
C) It peaks in early adolescence and then slowly declines.
D) It shows little change until early adolescence, when there is a sudden increase.

Question 6

What is the typical capacity of the short-term store?

A) between 3 and 7 items
B) between 5 and 9 items
C) between 7 and 11 items
D) unlimited if the material is kept active using rehearsal

Question 7

Which information-processing component is subject to the greatest voluntary control?

A) sensory functions
B) the short-term store
C) the long-term store
D) executive functions

Question 8

What is meant by the term metacognition?

A) literal, verbatim traces of information
B) the physical capacities of the various human information-processing systems
C) imprecise encoding of information
D) knowledge of one's cognitive abilities and processes that relate to thinking

Question 9

Memory span refers to the number of rapidly presented,unrelated items that can be recalled in which way?

A) in the exact order of presentation
B) in any order
C) after a 5-minute delay
D) after a 1-hour delay

Question 10

What memory system has the largest capacity?

A) the long-term store
B) the short-term store
C) the sensory register
D) the somatic register

Question 11

What is the memory system that holds large amounts of information for very brief periods of time?

A) the sensory register
B) the associative register
C) the long-term store
D) the short-term store

Question 12

Ambrose Bierce wrote,"The mind is a mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain; its chief activity consists of trying to understand its own functions." For Bierce,what does the mind's main activity represent?

A) fuzzy traces
B) metacognition
C) relational primacy
D) working memory

Question 13

Information-processing theorists draw an analogy between the operations of a computer and the workings of the human mind.According to this view,what is the mind's hardware?

A) the brain, the sensory receptors, and their neural connections
B) the brain and the strategies the brain uses to solve problems
C) the specific alleles that make up an individual's genotype that control the formation of neural connections
D) the rules and strategies that specify how information is registered, interpreted, stored, retrieved, and analyzed

Question 14

Which characteristic most clearly distinguishes human information processors from computers?

A) The mind has nothing that is analogous to a computer's hardware.
B) Unlike computers, in humans the long-term store has a limited capacity.
C) The computer has nothing that is analogous to the mind's computational capacity.
D) Unlike humans, computers lack voluntary executive control processes.

Question 15

The capacity of which of the following is referred to as the span of apprehension?

A) the sensory register
B) the short-term store
C) the long-term store
D) the attentional register

Question 16

What is represented by the number of rapidly presented,unrelated items that can be recalled in the exact order of presentation?

A) the capacity of our sensory registers
B) our memory span
C) the capacity of long-term store
D) our working-memory span

Question 17

Age-related improvements in which tasks are so reliable that this skill is among those that are assessed in children's intelligence tests?

A) attention
B) perception of cardinality
C) memory rehearsal
D) memory span

Question 18

What is the memory system that maintains information for extended periods of time?

A) the sensory register
B) the long-term store
C) the short-term store
D) the associative register

Question 19

What is another name for working memory?

A) the sensory register
B) procedural memory
C) the short-term store
D) the proactive store

Question 20

Which memory system maintains information in a relatively pure,unanalyzed form?

A) the sensory register
B) the short-term store
C) the long-term store
D) the procedural register

Question 21

Suppose that you are to give a presentation for one of your classes. As you drive to school you practise your presentation in your head. You arrive and your friend asks you about the traffic on your way. You find that you do not really remember the drive at all, despite arriving safely.
What process allowed you to complete the drive?

A) implicit memory
B) explicit memory
C) explicit base
D) implicit base

Question 22

Which statement best summarizes research findings regarding the difference in the use of strategies between younger and older children?

A) Younger children use fewer strategies, but use them more effectively than older children do.
B) Younger children use more strategies, but use them far less effectively than older children do.
C) Younger children use fewer strategies, and use them less effectively than older children do.
D) Younger children use the same number of strategies, but use them less effectively than older children do.

Question 23

Mikhail is 6 years old and loves to play adventure video games,even though he finds some of them quite difficult.Yesterday,his older brother taught him how to help the hero escape when she was swallowed by a monster.Even though Mikhail has been shown what to do,he still forgets to apply this information and he loses the game.Mikhail's behaviour exemplifies which type of deficiency?

A) rehearsal
B) production
C) utilization
D) apprehension

Question 24

Given that a child has a production deficiency,what intervention strategy would be most useful to improve his or her performance?

A) Counsel the child to adapt to her or his learning disability.
B) Give encouragement to raise her or his self-esteem.
C) Teach him or her a more appropriate problem-solving strategy.
D) Redirect his or her efforts to less-difficult problems.

Question 25

Marta shows Eileen how to use the memory in her calculator to store the intermediate steps in a calculation.However,when Eileen tries to use Marta's method,she finds it confusing and reverts to writing down all the intermediate calculations,and then re-entering them when she needs them.In this example,what deficiency accounts for Eileen's behaviour?

A) schematic
B) production
C) utilization
D) mediation

Question 26

Which strategy are children using for addition when they start with the larger of the two numbers to be added,and then count up from that number?

A) min
B) sum
C) max
D) fact retrieval

Question 27

Five-year-old Boris tells his teacher,"I can't figure out how to memorize the names of the zoo animals; can you help me?" What type of learning deficiency is Boris exhibiting?

A) dyslexia
B) production
C) utilization
D) apprehension

Question 28

Which statement best summarizes Siegler's model of developmental changes in strategy use?

A) They occur as overlapping waves.
B) They occur in overlapping stages in which strategies are sequentially replaced.
C) They occur as discrete waves with no overlap.
D) They occur in discrete stages with no overlap.

Question 29

Which of the following best describes what fuzzy-trace theorists mean by the term gists?

A) representations that fail to preserve essential details and necessary information
B) literal, verbatim representations of key information
C) verbatim representations that have degraded over time
D) representations that preserve the essential content of memories, without precise details

Question 30

When asked to "think of nothing," which age group will report that they are able to do so?

A) 5-year-olds
B) 7-year-olds
C) 10-year-olds
D) 14-year-olds

Question 31

What is span of apprehension?

A) the number of items that can be kept in mind while being operated on mentally
B) the amount of information that can be held in the long-term store
C) the amount of information that the person does not attend to while problem solving
D) the amount of information in the sensory store

Question 32

What type of deficiency occurs when a child fails to generate and use a known strategy that could improve learning and memory?

A) production
B) schematic
C) utilization
D) mediation

Question 33

Which maturational change has been identified as the source of age-related improvements in children's processing speed?

A) myelinization of the cortical association areas
B) myelinization of the reticular formation
C) increased numbers of neurons in cortical association areas
D) increased speed of transfer of oxygen and nutrients to the brain

Question 34

When Brainerd and Gordon asked preschool and children in Grade 2 to solve simple numerical problems,what did they find?

A) The preschoolers were worse than the children in Grade 2 on both gist-based and verbatim problems.
B) The preschoolers were not as good as the children in Grade 2 at solving gist-based problems.
C) The preschoolers were better than the children in Grade 2 at solving verbatim problems.
D) The preschoolers did just as well as the children in Grade 2 on both gist-based and verbatim problems.

Question 35

Suppose that you are to give a presentation for one of your classes. As you drive to school you practise your presentation in your head. You arrive and your friend asks you about the traffic on your way. You find that you do not really remember the drive at all, despite arriving safely.
What process allowed you to practise your presentation?

A) implicit memory
B) explicit memory
C) explicit base
D) implicit base

Question 36

When Aiden is asked to add two numbers together,he "just knows" the answer and retrieves the correct answer directly from long-term memory.What did Siegler and his colleagues call this strategy?

A) min
B) sum
C) max
D) fact retrieval

Question 37

In comparison to verbatim traces,which statement best summarizes the research evidence concerning the use of fuzzy traces to encode and use learned information?

A) They are more susceptible to interference and forgetting.
B) They are more easily accessed and require more effort to use.
C) They are less susceptible to interference and forgetting.
D) They are less easily accessed and require more effort to use.

Question 38

According to the research by Robert Kail,increases in which aspect of information-processing accounts for improved memory with increasing age?

A) capacity of the short-term store
B) capacity of the long-term store
C) speed and efficiency of processing
D) selective attention

Question 39

What type of deficiency occurs when a child fails to benefit from an effective strategy that he or she has generated spontaneously?

A) schematic
B) utilization
C) mediation
D) production

Question 40

Kerry is 6 years old,and when she adds numbers together she uses the sum strategy.Her older brother shows her the min strategy and Kerry can see that this is a better strategy that will be much faster.The fact that Kerry didn't use the min strategy until her brother showed her how illustrates what type of deficiency?

A) operational
B) production
C) utilization
D) mediation

Question 41

Miller and Weiss asked 7-,10-,and 13-year-olds to remember the locations of animals hidden behind flaps,telling the children to pay attention to the animals and ignore other objects behind each flap.How helpful were these instructions for each age group?

A) They were helpful for all three age groups and increased performance dramatically.
B) They were helpful only for the youngest age group; the 10- and 13-year-olds did well whether told what to ignore or not told.
C) They were not helpful for any of the age groups; even at 13 years of age children have difficulty ignoring irrelevant information.
D) They were most helpful for the 13-year-olds; younger children tended to have difficulty ignoring irrelevant information, even when instructed to.

Question 42

According to recent research findings,why do older children make more correct judgments as to whether two complex pictures are different?

A) They have better visual scanning skills.
B) They have better depth perception.
C) They are better at representing three-dimensional objects.
D) They are better at remembering task instructions.

Question 43

Your psychology professor asks you for the name of the individual who identified three different levels of moral development.To answer this question correctly,what type of memory will you need to use?

A) event
B) autobiographical
C) meta
D) strategic

Question 44

Which statement best characterizes the results of Vurpillot and colleagues' experiments regarding the abilities of children to search two different visual scenes and to identify differences between them?

A) Five-year-olds and 8-year-olds searched similarly.
B) Searches by 5-year-olds were more systematic than those of 8-year-olds.
C) Children over the age of 8 were more systematic in their searches, and thus performed well.
D) Children under the age of 10 were not thorough in searching, and thus performed poorly.

Question 45

Lynette is writing a test in geography and is trying to recall the capital of Germany.To answer this question correctly,what type of memory will Lynnette need to use?

A) autobiographical
B) transitional
C) strategic
D) event

Question 46

According to Brainerd and Gordon,why might young children think more slowly and less efficiently than older children?

A) They rely too heavily on gist information.
B) They try to process unnecessary verbatim detail.
C) They are not able to create schemes that are sufficiently detailed.
D) They lack the cognitive capacity to hold information in their short-term store.

Question 47

Improvements in which skill best accounts for why older children are better than younger children at finding lost objects?

A) visual scanning
B) depth perception
C) three-dimensional mental representations
D) attention to relevant cues

Question 48

Wayne and Sally are telling their friends about the interesting things they did during their recent trip to Banff National Park.What type of memory are Wayne and Sally using to communicate the events of their trip?

A) episodic
B) strategic
C) mnemonic
D) selective

Question 49

Which type of event memory is the earliest to develop?

A) strategic
B) autobiographical
C) nonverbal rehearsed
D) deferred imitation

Question 50

Drew is demonstrating a new computer program to his younger sister.What type of memory would Drew need to use as he shows her how to open the application and create a file?

A) strategic
B) episodic
C) event
D) autobiographic

Question 51

Mr.Reynolds asks his Grade 3 students to write a short essay about what they did during their spring break.To do this effectively,what type of memory will his students need to use?

A) sensory
B) event
C) selective
D) strategic

Question 52

Younger children tend to recall more incidental,irrelevant information about situations than do older children and adults.Difficulties with which cognitive process is thought to account for the younger children's deficit?

A) event memory
B) systematic visual scanning
C) detecting visual forms
D) selective attention

Question 53

Researchers have found that 6-year-olds give more sustained attention to their toys or activities than do younger children.What has this developmental change in attention span been attributed to?

A) myelinization of the occipital lobe
B) improved cross-modal transfer
C) myelinization of the reticular formation
D) decreased speed of habituation

Question 54

Rachel is 4 years old and has difficulty with a task requiring her to decide whether two complex stimuli are the same or different.To what would Vurpillot attribute Rachel's difficulties with this task?

A) poor recall and recognition memory
B) a failure to use systematic attention
C) inadequate verbal capabilities
D) immature sensory registration

Question 55

Jaylene is a 2-year-old toddler.Although she knows that she should not touch her mother's books,she cannot seem to stop herself from doing so,despite the fact that she has been scolded on numerous occasions.How would an information theorist account for Jaylene's behaviour?

A) She lacks verbatim tracing.
B) She is executing a predominant response.
C) She has repressed her predominant response.
D) She lacks attentional tracing.

Question 56

In contrast to theorists who emphasize the activation of cognitive processes in the development of thinking skills,others emphasize the importance of which skill?

A) verbatim tracing
B) inhibition
C) detection
D) attentional tracing

Question 57

What is the term for memories of events that we have personally experienced?

A) strategic
B) scripted
C) autobiographical
D) contextual

Question 58

A 5-year-old relates her experience about going to the dentist: "You get in the car,drive there,get out,go inside,wait,get in the dental chair,get teeth fixed,jump from the chair,walk to the car,and go home." How would a psychologist characterize this child's memory strategy?

A) as an apprehension event
B) as a metamemory script
C) as a general memory script
D) as a rehearsal event

Question 59

In a research study 6-year-olds and 14-year-olds are asked to sort coloured cards.In order to increase performance,will it be helpful to tell the participants to pay attention to the colours,while ignoring the shape of the cards?

A) It will be equally helpful to both age groups.
B) It will be helpful only to the younger age group.
C) It will not be helpful to either group.
D) It will be helpful to the older group.

Question 60

In addition to the advances in the development of brain physiology,what other factor is thought to account for the improvement in attention span with age?

A) unconditional positive reinforcement from others
B) improvement of attentional strategies
C) increased involvement in activities such as study groups
D) increased capacity of the sensory store

Question 61

According to available evidence,people of all ages report more inaccurate information when asked leading questions that suggest inaccurate facts or events.Which age group is most susceptible to such memory distortions?

A) elementary school children
B) preadolescents
C) older adolescents
D) adults

Question 62

Studies of eyewitness memory typically have children experience or watch an event,and later answer questions about the events that they witnessed.Which statement best summarizes what preschool children provide during their recall of the event?

A) few precise details, but what they do recall is generally accurate.
B) few precise details, and what they do recall is generally inaccurate.
C) many precise and vivid details, but what they do recall is inaccurate.
D) many precise and vivid details, and what they do recall is accurate.

Question 63

Which memory strategy involves grouping or classifying stimuli into meaningful clusters?

A) rehearsal
B) semantic organization
C) cued encoding
D) elaboration

Question 64

Leonard is trying to remember the names of the capital cities for the countries that are members of the European Economic Union.To make it easier to remember all the names,he groups the countries according to their general geographical location.Which memory strategy is Leonard using to remember the names?

A) rehearsed encoding
B) cued encoding
C) semantic organization
D) elaboration

Question 65

Mr.Giomalli places 20 items on a table in front of his class,and then he carefully watches the children's lips to see if they are silently "rehearsing" the items to help them remember what they have seen.He observes that about 85 percent of the students use this strategy to help them remember.Based on this information,what year of age are the students in Mr.Giomalli's class?

A) 3
B) 5
C) 7
D) 10

Question 66

The work of Carole Peterson suggests that children's autobiographical memories for significant events may be more robust than previously reported.Which statement best summarizes the results of her research?

A) One-year-olds remembered trips to Disney World even after 3 years.
B) One-year-olds remembered hospital visits even after 5 years.
C) Two-year-olds remembered hospital visits even after 5 years.
D) Three-year-olds remembered trips to Disney World even after 7 years .

Question 67

Ms.Bellamy places 14 items on a table in front of her class,and then she carefully watches the children's lips to see if they are silently "rehearsing" the items to help them remember what they have seen.She observes that just over half seem to use this strategy.Based on this information,what year of age are the students in Ms.Bellamy's class?

A) 3
B) 5
C) 7
D) 10

Question 68

What is a memory script?

A) schemes for certain experiences that preserve the ordering and causal relations among the events
B) memories of particular events that we have personally experienced
C) metamemory strategies for effectively retrieving information from the long-term store
D) metamemory strategies for effectively organizing information to be remembered

Question 69

Which statement best summarizes the research findings regarding children's autobiographical memories when they are aided by parental elaboration?

A) They recall more information, but only in the short term.
B) They make more errors in the information that they recall.
C) They recall more information, even a few years later.
D) They make more errors unless their parents are present.

Question 70

Which statement best summarizes the research finding regarding the recall abilities of preschool children when they are prompted with specific cues about events that they have witnessed?

A) They recall more of the actual details of the event and exclude some of the inaccurate details that had been previously recalled.
B) They recall more of the actual details of the event but include more details about the event that are inaccurate.
C) They recall the same information regardless of prompting.
D) They recall many inaccurate details, and do not show any improvement in their recall of the actual events after prompting

Question 71

Which statement best summarizes research findings regarding the persistence of false memories that are created during studies that assess children's eyewitness memory?

A) They seldom persist once the memory test is over.
B) They persist for several days after the test, but then are forgotten.
C) They often persist, and these false memories may be as resistant as, or more resistant to, forgetting than true memories.
D) They often persist, but these false memories are generally less resistant to forgetting than true memories.

Question 72

Ornstein and associates have shown that a 7-year-old will rehearse as effectively as a 12-year-old as long as the items the child must remember remain in sight.What do these results imply about the the source of the inefficient rehearsal that 7-year-olds normally display?

A) It results from a mediation deficiency.
B) It results from the physical limitations of the short-term store in young children.
C) It results from problems in retrieving items to form clusters.
D) It results from a lack of motivation to succeed when memory tasks are difficult.

Question 73

As Pearl was introduced to the seven partners of her new law firm,she silently repeated all the names to herself,in order.What strategy was Pearl using to remember the names?

A) rehearsal to temporarily hold the names in her short-term store
B) semantic organization to increase the capacity of her long-term store
C) elaboration to temporarily hold the names in her short-term store
D) cued recall to retrieve the information that was in her long-term store

Question 74

What does research on the ability to recall early childhood events indicate about most adults' memories?

A) Most adults do not recall events that occurred before age 3 because of the young child's limited memory capacity.
B) Most adults do not recall events that occurred before age 3, possibly because the events were stored nonverbally and are difficult to retrieve.
C) Most adults recall numerous vivid memories of events that occurred before age 3, particularly emotional events such as birthdays or scary events such as injuries.
D) Most adults do not recall events that occurred before age 3, probably because of the emotional nature of the content.

Question 75

Which type of memory is exemplified in eyewitness testimony?

A) strategic memory
B) attentional memory
C) implicit memory
D) event memory

Question 76

In contrast to younger children,how do older children rehearse information?

A) differently but less efficiently
B) in the same way and with the same efficiency
C) in the same way, but more efficiently
D) differently and more efficiently

Question 77

Which of the following best characterizes the process of rehearsal?

A) the internal repetition of the contents of the short-term store
B) the rearrangement of information into meaningful clusters
C) the creation of meaningful links between the pieces of information one is trying to remember
D) the use of external cues to aid in the recall of information held in the long-term store

Question 78

At what age do children first show evidence of actively retrieving information from memory,when no cues are present to remind them of their experiences?

A) at birth
B) between 1 and 4 months
C) between 8 and 12 months
D) at about 24 months

Question 79

Which statement best characterizes the memory performance of children when they organize events into scripts?

A) They forget typical information, but remember atypical events.
B) They remember typical events, but forget atypical information.
C) They remember both typical events and atypical information, equally.
D) They forget both atypical information and typical events, equally.

Question 80

When police investigators interrogate a witness to a crime,what type of memory are they asking the witness to use?

A) rehearsal
B) event
C) strategic
D) sensory