Deck 14: Conscious Thought, Unconscious Thought

Question 1

Is it possible to study unconsciousness?

A) No; any tests would be based on subjective introspections.
B) No; unconscious activity does not exist.
C) Yes; by asking what activities can be done without consciousness.
D) It has not been studied successfully yet, but will be in time.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Which of these is NOT an example of causal attribution in unconscious thinking?

A) Jenny believes she remembers the color of her last birthday cake.
B) Louise finds a name familiar so she believes it belongs to a famous person.
C) Abby remembers the face of a man so she believes the man was part of a robbery.
D) In an experiment, Jane is willing to experience a higher intensity of electric shock, as she believes any adverse reactions are the side effects of a pill that she took prior to the experiment.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

A great deal of behind-the-scenes activity is necessary to make possible intellectual achievements like thinking and remembering. This behind-the-scenes activity is referred to by psychologists as

A) nuts-and-bolts work.
B) the cognitive unconscious.
C) subconscious production.
D) running the program.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Patients who have experienced damage to the striate cortex sometimes show a phenomenon known as blind sight. In this case, most patients

A) can consciously see where an object is but cannot identify it.
B) can consciously report the identity of an object but not where it is located.
C) are blind yet incorrectly report that they can see the identity and location of an object.
D) often guess correctly in response to what they have seen or where an object is located even though they report that they cannot see it.

Question 5

Our thoughts seem to be embedded in a context that is usually not noticed yet serves to define and guide the thoughts. Which of the following is NOT an example of this sort of context?

A) Discovery based on mental imagery is influenced by the perceptual reference frame for the image.
B) Decisions are guided by how the decision is framed.
C) The meaning of the terms involved in our thoughts is clarified by the surrounding context of thought.
D) Perception of a word or object is strongly shaped by the other words and objects that surround the target.

Question 6

The phrase "memory without awareness" is another way of describing a pattern in which

A) explicit memory tests indicate that participants remember an event, but implicit memory tests indicate that they do not remember.
B) implicit memory tests indicate that participants remember an event, but explicit memory tests indicate that they do not remember.
C) recognition tests indicate that participants remember an event, but recall tests indicate that they do not remember.
D) direct memory testing indicates that participants remember an event, but indirect testing indicates that they do not remember.

Question 7

Much of our current understanding of consciousness derives from

A) subjective reports, although these had been deemed unscientific in the past.
B) studies of what can be done in the absence of consciousness.
C) chronometric studies.
D) an increased sophistication in our ability to analyze introspective reports.

Question 8

Our unconscious thinking about an event

A) tends to be simple and direct, leading us, for example, to think of the event as familiar or preferable.
B) can often be quite complex, involving several steps of reasoning and inference.
C) can influence us in small ways but seems not to have larger-scale impact.
D) is most influential with novel events; with familiar events, we react in a more reflective fashion.

Question 9

In the late 1800s, the young science of psychology

A) considered consciousness to be a central concern of the science.
B) argued that consciousness could not be studied scientifically.
C) studied consciousness by focusing on the biological roots of conscious thought.
D) largely ignored the topic of consciousness.

Question 10

Even in cases where we think we are fully conscious of our thoughts or "inner dialogue," there are unconscious factors influencing us, such as set. Which of the following is NOT true of sets?

A) They can keep us focused.
B) They are unnoticed assumptions.
C) They can be an obstacle to problem solving.
D) They are always a good thing.

Question 11

Which of these is most likely to be true about the process of introspection?

A) Introspection acts as a special window, allowing people to report correctly why they acted the way they did.
B) People often show little confidence about their reasoning when they introspect, although their reasoning is mostly correct.
C) People can often use their confidence ratings to detect whether their introspections are likely to be correct.
D) Introspection often produces mistaken beliefs that arise from plausible after-the-fact inferences.

Question 12

Which of the following is FALSE about introspective reports?

A) They are sometimes correct.
B) They can be the result of after-the-fact reconstructions.
C) They often feel like inferences.
D) They are occasionally wrong.

Question 13

Positive feedback influences confidence in memory, possibly because of an unconscious line of thinking, like

A) "I can set aside my doubts about my memory, because I got it right!"
B) "I know I didn't see him, but I seemed to get it right, so I guess I'll go with it!"
C) "They could be lying to me. I probably did not get it right."
D) "I have a perfect memory!"

Question 14

Several authors have proposed that we are generally aware of the ________ of our own thoughts even though we are usually unaware of the ________ of thought.

A) product; processes
B) decision-making processes; products
C) implicit mechanisms; explicit mechanisms
D) inferences; strategies

Question 15

Sometimes we reason carefully and deliberately through an argument, scrutinizing each step. In a case of this sort

A) all of our thoughts will be entirely conscious even if we are unconscious of our thoughts in other situations.
B) the processes of our thoughts, but not the products, will be consciously available.
C) our sequence of thoughts depends on an unconscious support structure that guides how we interpret the elements of each thought.
D) there are no unconscious processes involved.

Question 16

Which of the following is NOT an example of the principle, "We are aware of products but not of processes"?

A) Jeff knew that the stimulus seemed familiar, but he did not know why.
B) Jesse believed that the stimulus was "cake," but he could not tell whether he had seen the stimulus or just inferred it.
C) Jeremy suddenly found himself thinking about marriage, and he could not figure out what had brought this idea into his thoughts.
D) Jacob wanted to do well on the spelling test, but he did not know the best way to study the words.

Question 17

In one study, participants in Group 1 were given a pill and told, "This pill will make you a bit jumpy, will make your palms sweat, and may give you butterflies in your stomach." Participants in Group 2 were given the same pill, but they were told, "This pill may make you a little sleepy." In both cases, the pill was a placebo. All participants were then exposed to electric shocks and were asked to rate how painful each shock had seemed. Given other evidence, we would expect that

A) there would be no difference between the two groups.
B) the participants would not differ in how they rated the shocks, but participants in Group 2 would end up having more positive feelings about the experiment.
C) the participants in Group 2 would rate the shocks as less painful than the participants in Group 1.
D) the participants in Group 1 would rate the shocks as less painful than the participants in Group 2.

Question 18

When asked to introspect about their reasons for making a particular choice, participants

A) sometimes offer an explanation with great confidence even though the explanation names factors that they know to be irrelevant and leaves out factors that they know to be crucial.
B) can usually specify their reasons and accurately report on the processes used for selecting the reasons.
C) often have no idea about their reasons, but if they are able to report their reasons, they are likely to be correct.
D) report their reasons in general terms but do so with little confidence.

Question 19

Feedback can lead participants to be more confident of their memories, even if they are wrong. What explanation is NOT appropriate to explain this fact?

A) People are more confident when they are told they are right.
B) Memories are strengthened when people are told they are right.
C) Doubt is erased when people are told they are right.
D) The change in confidence is an unconscious attribution.

Question 20

Erin, who has Korsakoff's amnesia, is asked to perform in a memory experiment. Erin is likely to

A) be capable of learning but do poorly in explicit tests of memory.
B) recall explicitly events that she has witnessed but not things that she has done.
C) perform well on tests requiring conscious recollection even though her performance is poor if memory is tested indirectly.
D) be unable to recall material learned in the past even though she explicitly recognizes the material when she encounters it.

Question 21

Which neural area is most critical for consciousness?

A) frontal lobe
B) brainstem
C) hindbrain
D) There is no single area that is responsible for consciousness.

Question 22

The fact that we are unaware of most of our mental processing is a good thing for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that

A) the inferred processes that we are consciously aware of accurately reflect the unconscious processes that occur behind the scenes.
B) awareness of all of our processing would send us into information overload.
C) in many cases, information about our underlying mental processes would be distracting rather than helpful.
D) most tasks would be greatly slowed if we had to sort through all of the underlying processing information.

Question 23

Anita has been driving a car with a stick shift for five years. What effect does her years of practice have on consciousness?

A) Practice reduces the need for executive control over shifting gears.
B) Practice has led her to be able to ignore shifting gears and focus entirely on other tasks while driving.
C) Practice has made her a worse driver because now she does not pay attention to the road.
D) Practice has given her a false sense of skill.

Question 24

Which of the following is NOT necessary for successful metamemory?

A) executive control
B) self-monitoring
C) conscious reflection
D) habitual responding

Question 25

Why is the unconscious called "irresistible"?

A) Our unconscious is inflexible, making it difficult to adjust or overrule routines.
B) It is a sexy topic for psychologists to study.
C) Freud coined the phrase, and it is still in use today.
D) There are no limits to what the unconscious can achieve.

Question 26

Biologically, attention seems to

A) sustain activity within a neural system but not to link the activity between different neural systems.
B) link the activities of different neural systems but not to help sustain the activity within a neural system.
C) sustain activity within a neural system as well as link the activities between different neural systems.
D) bind together neural systems that do not fire in synchrony.

Question 27

Which of the following is NOT an advantage gained by relying on routine?

A) Mental tasks run more quickly.
B) We can focus attention on other aspects of a task, thus improving performance.
C) We can expend less effort in deciding how to execute a task.
D) We can consider each decision with greater care.

Question 28

Which of these is the best example of an action slip?

A) Darren was distracted and so took his usual route home from work instead of turning left at the traffic light to go to his friend's house, as he had intended.
B) David mistakenly pushed over a vase of flowers when he was reaching for his keys.
C) Daniel did not check the address of his dentist, as he mistakenly believed he remembered it correctly.
D) Derek reread the paragraph to make sure that he fully understood its content, even though he did not learn anything new from this second reading.

Question 29

Which of these tasks is LEAST likely to be resolved with the use of unconscious processes?

A) a task that can be guided by habits
B) a task that involves an already established routine
C) a task that elicits strong stimulus-based actions
D) a task that has been previously well practiced but needs to be changed for a particular occasion

Question 30

Metacognition is one example of

A) memory.
B) executive control.
C) unconscious processing.
D) reflexive responding.

Question 31

A patient with blind sight is likely to show all of the following traits EXCEPT if asked to

A) walk across the room, he or she does so easily.
B) reach toward an object, he or she tends to reach in the appropriate direction.
C) reach toward an object, he or she tends to reach with the appropriate hand position (e.g., with the hand open wide if the target is large).
D) guess the identity of a visual stimulus, his or her guesses are consistently correct.

Question 32

Alex is a blind-sight patient. He does not reach out for objects, but he avoids them when walking. He has ________ consciousness but not ________ consciousness.

A) access; phenomenal
B) phenomenal; access
C) qualia; phenomenal
D) overt; covert

Question 33

Blind-sight patients seem able to make many visual discriminations and, when pressed, to locate objects in their visual environment. Yet these same patients cannot walk across a room without bumping into something. The text suggests that blind-sight patients

A) are able to make discriminations only when the stimuli are particularly clear.
B) can make discriminations only in controlled laboratory conditions.
C) do not feel they have a reason or justification for using the information that is apparently available to them.
D) tend to rely on routine rather than use the information that is apparently available to them.

Question 34

The term "action slip" refers to

A) an unintended action as the result of clumsy behavior.
B) mistakenly relying on a habitual response when a novel response was needed.
C) accidents that occur when a patient has blind sight.
D) the use of a conscious response rather than an unconscious one, even if it is more time-consuming.

Question 35

Billy thinks he understands the information from the textbook very well; however, he fails the quiz on that same material. Billy's error results from a failure of

A) self-esteem.
B) metacognition.
C) false memories.
D) a problem-solving set.

Question 36

Patients with amnesia show evidence of experience but do not have the subjective experience of consciousness. In other words, they are missing

A) qualia.
B) access.
C) intuition.
D) evidence.

Question 37

Lisa rides the train to work and always gets off at Stop A. One Saturday she has to go into town, and she rides the same train she takes to work. She is supposed to get off at Stop F, but she starts talking to her mother on the phone and then gets off at Stop A. What does this tell us about unconscious processing?

A) Unconscious processing is impossible.
B) If not consciously attending to what we are doing, we will rely on habit.
C) Unconscious processing only causes problems.
D) People tend to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Question 38

Which of the following is NOT an advantage gained by practicing a task?

A) Only one routine needs to be launched instead of several steps in order to complete a task.
B) Each step in the task no longer needs to be monitored to decide when to start the next step.
C) The task can be completed without the need to pay attention, so that attention can be allocated elsewhere.
D) Practice allows the mechanics behind the task to enter conscious awareness.

Question 39

________ refers to one's ability to monitor or control his or her own mental processes.

A) Metacognition
B) Metabolism
C) Cognitive effort
D) Mental control

Question 40

In which of the following situations would reliance on routine benefit performance? When one is performing a(n)

A) task that is highly complex and involves the coordination of many elements.
B) unfamiliar task.
C) task that requires frequent choices and adjustments.
D) task for which a routine is available but the current circumstances are ones in which it would be best to avoid the habitual routine.

Question 41

What does the neuronal workspace suggest about brain activity when sleeping?

A) The brain is less active during sleep.
B) The activities of the various brain areas slow down during sleep.
C) During sleep, the brain's activities are not coordinated.
D) Sleeping is just like being awake.

Question 42

The term "neural correlates of consciousness" refers most accurately to the

A) changes in the brain that occur when we become conscious of a stimulus.
B) subjective experience of how it feels to become conscious of a stimulus.
C) area of the brain that is damaged when a person experiences blind sight.
D) electrical activity in the brain that occurs when we are unconscious.

Question 43

What sort of question might a neuroscientist ask about qualia?

A) How does qualia influence mental processing?
B) How does qualia influence stimulus-response learning?
C) How does qualia impact behavior?
D) How does brain tissue give rise to a state like qualia?

Question 44

Matt has sustained damage to his anterior cingulated cortex. What sort of disruptions in behavior would we expect to see as a result of this damage?

A) difficulty with language, making problem solving difficult
B) an inability to pay attention to anything in his environment for more than a few seconds
C) difficulty overriding default responses with goal-directed behaviors
D) a form of amnesia

Question 45

Which area of the brain is thought to be critical for resolving conflicts among disparate goals?

A) occipital lobe
B) basal ganglia
C) anterior cingulated cortex
D) frontal lobe

Question 46

The text argues that you will take action based on a memory

A) only if you are satisfied that the thought you are having is in fact an actual memory.
B) as soon as you recall the gist of the remembered information.
C) independently of how you assess the memory.
D) only if the content of the memory is consistent with your other beliefs.

Question 47

Which of the following statements about the role of the neuronal workspace in executive control is FALSE?

A) The workspace links other active areas of the brain, allowing for the "executive" to make decisions about current processing.
B) The workspace allows the executive to detect conflict that may arise from competing demands or goals.
C) It allows one to create new ideas and rise above habit.
D) It prevents activity from occurring in multiple areas of the brain, to avoid confusion.

Question 48

Participants in many experiments show clear evidence of implicit memory but fail on comparable tests of explicit memory. Yet the participants could, in principle, rely on their implicit memories to guide their guessing in the explicit test. If they did, they would perform well on the explicit tests. The text indicates that participants fail to do this because

A) implicit memories are memories of a sort that cannot be applied to a procedure with direct memory testing.
B) implicit memories are not detectable by the participant.
C) participants seem to treat their implicit memories as though they were unreliable chance associations, so they do not trust them to be actual memories.
D) participants seem to rely on implicit memories for perceptually based tasks but not for tasks that are more conceptual.

Question 49

Although the text suggests that we know what consciousness is for, most researchers agree that defining consciousness is difficult. Which of these is LEAST likely to be a part of what consciousness is?

A) subjective feelings, such as what apples taste like or what the color green looks like
B) automatic responses to strong cues in the environment
C) the ability to report and use mental experiences
D) the awareness of self, such as individual memories

Question 50

Describe the unconscious support structure that influences cognition and our cognitive products.

Question 51

One possible difference between a "sleeping brain" and an "awake brain" relates to the neuronal workspace. Which of the following statements most accurately represents this relationship?

A) When one is awake, the neuronal workspace allows areas of the brain to communicate with each other, which gives rise to consciousness.
B) The workspace prevents conflicting information from being processed during sleep, but not when one is awake.
C) Changes in brain activity are monitored by the neuronal workspace when one is asleep, but not when one is awake.
D) When one is asleep, the neuronal workspace allows areas of the brain to communicate with each other, which leads to dreaming.

Question 52

In the neuronal workspace hypothesis, workspace neurons

A) carry the content (or information) of consciousness.
B) dictate the rate at which neurons fire.
C) glue together bits of information from different neural systems to create a unified experience.
D) detect neural systems that are firing in synchrony with each other in order to amplify the output of the strongest of these systems and suppress the output of the others.

Question 53

The anterior cingulate cortex plays a crucial role in

A) regulating attention.
B) regulating prefrontal cortex activity.
C) binding representations together from different brain areas.
D) detecting conflict among brain systems.

Question 54

Is it possible that perceptual information has to be conscious before a person will put that information to use?

A) Yes, as in blind-sight patients who think they cannot see.
B) Yes, as in blind-sight patients who think they have no implicit memory.
C) No; patients with amnesia are likely to guess, even if not prompted.
D) No; the unconscious will always override the conscious.

Question 55

Which of the following claims about consciousness and memory is FALSE?

A) It is the nature and quality of our conscious experience that persuades us to take information seriously.
B) Outside of laboratory circumstances, we are unlikely to be influenced by the workings of implicit memory.
C) When our conscious experience is rich and detailed, this persuades us that the presented information is more than a fantasy or chance association.
D) When our conscious experience is impoverished, we tend not to take action based on the information gained from that experience.

Question 56

Which of the following is UNLIKELY to be the result of fluency effects?

A) confidence estimates
B) familiarity estimates
C) qualia
D) stereotype threat

Question 57

In order to detect that a red shape was moving, it is likely that

A) the neural system detecting motion and the neural system detecting the color red were both firing in synchrony.
B) only the neural system detecting the color red was firing, as color is visually more important than motion.
C) only the neural system detecting motion was firing, as motion is visually more important than color.
D) the neural system detecting motion and the neural system detecting the color red were both firing but at an asynchronous rate.

Question 58

The mind-body problem refers to the fact that

A) the body directs the mind.
B) the mind directs the body.
C) the mind is a different entity from the brain.
D) conscious experience is separate from the physical experience.

Question 59

It is argued that people do not experience fluency as fluency. What explanation does the text give to describe this experience?

A) People think, "That was easy to process because I've experienced it before."
B) People think, "That wasn't as easy as some other tasks have been-maybe it is because it is a new task."
C) People think, "Processing that was easy, so this must be important."
D) People think, "This is familiar . . .," and then develop an explanation as to why.

Question 60

The neuronal workspace helps us with all of the following EXCEPT that it

A) allows us to think of a stimulus or idea long after the trigger for it has been removed.
B) breaks down a unitary experience into its separate components so that we are explicitly aware of the process behind redness and the process behind roundness every time we see an apple.
C) allows us to detect conflicts if two stimuli are leading toward different and incompatible responses or if the elicited response from a stimulus is incompatible with our goals.
D) allows us to compare neural systems in order to produce new combinations of ideas or novel behaviors.

Question 61

Your friend Mark thinks he is ready for his big test. Describe metacognition to Mark. What factors are likely to be accurate metacognitive markers? What could be misleading?

Question 62

What does the phenomena of processing fluency suggest about the nature of consciousness and our own intuitions about our cognitive processing?

Question 63

How is consciousness represented in the brain? Describe the critical areas and how they interact to lead to conscious awareness.

Question 64

What does consciousness tell us about the nature of introspection? Can we be trusted to know about the mental processes in which we engage? Why or why not? Provide examples to justify your position.

Question 65

Explain how the neuronal workspace would account for changes in consciousness associated with sleep.

Question 66

Are unconscious processes akin to "mental reflexes"? Support your answer with empirical evidence.

Question 67

Explain why the experiences of patients with amnesia or blind sight are so critical to our understanding of consciousness. Make sure to include in your answer a discussion of the disorders, the paradoxical abilities that the patients exhibit, and what this says about consciousness in the rest of us.

Question 68

Explain the concept of a "neuronal workspace" as it relates to consciousness. Include in your description the appropriate neural correlates.

Question 69

Describe the benefits and dangers of unconscious processing. How does it facilitate cognitive processing in everyday life? How can it lead to errors?