Question 1

Christine wants to buy a new television. She will not purchase a television with a screen smaller than 25 inches. She will also not purchase a television that costs more than $500. Her decision-making strategy is referred to as

Accepted Answer

A)  a purely additive strategy. 
B)  a weighted additive strategy. 
C)  elimination by aspects. 
D)  a field independent strategy.

Question 2

Which of the following is the BEST example of overregularization?

Accepted Answer

A)  I eated a cookie 
B)  Cookie 
C)  I wanted a cookie 
D)  Give cookie

Question 3

Nisbett and his colleagues suggest that a holistic style of thinking is one that focuses on

Accepted Answer

A)  objects and their properties, rather than overall context. 
B)  following step-by-step procedures rather than using mental shortcuts. 
C)  context and relationships among the elements in a field. 
D)  external frames of reference and takes the environment as a given.

Question 4

In general, toddlers can

Accepted Answer

A)  say more words than they understand. 
B)  understand more words than they can say. 
C)  understand and say about the same number of words. 
D)  use more "action" words than "object" words.

Question 5

Vivian is making quiche for the very first time. She carefully follows the step-by-step directions provided in her cookbook. In this case, Vivian is using

Accepted Answer

A)  an algorithm to help her prepare the quiche. 
B)  a heuristic to help her prepare the quiche. 
C)  functional fixedness to help her prepare the quiche. 
D)  framing to help her prepare the quiche.

Question 6

According to Pinker and Bloom (1992), if the acquisition of language produced a 1% difference in mortality rates among overlapping Neanderthal and human populations, Neanderthals would have become extinct in

Accepted Answer

A)  10 generations. 
B)  30 generations. 
C)  4000 generations. 
D)  30,000 generations.

Question 7

The cognitive revolution in psychology occurred in

Accepted Answer

A)  the 1880s. 
B)  the 1920s. 
C)  the 1950s. 
D)  the 1980s.

Question 8

When the word "oat" is changed to the word "boat," the number of

Accepted Answer

A)  phonemes and morphemes are both increased. 
B)  phonemes stays the same, but the number of morphemes is increased. 
C)  phonemes increases, but the number of morphemes stays the same. 
D)  phonemes decreases, but the number of morphemes increases.

Question 9

Our ability to reason constitutes primarily

Accepted Answer

A)  a behavioral activity. 
B)  a cognitive activity. 
C)  a learned activity. 
D)  an objective activity.

Question 10

Noam Chomsky contended that

Accepted Answer

A)  language is almost wholly a matter of social learning. 
B)  biological factors play a relatively minor role in language development. 
C)  there is an inborn biological propensity that guides language learning. 
D)  reinforcement is the main factor in language learning.

Question 11

Problem solving

Accepted Answer

A)  involves making choices under conditions of uncertainty. 
B)  is the sudden discovery of the correct solution following incorrect solutions. 
C)  involves evaluating alternatives and making choices among them. 
D)  refers to active efforts to discover what must be done to achieve a goal that is not readily attainable.

Question 12

Working backward is a good strategy to follow when

Accepted Answer

A)  a problem has obvious subgoals. 
B)  you can recognize the similarity between two problems. 
C)  the problem does not have a well-specified goal. 
D)  you have many options available at the beginning of a problem, but few options at the end.

Question 13

When Graham is printing copies from the computer in the computer classroom, the paper keeps jamming in the machine. He takes the paper out of the paper tray, fans it, and then flips it over, so the other side of the paper feeds first. This is the way he solves similar problems on the photocopy machine at the office where he works. In this case, Graham's method of solving the problem is consistent with the problem-solving heuristic known as

Accepted Answer

A)  means-end analysis. 
B)  working backward. 
C)  trial-and-error. 
D)  searching for analogies.

Question 14

Which of the following is LEAST likely to be one of the first words a child would learn?

Accepted Answer

A)  juice 
B)  eat 
C)  ball 
D)  red

Question 15

The smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually are

Accepted Answer

A)  morphemes. 
B)  phonemes. 
C)  sounds. 
D)  words.

Question 16

The requirement that a declarative sentence have both a noun phrase and a verb phrase is an example of a

Accepted Answer

A)  rule of syntax. 
B)  transformational rule. 
C)  morpheme. 
D)  heuristic.

Question 17

You are having a conversation with your psychology professor and he proposes that neural circuits supporting language emerge gradually in response to language learning experiences. Which type of theorist would likely agree with his assertions?

Accepted Answer

A)  a behaviorist 
B)  a navtivist 
C)  an emergentist theorist 
D)  an evolutionary theorist

Question 18

Young children have a larger receptive vocabulary than productive vocabulary. In other words, they ____ more words than they ____.

Accepted Answer

A)  hear; speak 
B)  speak; understand 
C)  understand; speak 
D)  understand; hear

Question 19

You are listening to 2-year-old Annie as she says "No eat. No like." She is trying to let you know that she is not going to eat her broccoli because she doesn't like it. Annie's communication illustrates the use of

Accepted Answer

A)  underextension. 
B)  telegraphic speech. 
C)  semantic slanting. 
D)  overregularization.

Question 20

In a video game there are a number of instances where players must retrace their steps in order to reach the final solution for the game. In this situation, one of the WORST problem-solving heuristics to use would be

Accepted Answer

A)  working backward. 
B)  searching for analogies. 
C)  forming subgoals. 
D)  hill climbing.

Exam 15: Language and Thought Part 1