Question 1

William James made his most important contributions to cognitive psychology in his work on

Accepted Answer

A)  problem-solving strategies. 
B)  memory in everyday life. 
C)  complex decision making. 
D)  cognitive development in children.

Question 2

Which of the following research topics would be most likely to interest a behaviorist?

Accepted Answer

A)  The effect of parents' marital satisfaction on children's nightmares. 
B)  The effect of praise on children's running speed. 
C)  Individual differences in verbal ability. 
D)  The relationship between the true size of an object and its size as represented in a mental image.

Question 3

Suppose that several psychologists want to explore interpersonal interactions during adulthood. Which of the following topics would be most consistent with the cognitive approach?

Accepted Answer

A)  "How do early childhood experiences contribute to the development of love relationships during adulthood?" 
B)  "Can interpersonal attraction be influenced by classical conditioning?" 
C)  "When meeting someone for the first time, what attribute does a person perceive most quickly, gender or ethnicity?" 
D)  "Do people spend less time with depressed individuals, as opposed to nondepressed individuals?"

Question 4

Which of the following students provides the most accurate interpretation of one of the themes of the textbook?

Accepted Answer

A)  Daquan: "In general, our cognitive processes may operate quickly, but we make numerous errors." 
B)  Jessica: "In general, our cognitive processes tend to be passive, unless we make a special effort." 
C)  Sam: "We are typically more accurate in processing negative information, rather than positive information." 
D)  Sophie: "Many cognitive processes emphasize both top-down processing and bottom-up processing."

Question 5

According to the discussion in Chapter 1, behaviorism places the most emphasis on

Accepted Answer

A)  interpersonal relationships. 
B)  observable activities. 
C)  unconscious emotions. 
D)  mental processes.

Question 6

During the 1950s, many psychologists were becoming discouraged with behaviorism, and cognitive psychology began to emerge. A major reason they were disappointed with behaviorism is that

Accepted Answer

A)  it considered only psychological processes that are clearly observable. 
B)  it paid too much attention to individual differences. 
C)  it failed to develop objective methods of measuring behavior. 
D)  it focused too much on emotional factors, and not enough on observable behaviors.

Question 7

According to the introductory chapter in your textbook, the influence of cognitive psychology

Accepted Answer

A)  has been relatively weak, both within psychology and in other disciplines. 
B)  has been limited primarily to areas related to education. 
C)  has not yet reached applied areas of psychology. 
D)  has extended to other disciplines, such as neurology.

Question 8

According to the information-processing approach,

Accepted Answer

A)  we process all information at either a deep or shallow level of processing. 
B)  introspection is the most important research technique; with the proper controls, introspection can be very reliable. 
C)  decision-making is the primary component of all cognitive processes. 
D)  mental processes can be interpreted as a flow of information, somewhat similar to the way a computer operates.

Question 9

Which of the following students provides the best summary about the current status of the information-processing approach?

Accepted Answer

A)  Alena: "The information-processing approach is now more popular than the parallel distributed processing approach, because most cognitive tasks require serial processing." 
B)  Magda: "The information-processing approach has declined in popularity during recent years, because those models are not complex enough to explain many cognitive activities." 
C)  Dave: "The information-processing model is still extremely popular, and it remains at the cutting edge of cognitive psychology." 
D)  Samuel: "The most important model is one in which the information-processing approach has been blended with the gestalt approach, in order to explain higher mental processes."

Question 10

According to the themes of your textbook,

Accepted Answer

A)  our cognitive processes typically operate independently of one another. 
B)  our cognitive processes usually occur automatically. 
C)  our cognitive processes are quite accurate; our errors can often be traced to strategies that are useful in other situations. 
D)  we react to negative information more efficiently than we react to positive information.

Question 11

An important characteristic of the connectionist approach to cognition is that

Accepted Answer

A)  it handles information by processing it one step at a time. 
B)  it first analyzes an object's shape, then its size, and finally its color. 
C)  it can perform many operations at the same time. 
D)  it predicts that humans perform cognitive tasks much more accurately than they actually do.

Question 12

Based on the information in Chapter 1, how would you describe the approach of William James?

Accepted Answer

A)  He emphasized rigorous experimentation and carefully controlled research. 
B)  He asked research participants to report their sensations and perceptions as objectively as possible. 
C)  He emphasized the kinds of psychological experiences that people encounter in their everyday lives. 
D)  He emphasized that we must look for the unconscious forces that underlie cognitive activities.

Question 13

Suppose that you attend a lecture on the bottom-up processes involved in speech perception. The lecturer is likely to emphasize

Accepted Answer

A)  how the listener's auditory system registers and transmits information about the speech sounds. 
B)  the listener's familiarity with the language. 
C)  the listener's knowledge about grammar. 
D)  the listener's expectations about what the speaker will say.

Question 14

In contrast to a PET scan, the fMRI technique

Accepted Answer

A)  requires an injection of a radioactive chemical. 
B)  provides more precise information when measuring a series of events in the brain. 
C)  is more accurate in determining what a person is thinking, for instance, whether the thoughts are pleasant or unpleasant. 
D)  involves placing electrodes on a person's scalp.

Question 15

Cognitive science is

Accepted Answer

A)  an earlier version of modern behaviorism. 
B)  a new approach for treating psychological disorders. 
C)  an interdisciplinary field that explores questions about the mind. 
D)  the application of principles from cognitive psychology to industry and other real-world settings.

Question 16

A neuroscience technique that provides time-course information about the processing of stimuli, plus coarse-grained information about the location of neural tissue that is involved in this processing, is called

Accepted Answer

A)  the event-related potential (ERP) technique 
B)  magnetoencephalography (MEG) 
C)  the brain-lesion technique 
D)  positron emission tomography (PET) scan

Question 17

In the introspection technique,

Accepted Answer

A)  people describe what they are thinking as they perform a task. 
B)  people report their daily experiences in an informal, unstructured fashion. 
C)  the experimenter observes how people respond to learning tasks. 
D)  emotional responses are emphasized, rather than a variety of thought processes.

Question 18

Suppose that your professor tells you that you must locate a journal article about cognitive psychology that presents empirical evidence. You should look for an article that

Accepted Answer

A)  studies humans, rather than other animals. 
B)  emphasizes evidence collected in experiments. 
C)  provides a theoretical explanation for previous research. 
D)  uses at least two different statistical analyses.

Question 19

Suppose that a psychologist writes an article on children's acquisition of gender stereotypes. Which of the following article titles would be most consistent with the cognitive approach?

Accepted Answer

A)  "How parents' reinforcement of behaviors shapes stereotypes" 
B)  "The effects of classical conditioning on children's emotional reactions to gender stereotypes" 
C)  "How early emotional reactions to parents influence later gender stereotypes" 
D)  "Children's memory for gender-consistent information"

Question 20

With practice and reinforcement, a rat learns to navigate a maze. A behaviorist would operationalize the rat's "learning" as

Accepted Answer

A)  the decrease in the rate of errors, over time. 
B)  the rat's memory for the correct sequence of right and left turns. 
C)  the rat's internal "map" of the maze. 
D)  the rat's decreasing reliance on cheese as a reinforcer.

Exam 1: An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology