Question 1

Alda has been showing early signs of memory loss and reduced cognitive ability. His doctors recommend a special type of neuroimaging that examines the flow of oxygenated blood and glucose metabolism in the brain. What is this imaging called?

Accepted Answer

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) neuroimaging examines the flow of oxygenated blood and glucose metabolism in the brain.
Key Takeaway: PET imaging is very useful in examining the brains of people suffering from early signs of memory loss and reduced cognitive ability. PETs provide images of the brain that indicated reduced blood flow and glucose metabolism which may point to a disease such as Alzheimer's or an event such as a stroke or an aneurysm. PET imaging is used as one of the tests to uncover where the reduced cognitive ability may be stemming from in the brain.

Question 2

The memory centers of the brain rely on the organization of information to make what function easy?

Accepted Answer

Organization of information in the memory centers of the brain are important in retrieving this information.
Key Takeaway: The manner in which your brain organizes information is important in retrieving it. For example, if you are memorizing lists of information in a human physiology class, you may organize that information by the function of organs or by their location in a system. Depending on the way you organize this information, retrieving it in a test or a quiz will be highly dependent on this way.

Question 3

Introspection, as a cognitive exercise, is an important method of gaining information. What does introspection mean?

Accepted Answer

Introspection is a process of examining one's thoughts and ideas.
Key Takeaway: Cognitive psychologists encourage their patients to examine their thoughts and ideas about different aspects of their lives. These exercises are designed to gain information about the person's thinking processes. For example, a person who finds public speaking daunting would be encouraged to examine their thoughts before doing presentations. The goal is to uncover ideas such as 'I will embarrass myself' or 'people won't be interested in what I have to say'.

Question 4

In language processing, the smallest meaningful unit in language is referred to as:

Accepted Answer

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in language.
Key Takeaway: A word is the smallest unit in language that can be understood in isolation. For example, the word 'distaste' has two morphemes: 'dis-' and 'taste', and each has a meaning that can be understood by itself. In language processing, the morpheme provides the building block whereby language acquisition is based.

Question 5

Lawyers for a convicted thief want the court to overthrow his past conviction based on the prosecutor's questioning of witnesses. In one instance, the prosecutor referred to the defendant as the 'thief' when questioning an elderly witness. What kind of memory bias is involved in this case?

Accepted Answer

The misinformation effect is a memory bias that results from misinformation that is given to a person.
Key Takeaway: The misinformation effect can lead to a person not remembering information correctly or completely. In the case of the convicted thief, given the witness a suggestive term is likely to bias the recall of information. For the elderly lady, referring to a suspect as a thief may lead her to inaccurately remember him as the person who committed the crime when she would not have done so otherwise.

Question 6

Your mind creates concepts to organize information about entities such as places you've visited and books you've read. On what are concepts based?

Accepted Answer

Concepts are based on mental representations of entities such as places and things.
Key Takeaway: In cognitive science, how information is organized about entities are important in understanding them. Concepts are mental representations of entities that we deal with on a daily bases such as places, things, and events. The mind creates these concepts to organize them and integrate them into prior knowledge.

Question 7

You are given a list 20 words and asked to memorize them. When it comes to recall the 20 words, you are very accurate in remembering the first 5 you heard. What is this effect referred to?

Accepted Answer

The primacy effect refers to the tendency to remember with greater accuracy those items in a list that are heard first.
Key Takeaway: The primacy effect in information recall means that you are more likely to remember information that you heard first more accurately. This effect is probably due to increased attention at the beginning of a word retention exercise. It could also be due to your memory centers being able to encode this information efficiently which makes retrieval more accurate.

Question 8

Cathy's research in the cognitive science laboratory shows that when participants are asked to think of word synonyms while completing a physical task, their speed reduced by 2-4 seconds. What is this an example of?

Accepted Answer

Limited capacity refers to the inability for people to complete two or more tasks at the same time with the same proficiency as one of these tasks
Key Takeaway: Limited capacity is a concept that explains why people can't do two things at the same time as well as they can do one thing. For example, if a person is driving and texting on their phone at the same time, they are most likely not paying enough attention on the road and not texting as quickly as they could. Doing one of these tasks alone at any given time is more efficient than doing two at the same time.

Question 9

Frank's boss wants him to raise $20,000 from the department alumni. Frank determines who the biggest contributors to the past fundraising campaign were and sets out a plan to raise this amount from them. What type of problem solving heuristic is Frank using?

Accepted Answer

A means-end heuristic is a problem-solving technique that identifies the difference between the current state and the end goal, and then formulates the means to reduce this difference.
Key Takeaway: Means-end heuristics are problem-solving techniques whereby the person measures the distance between where they are and where they want to be in the problem. Once they find this difference, they formulate a plan (means) to reduce this difference. Frank's plan to target known donors who have generously given in the past provides him with a way to solve the problem of raising $20,000.

Question 10

Linda has been buying a lottery ticket every Friday for the past 15 years. She hasn't won anything yet but she thinks it will happen every time she pays the $2. What is the likely reason that Linda overestimates her chances of winning big at the lottery?

Accepted Answer

The availability heuristic is the tendency of people to predict the frequency or the likelihood of an event. This phenomenon was first reported by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.
Key Takeaway: The availability heuristic allows people to predict the frequency or likelihood of an event. When this likelihood is grossly mistaken (such as the 1 in 14 million chance of winning the lottery), then it results in a cognitive bias. Linda is using an availability heuristic to predict her winning the lottery when the odds point to it being an extremely rare event.

Question 11

In a parallel distributed processing (PDP) connectionist model, objects or events are represented by a pattern of:

Accepted Answer

In a parallel distributed processing (PDP) connectionist model, objects or events are represented by a pattern of activation across nodes.
Key Takeaway: In a PDP connectionist model, objects or events are represented by activation across nodes. This model is important in explaining how cognitive processes such as understanding common qualities of objects are processed through neural communication.

Question 12

Which psychologist defined the structural model of the psyche: ego, superego, and id?

Accepted Answer

Sigmund Freud is the psychologist who defined the structural model of the psyche: ego, superego, and id.
Key Takeaway: Sigmund Freud defined three theoretical constructs of the human psyche that influence the person's mental life. The id is thought to govern basic drives such as sex and violence while the ego is more organized and grounded in the reality of the outside world. The superego, on the other hand, governs higher ideals of the human psyche and aims to act in a socially acceptable manner.

Question 13

Adam solves algebraic equations by beginning with the final product. What kind of problem solving technique is Adam using?
A)means-end
B)working forward
C)working backward
D)answer availability

Accepted Answer

Working backward is a problem solving technique whereby the person begins with the final product.
Key Takeaway: Working backward is a problem solving technique that is used in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. The goal of working backward is to begin with the final answer and trace the path or process that has lead to it.

Question 14

In cognitive research, the time between the presentation of a stimuli to a person and their reaction is referred to as:

Accepted Answer

Reaction time is a research method in cognitive research that measures the time between the presentation of a stimuli to a person and their reaction.
Key Takeaway: Reaction time is a frequently used method in cognitive research. For example, a researcher may want to know how quickly a person would identify an object on a computer screen. Reaction time is especially useful when measuring such concepts are limited capacity.

Question 15

What, in order, are the needs in Maslow's hierarchy?

Accepted Answer

Maslow's Hierachy of Needs go in the following order:
1) Physiological
Food, housing, water and shelter
2) Safety
Physical safety and security for oneself and family/friend, and security of employment, resources, property, etc.
3) Social Acceptance
Acceptance from friends and family, and intimate relationships
4) Esteem
Respect from others, achievement
5) Self-actualization
Personal growth, fulfillment, creativity
Key Takeaway: Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who created this hierarchy of needs in 1943. It's a useful framework in your personal and professional life to understand what people are seeking. Generally, people must satisfy the lower levels (nourishment and physical safety) before they can seek higher levels of needs.

Question 16

In McGregor's X and Y Theories, Theory X assumes workers are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can, while Theory Y assumes workers can be ambitious if they are properly motivated.

Accepted Answer

Douglas McGregor was a Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management (your editor's alma mater) who proposed these two theories of human motivation. In his Theory X assumes workers are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can, while Theory Y assumes workers can be ambitious if they are properly motivated.
Key Takeaways: McGregor didn't believe either X or Y was right or wrong, but rather that companies tended to follow one approach or the other with regards to managing their employees.

Question 17

In a military training exercise, recruits are conditioned to respond only to the voice of their commanding officer amongst the voices of other personnel. What does this type of differential auditory response signify in perception?

Accepted Answer

Perceptual salience refers to an aspect of a stimuli that differentiates it from other stimuli presented simultaneously.
Key Takeaway: Perceptual salience is an adaptive mechanism of organisms that helps them focus limited perceptual ability on important stimuli, including auditory, visual, tactile, and olfactory information. In this example, it is important for soldiers to concentrate their auditory attention in a moment of stress on recognizing and processing orders from their superior officer.

Question 18

An important aspect of stereotype development is the belief that a personality characteristic is much more widely present in a grouping such as gender, ethnicity or profession than it actually is. What type of attribution leads to the development of this belief?

Accepted Answer

Group dispositional attributions lead to the erroneous belief that members of an entire group share similar dispositions or personality characteristics.
Key Takeaway: When a person believes that a disposition or personality characteristic is common to most or all members of a certain group, they are making an attribution error known as a group dispositional attribution. Attribution, in general, leads to a person underestimating situational influences and overestimating personal characteristics. In the case of a group, a dispositional attribution makes an erroneous judgment on an entire group.

Question 19

Adam's research study is examining the influence of mainstream media on the perceptions of Arab-Americans. He finds that participants have formed unconscious associations between Arabic names and threatening words such as 'violence'.
What type of social cognition methodology is Adam conducting to study these associations?

Accepted Answer

An Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a social cognition methodology that examines the unconscious associations between mental representations of concepts in memory.
Key Takeaway: An IAT is an important social cognition methodology to test the connection between mental representations of concepts in memory. An IAT can help uncover not only an existing connection but its strength as well. If Adam's participants have made a strong unconscious (implicit) association between an Arabic sounding name and threatening words, they will choose those words more readily when prompted than with a non-Arabic sound

Question 20

While only 5 years old, James has suffered a significant stroke near the parietal lobe that has affected his spatial ability and depth perception. According to James' doctor, neighboring parts near the stroke area may assume the function of the affected area, reducing the impact of the stroke.
What is the term for this phenomenon?

Accepted Answer

Functional plasticity occurs when the functions of a damaged area in the brain are assumed by healthy areas.
Key Takeaway: Functional plasticity is an adaptive mechanism in the brain whereby the functions of a damaged area are assumed by a healthier area. From memory to motor abilities, the brain may compensate in instances of injury by assuming the functions of the damage area, even if on a limited basis.

Quiz 33: (AP) Psychology: Part A