Practice Exam Questions

Practice Exam Question

1.Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of a symbol?

a.arbitrary association with meaning

b.representation

c.can denote abstract concepts

d.stores information about modality (seen, heard, etc.)

2.Suppose you perform a task that involves 1) reading one number [A], 2) squaring it, 3) reading a second number [B], 4) adding it to the first number (A²), and then 5) comparing the total to see if it is more or less than 100. This process takes you 2000 msec (the latency). According to the method of subtraction, which of the following conclusions is correct?

a. If you instead compared the total to see if were more or less than 500, the latency would increase.

b. If you eliminated the steps of reading B and adding it to A², it would reduce the latency to 1200 msec because 2 of the 5 steps have been eliminated.

c. If you remove step 2 and the latency decreases to 1700 msec, that means that the squaring operation takes 300 msec.

d. None of the above can be concluded, given the information available.

3.Consider the Rats and Cats Game that we played during the first day of class. Recall that the goal is to move the 3 cats and 3 rats from one side of the river to the other in a boat that can hold at most two animals (and requires at least one animal if it is to cross the river). At no time may cats outnumber rats on either side of the river or the rats will be eaten. (It’s OK to have some cats and zero rats on one side, as then there are no rats to eat.) This table shows the first 6 moves of the game. The 7^th move is the most difficult move of the game. What should the 7^th move be?

1	RRRCCC boat	R
2	RRRC	I	CC boat
3	RRRCC boat	V	C
4	RRR	E	CCC boat
5	RRRC boat	R	CC
6	RC		RRCC boat

a.send 1 cat with the boat across the river

b.send 1 rat with the boat across the river

c.send 2 cats with the boat across the river

d.send 1 rat and 1 cat with the boat across the river

4. Imagine that a group of nurses looks at the medical records for each patient in a group of 100. For each patient, the nurse notes whether or not the patient had a sore throat and whether or not the patient developed influenza. The records for the 100 patients are shown on the left, and the nurses were asked to judge whether sore throat predicted influenza. Then the nurses did the same thing for a second group of 100 patients, this time noting whether the patients had cough or not and whether they developed influenza or not. Those results are shown on the right. Again, nurses were asked to judge whether cough predicted influenza. Which of the following statements is true?

	influenza	no influenza	Total		influenza	no influenza	Total
sore throat	72	18	90	cough	40	20	60
no sore throat	8	2	10	no cough	20	20	40
Total	80	20	100	Total	60	40	100

a. If the nurses were using the cell a strategy they would conclude that sore throat is a better predictor of influenza than cough is, which is actually the correct answer in this case.

b. If the nurses were using the cell a strategy they would conclude that sore throat is a better predictor of influenza than cough is, which is actually the incorrect answer in this case.

c. If the nurses were using the cell a strategy they would conclude that cough is a better predictor of influenza than sore throat is, which is actually the correct answer in this case.

d. If the nurses were using the cell a strategy they would conclude that cough is a better predictor of influenza than sore throat is, which is actually the incorrect answer in this case.

5.Halfway through a cognitive psychology lecture, the professor is replaced with an insurance salesperson. The students do not notice this change. This is an example of

a.preattentive processing

b.change blindness

c.automatic processing

d.proactive interference

6.Consider these 3 students who each took 3 exams in a course. Each midterm was worth 30% of the grade and the final was worth 40% of the grade. Suppose you had to estimate quickly which student had the highest course grade. Which of the following strategies would use the least amount of information and the least cognitive effort?

	weight	Amy	Brian	Curt
Midterm A	0.30	90	75	85
Midterm B	0.30	70	80	70
Final Exam	0.40	85	80	80

a.compute each student’s weighted average

b.compute an unweighted average for each student

c.see if one student does better than another student on every exam

d.find the student who scores highest on the most important exam

7.A theory that says that all unattended information is always thoroughly processed would be what kind of theory?

a.early selection

b.late selection

c.capacity theory

d.attenuation theory

8.Consider the following abstract:

Gilmore, Grover C; Allan, Tracey M; Royer, Fred L. Iconic memory and aging. Journal of Gerontology. Vol 41(2), Mar 1986, 183-190.

Illustrated in 3 experiments with 40 young (aged 18-29 yrs) and 41 elderly (aged 65-80 yrs) adults that the partial report paradigm designed by G. Sperling could be used with elderly adults to obtain a measure of the capacity of iconic memory. Both the young and older Ss exhibited a strong partial report superiority that declined with delays in the cue interval. The effect of the perceived organization of an array on readout from iconic memory also was examined. Contrary to the findings of P. M. Merikle, the differences due to the display layout were attributed to better acuity for one type of display and not to perceptual organization factors. Results suggest the need for investigation of sensory factors (e.g., retinal illumination, duration of displays) that could dictate age effects.

The “partial report superiority” mentioned in lines 3 - 4 refers to the fact that

a. Subjects only remembered part of the array

b. Before seeing the array, subjects were warned which subset they would be asked to recall.

c. Subjects were more accurate if they were asked to recall whichever 4 items they chose in the array, rather than all the items

b. After seeing the array, subjects were asked to recall a specific subset of it.

9. Consider this graph showing the reaction time results for Schneider and Schiffrin’s (1977) experiment. Subjects had to detect a visual target placed in a frame of distractors. The number of distractors (frame size) and number of targets (memory set size) was varied. In addition, some subjects were in the varied mapping condition while others were in the consistent mapping condition. Based on what you know about the result of this study, which curves in the graph above show the results from the varied mapping condition, and which show the results from the consistent mapping condition?

a. black and white circles show the varied mapping condition; black and white triangles show the consistent mapping condition

b. black and white circles show the consistent mapping condition; black and white triangles show the varied mapping condition

c. black circles and black triangles show the varied mapping condition; white circles and white triangles show the consistent mapping condition

d. black circles and black triangles show the consistent mapping condition; white circles and white triangles show the varied mapping condition