PSYC 351A Practice Exam Questions

Choose the single best response for each question.

1. The so-called “cognitive revolution” occurred parallel to (and, in part, because of) which
being introduced?
a. Cognitive psychology textbooks
b. Analytic introspection
c. Skinner boxes
d. Computers

2. In Donders’s research on human decision making, he found that the time it took to decide
which of two buttons to push in response to a stimulus was
a. less than one second.
b. between one and two seconds.
c. two to five seconds.
d. more than five seconds.

3. Which describes the MOST influential element of the cognitive revolution?

a. Shift to a greater emphasis on how observable actions affect thoughts
b. Studying behavior was the end goal
c. Shift to understand how unobservable thoughts affect observable behavior
d. Understand how stimuli affect observable responses

4. Which is the main implication of Palmer’s experiments with having participants identify
target objects in context of a scene?
a. Knowledge of the environment can influence perception.
b. Knowledge of perception can influence our environment.
c. Knowledge of a stimulus can influence our sensation.
d. Knowledge of a response can influence our perception.

5. Why can we consider Tolman one of the early cognitive psychologists?

a. Because he used behavior to infer mental processes
b. Because of his focus on measuring behavior
c. Because he focused on the stimulus–response connections in the rat’s mind during
his maze experiment
d. Because of his interest in operant conditioning

6. Perceiving machines are used by the U.S. Postal Service to “read” the addresses on letters
and sort them quickly to their correct destinations. Sometimes, these machines cannot
read an address because the writing on the envelope is not sufficiently clear for the
machine to match the writing to an example it has stored in memory. Human postal
workers are much more successful at reading unclear addresses, most likely because of
a. bottom-up processing.
b. top-down processing.
c. their in-depth understanding of principles of perception.
d. repeated practice at the task.
7. Evidence for the role of top-down processing in perception is shown by which of the
following examples?
a. When someone can easily select a target that has a feature distinct from distracters
b. When someone cannot read an illegible word in a written sentence
c. When someone easily identifies an object even though that object is unexpected in
that context (e.g., identifying a telephone inside a refrigerator)
d. When someone accurately identifies a word in a song on a radio broadcast despite
static interfering with reception

8. The notion that every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is
as simple as possible is called the law of
a. common fate.
b. similarity.
c. pragnanz.
d. continuity.

9. Amhad is doing an experiment in which he has to choose between the object he has been
shown previously (the target object) and another object. Choosing the target object will
result in a reward. What sort of task is Amhad doing?
a. Landmark discrimination problem
b. Dissociation task
c. Greeble recognition task
d. Object discrimination problem

10. What differentiates bottom-up processing from top-down processing?

a. The direction of scanning
b. The pattern of organization
c. The source of information
d. The pathway of action

11. If a Gestalt psychologist was baking a cake for an event, what would they be MOST
focused on?
a. The oven
b. The cake
c. The flour
d. The flavor

12. How does the phenomenon of apparent movement work?

a. The perceptual system creates the perception of movement from stationary
images.
b. The perceptual system detects stationary images more slowly than motion is
perceived.
c. The retina sends overlapping electrical signals to the brain when motion is
perceived.
d. The perceptual system slows when flashing objects are introduced.
13. Elaborative rehearsal of a word will LEAST likely be accomplished by
a. repeating it over and over.
b. linking the new word to a previously learned concept.
c. using it in a sentence.
d. thinking of its synonyms and antonyms.

14. Tasha has been studying all week for the exam. One way that she has been studying is by
taking the practice questions repeated at the end of the chapters in her textbook. Tasha is
using retrieval practice and hopes that what will improve her test scores?
a. Spacing effect
b. Generation effect
c. Testing effect
d. Recall

15. The rereading of your notes or textbook creates an illusion of learning due to the
a. spacing effect.
b. familiarity effect.
c. testing effect.
d. generation effect.

16. Which is TRUE about the difference between perception and imagery?
a. Imagery is more stable than perception.
b. Perception is more stable than imagery.
c. Perception is more fragile than imagery.
d. Imagery is more fluid than perception.

17. Shepard and Metzler measured the time it took for participants to decide whether two
objects were the same (two different views of the same object) or different (two different
objects). These researchers inferred cognitive processes by using
a. image scanning.
b. mental chronometry.
c. epiphenomena.
d. propositional representations.

18. Research exploring the interaction between imagery and perception has indicated which
result?
a. Target letters were detected faster when they matched the letter that participants
were instructed to imagine.
b. Target letters were detected faster when they were different from the ones
participants had imagined.
c. Target letters were detected faster if they appeared in the first box over the second
one.
d. Target letters were detected faster if they appeared in the second box over the first
one.
19. In a signal detection experiment, C greater than zero indicates
a. a conservative bias.
b. a liberal bias.
c. a tendency to say “present” more than “absent.”
d. no bias.

20. Which would fill the smallest visual field in contrast to a rabbit?
a. a wolf
b. an anteater
c. a rhinoceros
d. a bumblebee
 ANSWER KEY: PSYC 351A Exam 1 Practice

1. d
2. a
3. c
4. a
5. a
6. b
7. d
8. c
9. d
10. c
11. b
12. a
13. a
14. c
15. b
16. b
17. b
18. a
19. a
20. d