EXP3604 Fall 2008

Exam #1 Form B (n=33)

1. The old philosophical debate between rationalism (e.g., Plato) and empiricism (e.g., Aristotle) is in some ways analogous to the cognitive psychologist’s contrast between
(a) stages, and codes, in information-processing models
(b) location-based versus object-based visual attention
(c) “top-down” and “bottom-up” processes in perception (18)
(d) behavioral versus physiological approaches to cognition (15)

“top-down” processes stress the importance of knowledge and concepts, as did the rationalists; while “bottom-up” processes stress the stimulus and data coming the external environment – the basis of “empiricism” in philosophy and psychology. (d) was popular; not sure why, except for what we called “reductionism” in class.

2. In the “Dear Aunt Jane” study of shadowing and selective listening, subjects shadowing a message on one ear
(a) failed to notice that the meaning of the message was switching back and forth across ears (5) (1 pt)
(b) “shadowed” the meaning of the message as it switched back and forth across ears (25)
(c) could not remember anything from the nonshadowed ear, even when it was personally relevant
(d) were able to shadow both messages simultaneously if they were both meaningful
The key finding of this study was the switching-by-meaning, which Broadbent’s “early filter” model couldn’t explain. Some subjects notice the switch, some don’t. Goldstein doesn’t mention this, but you might infer that some failed to notice it – again consistent with later-selection models. So, a point for (a).

3. McKay presented words in the “unattended” ear that were related to ambiguous ones presented in the attended (shadowed) ear. His results provided support for a(n) ____ theory of attention.
(a) early-selection
(b) attenuation (10) (3 pts)
(c) late-selection (18)
(d) nonselective
Goldstein explicitly describes McKay’s results as evidence for “late selection” models of attention (p. 109); in fact, its’ the only study he talks about in that section. We echoed that account in class. But if the unattended words were attenuated, the meaning of the attended message could bootstrap them over Treisman’s “threshold.” (Not to mention anything about rutabagas). And at least you understand that this is evidence AGAINST early selection. So, full credit for (b).

4. In Biederman’s Recognition-by-Components (RBC) theory of visual perception , the basic “components” or features of perception are
(a) lines, colors and curves
(b) coherent, complex objects
(c) simple 3D shapes like cylinders, solids and pyramids (27)
(d) two-dimensional shapes like squares and triangles

5. What part of the cortex appears specialized for perceiving the “big picture” and more global processing?
(a) left cerebral hemisphere
(b) right cerebral hemisphere (32)
(c) frontal lobes
(d) parietal lobes

6. The slowing rate of improvement seen as we practice various skills, like learning to read text upside-down (Kohlers, 1975), is described very precisely by the
(a) Power Law of practice (33)
(b) Theory of Information Transmission
(c) Stage model of Cognition
(d) interaction of top-down and bottom-up processes

7. In perceiving the spoken words “bad” and “pad,” we’re exquisitely sensitive to the timing of “voicing” of the initial consonant. This is one example of the importance of what process in pattern recognition?
(a) Gestalt grouping
(b) top-down bias and expectancies
(c) feature analysis (16)
(d) template-matching of phonemes (10)
The “voicing” example was offered as evidence for feature analysis as an important process in human pattern recognition. Yes, phonemes are involved, but it’s their analysis that’s at issue, and template-matching would involve the phoneme as a unit, without analysis into features like voicing.

8. When people are shown arrays of various shapes in various colors very briefly, they often misreport what color goes with what object. These “illusory conjunctions” support ___ theory of perception.
(a) Treisman’s feature-integration (17)
(b) Broadbent’s early-filter
(c) Biederman’s Recognition-by-Components
(d) McCleland’s Interactive Activation

9. Lab research on use of cell phones during driving has shown that
(a) it’s OK, no increase in risk of crashes
(b) it’s OK if it’s hands-free
(c) it’s OK, if you do it a lot (time-share skill)
(d) it’s OK, if you’re willing to accept the significant increase in risk of crashes (33)
Glad to see you’re on to this.

10. Lila Davachi (2003) and colleagues found that brain activity in regions around the hippocampus were more active for visually presented words that were
(a) later successfully remembered, than forgotten (25)
(b) presented in larger font, than smaller
(c) encoded in terms of sound, than of meaning
(d) shown to the right visual field, than the left

11. According to your text, human perception is so much better than machine pattern recognition because
(a) we can use vast knowledge about visual forms for “intelligent” processing (19)
(b) our visual acuity is better than the best sensors available
(c) computer systems have to rely on bottom-up processes (10)
(d) computer programs aren’t “motivated” to perceive accurately
Early attempts at machine recognition were all “bottom-up,” relying on “brute force” of computing speed, and failing. More recent programs have become much more “knowledge-based,” and to the extent they incorporate “top-down” constraints and heuristics, they’ve gotten better.

12. In a series of studies, Posner (1967) compared the time needed to match two letters with the same form (AA) versus the same name (Aa). The goal of this work was to measure
(a) the effects of task difficulty on reaction time (16) (2 pts)
(b) the time needed to obtain the names of letters from memory (10)
(c) individual differences in reaction time
(d) the effects of stress and motivation on information-processing
Posner’s 1967 study was in the spirit of Donder’s (1868) “subtractive”method of estimating the duration of a particular stage of processing, in this case, deriving the names of letters. Confusion I think because we also discussed his later work, using the probe-tone method to estimate the attentional demands (difficulty?) of a “primary” task, which was also letter-matching. But it didn’t compare AA and Aa, and it measured the effects of task difficulty on reaction to the probe tone, not to letter-matching task itself. A bit subtle, maybe; 2 pts. for (a) to take the edge off.

13. Donders’ (1868) comparison of simple reaction time and choice reaction time was an early example of what modern approach to cognition?
(a) cognitive neuroscience, with an interest in brain-mind connections
(b) analytic introspection, with an interest in conscious experience
(c) behaviorism, with an emphasis on overt, observable actions
(d) information-processing, with a focus on the sequence of mental operations (22)

14. Selective “looking” at complex, natural scenes is characterized by
(a) smooth, back-and-forth sweeping of the eyes over the scene
(b) fixations first on areas of visual “salience,” and later on meaningful and interesting objects (30)
(c) a more-or-less random scanning of spatial locations
(d) a “top-down” scanning from the upper to the lower portions of the scene

15. In his 1962 book on “Scientific Revolutions,” Thomas Kuhn suggested that scientific progress is most broadly thought of as involving
(a) a smooth, slow increase in knowledge
(b) fairly sudden, rare shifts in the guiding framework (27)
(c) a “dialectic” process of claims and counter-claims
(d) the emergence of a true theoretical perspective

16. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) can take “snapshots” of brain activity during mental tasks like memory because active areas of the brain
(a) glow in the dark
(b) produce a greater flow of electrical current
(c) become larger
(d) trigger increases in oxygenated blood in that area (32)

17. Hick (1952) showed that as the number of potential “targets” in a move-to-target task increased, reaction time to initiate the movement
(a) was unaffected by the number of targets
(c) increased 40 msec with every additional target
(c) increased logarithmically with the number of targets (28)
(d) decreased logarithmically with the number of targets

18. A psychologist interested in how quickly the meaning of a word is evoked might use ____, but if she’s interested in where that meaning is stored, she’s better off with ____.
(a) PET scanning of blood flow; Event-related analysis of EEG (ERP)
(b) functional imaging (fMRI); PET scanning
(c) structural imaging (MRI); ERP analysis
(d) ERP analysis; fMRI (24)

19. Both at the level of neuronal activity, and at the level of large brain regions and areas, an important principle of cognitive neuroscience stressed in your text is of
(a) distributed coding (22)
(b) oscillatory activity
(c) abstract processing
(d) electrochemical interactions
See text, pp. 40-47. Goldstein weighs the evidence for “localization” at both levels, and concludes that “Brain areas . . work together to create a distributed pattern of activity that creates all of the different components of that particular cognition.” (p. 47). True, the basis of neural activity is electrochemical in nature, but that’s not a cognitive principle.

20. The “modal model of memory” of Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968), described in text and class, was a good example of efforts to
(a) link psychological and neurological levels of analysis
(b) integrate objective and subjective aspects of cognition
(c) describe the “functional organization” of a cognitive system (21)
(d) describe the sequence of mental operations involved in perception (10)
This model depicts several memory structures (“stores” in their terminology), and how information can be passed between them. Although it serves as the framework on which all sorts of “task flow-chart” models can be based, like the letter-matching task, it doesn’t explicitly show any specific set of operations. Also, I presented the “modal” model in class as an example of attempts to describe how the memory cognitive systems might be “functionally organized.”

21. Your ability to quickly identify and read the words of sentences in English script is facilitated by the Gestalt principle of
(a) similarity
(b) proximity (12)
(c) continuity
(d) good form
By putting spaces between words, we facilitate grouping by closeness – the law of proximity; we gave this as an example of proximity in class. I’d like to know what those picking other responses might argue here..

22. In the “flanker” task, where an irrelevant stimulus interferes with detection of a target, it was found that interference was minimized with
(a) compatible distractors
(b) conditions of high “load” (21)
(c) very fast presentation of the display
(d) video-game experts

23. Studies of arousal and attention, and of divided attention, became popular when psychologists like Kahneman started thinking about attention as
(a) a pool of resources that could be dynamically allocated to various processes (18)
(b) a selective “filter” that let some signals pass and blocked others (15)
(c) increased blood flow to certain areas of the parietal lobes
(d) a mentalistic construction that had no place in psychological science

24. With practice, we can abstract a “prototype” of a set of stimuli (like the cartoon faces), which represents
(a) the features most correlated with that set (23)
(b) a template of a specific instance of the set
(c) the features common to all stimuli of that kind
(d) memory for the first example we encountered

25. Studies of “object-based” visual attention (e.g., Egly 1994) suggest that a person with unilateral neglect will have the most difficulty attending to
(a) the left of visual fixation (14) (1 pt)
(b) the left side of objects regardless of where they’re presented (12) (3 pts)
(c) the left side of objects shown to the left of visual fixation (3)
(d) objects presented simultaneously to the left and right of fixation
Well, the idea was that since Egly’s results suggest we can attentional focus can be object based, but also shows an effect of spatial location (as did Posner in his cuing studies), the hardest thing for a neglect patient to attend to would be the left (typically neglect is to the left, with right-hemisphere damage) side of an object on the left side of fixation. (Recall that they’d neglect the left side of objects that they’d be free to move fixation around on.. But apparently I’m way too cute here. So full credit for (b); one point for (a) for knowing about the bias in neglect.

26. Posner’s (1984) studies of shifts in the focus of visual attention suggest that
(a) it takes about a 500 milliseconds to shift attention from one location to a cued location (18)
(b) we can’t shift spatial attention without moving our eyes
(c) attention must be directed to objects, not empty locations in space (12)
(d) all the above
One of the few questions where a relatively specific quantity is of concern; but I stressed in class the importance of the delay between the arrow cue and the target stimulus, and how 100 ms was too fast, but 1 sec was plenty. (d) is always popular, but both (b) and (c) are shown to be wrong by the results of this study, which was described both in class, and in the text.

27. Which of the following events was NOT influential in the emergence of modern cognitive psychology in the period from 1950-1970?
(a) the introduction of the digital computer
(b) Noam Chomsky’s critique of behaviorist approaches to language
(c) Cherry and Broadbent’s experiments on selective attention
(d) development of brain imaging methods like fMRI (21)

28. What sort of remedial training might best help a “dyslexic” child improve reading skill?
(a) attentional focusing
(b) phonological analysis and “awareness” (20)
(c) visual search of complex arrays of letters
(d) practice on “whole-word” reading (9)