EXP3604 Fall 2008 NAME _____________________________________

Exam #1 Short Answer Answer ANY FOUR of the questions below

1. What aspect of Wundt’s analytic introspection method did the behaviorists like John Watson most strongly object to?

As discussed in class and in the slide on reactions to Introspection, Watson was most critical of the failure of introspection to produce reliable (repeatable) and valid (and unbiased) observations. 3 points for listing the focus on conscious phenomena (unmeasurable, “private” events) – a concern which they shared with Freud, for example. Half credit for various other objections, that were more linked to others (e.g., elementalism vs. the Gestalt psychologists). Several said the main problem was how different people gave different results – that’s part of the problem, but mere individual differences are not damning; we measure them all the time. The problem is when even those differences are (a) not reliably found under “constant” conditions, and (b) shown to be biased by the observer’s expectations and beliefs.

2. Give an example of how it’s important to understand how a stimulus is encoded or represented by a person, in understanding performance in some task.

Lots of possibilities. Using meaningful mediators to improve memory for “nonsense” syllables (FMR-boy); comparing AA to Aa decision time to look at deriving a verbal code; finding sound-alike errors and confusions in STM for visually presented letters; etc. Two or three points for just restating the question in various ways, without giving a specific example.

3. Describe and give an example of the Gestalt law of perceptual grouping known as good continuation.

When lines and borders intersect in an image, we interpret the forms in a way that gives the smoothest, most “continuous” surfaces. Examples were the Olympic rings, the earphone wires that overlapped, my own illustration (bacon and eggs) in the slide, or examples of what I called “closure” in class – when we interpret an object with occluded borders or edges as complete or continuous, as in Goldstein’s examples on the top of p. 79. Part credit for just showing or describing the example without defining it; or for describing one of the other Gestalt heuristics.

4. What is the “word superiority effect” in perception (Reicher 1969), as described in text and class? How have we tried to explain it?

It is the more accurate report of a briefly displayed single letter when shown in the context of a familiar word (e.g., the M in WARM), than when in a “nonword” string (e.g., WXRM) - even when the alternative is a letter with similar features that also spells a word (e.g., WARN). (You didn’t need that last part for full credit). Explanations talk about either “unitizing” of patterns like whole words in perception with practice, as in class, and/or the “top-down” contribution of whole-word recognition to letter-recognition, as emphasized in the text, p. 65. Part credit for describing the effect, but omitting or having a wrong explanation.

5. What is one finding that is inconsistent with Broadbent’s “early-filter” theory of selective attention? Why is that?

Several possibilities. People reacting to presentation of their own name in the “unattended” ear or channel; the meaning of an unshadowed and unrecognized word (“money”) influencing interpretation of a shadowed sentence (the boy threw a rock at the bank..); the inadvertent switching of shadowing from ear to ear to follow the meaning of the message (“Dear Aunt Jane”). A point or two for findings that supported the “early-filter” theory, such as the failure to encode anything more than the sound of an unattended message (Cherry’s work), or Broadbent’s own “split-span” studies.