Cognitive Psychology Test Questions
Course Introduction
Cognitive Psychology explores the mental processes underlying human behavior, focusing on how people perceive, think, remember, and learn. The course examines topics such as attention, memory, language, problem-solving, decision-making, and intelligence, drawing on experimental research and theoretical models. Students will gain a foundational understanding of cognitive functions, their development, associated neurological bases, and their application in real-life contexts, while also critically evaluating current research trends and methodologies within the field.
Recommended Textbook
Sensation and Perception 10th Edition by E. Bruce Goldstein
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769 Verified Questions
769 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: Introduction to Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why is the difference between physical and perceptual important
Answer: What physical measuring instruments record and what we perceive are two different things. The Hermann grid creates an "illusory perception" in which we perceive dark spots that aren't physically present. But sometimes we fail to perceive stimuli that are physically present. Perception is psychology, not physics, and perceptual responses are not necessarily the same as the responses of physical measuring devices.
Q2) Michaela lives near the railroad tracks and often hears the loud bangs associated with cars being added to trains. When a friend of hers is visiting, the friend becomes alarmed at the sounds, wondering what they are but Michaela is able to reassure her friend that it is a normal train-related sound. Michaela's _____ skills, at least in this situation, are superior to her friend's.
A) recognition
B) detection
C) search
D) adjustment
Answer: A
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3
Chapter 2: The Beginning of the Perceptual Process
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Sample Questions
Q1) The stimuli used in the preferential looking technique of testing infant acuity are
A) geons
B) gratings?
C) greebles
D) graftings
Answer: B
Q2) Vera has hyperopia, and tends to get headaches when she reads. This might be because _____.
A) Vera also has presbyopia and has the constant need to accommodate
B) Vera also has myopia and is unable to accommodate
C) Vera has just had LASIK surgery and her ciliary muscles are damaged
D) Vera is 5-years-old and lacks the visual acuity to read
Answer: A
Q3) In _____, the eyeball is too long, resulting in difficulty seeing far objects.
A) axial myopia
B) refractive myopia
C) axial hyperopia
D) refractive hyperopia
Answer: A
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Chapter 3: Neural Processing
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Sample Questions
Q1) The inability of lateral inhibition to explain some perceptual effects suggests that some contrast effects are based in _____.
A) the retina.
B) the cortex
C) the lateral plexus
D) the macula
Answer: B
Q2) As we travel farther from the retina, neurons fire to _____.
A) more complex stimuli
B) less complex stimuli
C) more intense stimuli
D) less intense stimuli
Answer: A
Q3) A neuron with an excitatory center-inhibitory surround receptive field will respond most when we stimulate _____.
A) only the center
B) only the surround
C) both the center and surround together
D) part of the surround
Answer: A
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Chapter 4: Cortical Organization
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Sample Questions
Q1) Object discrimination problem is to the _____ as a landmark discrimination problem is to the _____.
A) temporal lobes; parietal lobes
B) parietal lobes; temporal lobes
C) parietal lobes; occipital lobes
D) LGN; thalamus
Q2) The cortical magnification factor occurs in humans because _____.
A) a small area in the peripheral retina accounts for a large area on the cortex
B) the small area of the fovea accounts for a large area on the cortex
C) the lens accommodates so that the image is magnified on the retina
D) the area at the optic disk accounts for a large area on the cortex
Q3) Which statement regarding the dorsal and ventral pathways is most accurate
A) Information flow is unidirectional in both pathways.
B) The pathways rely on information from the same type of ganglion cells.
C) The pathways are independent of each other and do not communicate.
D) Both pathways have feedback activation.
Q4) Define "modular organization" and specify how the senses are organized into primary receiving areas.
Q5) Identify the five areas of the brain associated with processing of faces, explaining what is processed in each area.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Perceiving Objects and Scenes
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Sample Questions
Q1) A masking stimulus is primarily used to _____.
A) stop persistence of vision
B) increase the duration of persistence of vision?
C) increase the area of the "region-of-interest"
D) hide the purpose of the experiment from participants
Q2) Jimmy looks at a moderately blurred picture of Princess Diana's face. Jimmy will most likely _____.
A) not be able to identify the face
B) identify the face as male rather than female
C) be able to correctly identify the face
D) need a computer to scan the image to correctly identify it
Q3) When Palmer (1975) showed observers a kitchen scene and then a target picture, which picture was identified correctly 80% of the time
A) A loaf of bread, because it matches the context of the scene
B) A mailbox, because it seems so out-of-context, that it "pops-out"?
C) A drum, because participants were music majors?
D) A bedroom, because it is from the same category?
Q4) Describe the decoders developed by Naselaris et al. (2009), how they were established, and what they can be used for.
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Chapter 6: Visual Attention
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Sample Questions
Q1) Egly et al. (1994) showed that precueing increases the efficiency of information processing _____.
A) only when the cue is in the same position as the target
B) when the cue appears in the same rectangle as the target stimulus
C) when a cue is in a different rectangle than the target stimulus
D) only when the cue is the same color as the target stimulus
Q2) Which of the following is true regarding task-irrelevant stimuli
A) They are least distracting when you are engaged in a difficult task.
B) They are least distracting when you are engaged in an easy task.
C) They are most likely to distract you when workload is high.
D) They are least likely to distract you when perceptual load is low.
Q3) The eye movements that occur as the observer shifts his/her gaze from one part of the visual scene to another are called _____ eye movements.
A) pursuit
B) magnified
C) Saccadic
D) Aperature
Q4) How is talking on a cell phone while driving different from talking to passengers while driving
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Chapter 7: Taking Action
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Sample Questions
Q1) You are driving a car. Which statement is an accurate reflection of flow in this situation?
A) Optic flow is slower near the car.
B) Optic flow does not occur for information in the periphery.
C) Optic flow is faster farther away from the car.
D) Optic flow does not occur for the focus of expansion.
Q2) Lee et al.'s "Swinging Room" studies found that _____.
A) only adults are affected by flow information
B) only young children are affected by flow information
C) children will lean back when a forward-swaying flow pattern was created
D) adults were always able to keep their balance in the moving room
Q3) Fattori and coworkers (2012) discovered neurons called _____ cells; these responded not only when a monkey was preparing to grasp a specific object, but also when but also when the monkey viewed that specific object.
A) where/how/when
B) sensorimotor integration
C) visuomotor grip
D) sensory coordination
Q4) Discuss how mirror neurons could convey information about others' intentions.
Q5) Name and discuss two characteristics of optic flow.
Page 9
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Chapter 8: Perceiving Motion
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Sample Questions
Q1) The real world contains instances of continuous motion that somehow are divided up into meaningful units. The point in time when one unit ends and another begins is referred to as the _____.
A) breaking point
B) segment marker
C) event boundary
D) transition period
Q2) Describe the findings of Kourtzi and Kanwisher's (2000) fMRI study of implied motion.
Q3) A "point-light walker" wears lights on different body locations. When viewed in a dark room, an observer would perceive a(n) _____.
A) person when the point-light walker is not moving
B) person when the point-light walker is moving
C) person if just one light on the person is moving
D) unidentifiable biological organism when the point-light walker is moving
Q4) Review the evidence for the physiological basis of perceiving biological motion.
Q5) Describe the major components and principle of the corollary discharge theory.
(b) Describe two behavioral demonstrations that support the corollary discharge theory and specify how the theory predicts the result.
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Chapter 9: Perceiving Color
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Sample Questions
Q1) A monochromat experiences _____.
A) black, white, and grays
B) black, grays, and greens
C) different shades of red
D) different shades of blue
Q2) When you go to pick strawberries, you are easily able to separate the ripe red berries from the green foliage, the white blossoms and the green, still-forming berries. This has led to the suggestion that _____.
A) we need experience with the natural world in order to experience color vision
B) the genes resulting in lack of color vision should have disappeared long ago
C) color vision may have evolved for the express purpose of detecting fruit
D) only herbivore species should have color vision
Q3) Bornstein et al. habituated a four-month-old infants to a 510 nm ("green") stimulus, then presented a 480nm ("blue") stimulus or a 540nm ("green") stimulus. The infants in this study dishabituated to _____
A) the 480 nm stimulus only
B) the 540 nm stimulus only
C) both of the 480nm and 540nm stimulus
D) neither the 480 nm nor the 540 nm stimulus
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Page 11
Chapter 10: Perceiving Depth and Size
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Sample Questions
Q1) Motion parallax _____.
A) is widely used to create depth in cartoons and video games
B) is an important depth cue for amphibians, but not mammals
C) occurs when near objects are perceived as moving slower than distant objects
D) has not proven to be an effective cue for robot vision
Q2) Bats are able to determine depth by using _____.
A) echolocation
B) stereopsis
C) movement parallax
D) collocation
Q3) The key to the Ames Room illusion is that _____.
A) the room is constructed to look rectangular to the observer but it is not
B) the room is constructed of rectangular walls, but does not look that way
C) people of a wide range of physical heights are put in the room
D) all depth cues except binocular disparity are eliminated
Q4) Suppose you watch a "3-D" movie (using red/blue "3-D glasses") with your friends. After the movie, a friend asks "Why do we see such depth in this movie
Summarize how you would answer this question.
Q5) Describe the differences in how depth is perceived in cats, insects, and bats.
Page 12
Q6) Discuss motion-based depth perception cues.
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Chapter 11: Hearing I: Basic Processes and Pitch Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) Pitch is primarily determined by the _____ of the sound wave.
A) amplitude
B) clarity
C) decibels
D) frequency
Q2) A complex tone can be created by starting with a pure tone, called the _____, and adding frequencies that are multiples of this first frequency.
A) fundamental frequency
B) harmonic frequency
C) spatial frequency?
D) audible frequency
Q3) The unit of measurement for sound wave frequency is _____.
A) bels
B) decibels
C) Hertz
D) degrees
Q4) Describe the methods, results, and implications of research on the infant's ability to recognize the mother's voice.
Q5) Discuss the structures and functions of the middle ear.
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Chapter 12: Hearing II: Location and Organization
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Sample Questions
Q1) Infant studies reveal that the dominant stress patterns of their native language can influence perception grouping by _____.
A) 1 to 2 months of age
B) 5 to 6 months of age
C) 7 to 8 months of age
D) 10 to 12 months of age
Q2) The time between when sound arrives directly from the stage and when the first reflection arrives is called the _____.
A) intimacy time
B) spaciousness factor
C) bass ratio
D) reverberation time
Q3) What factors are important to consider when designing concert halls?
Q4) Describe the Jeffress model of auditory localization.
Q5) Gardner and Gardner showed that smoothing out the nooks of the pinnae _____.
A) results in more accurate localization on all coordinates
B) makes it more difficult to locate sounds along the elevation coordinate
C) results in more accurate localization along the elevation coordinate
D) does not affect spectral cues for localization
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Chapter 13: Speech Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) Humans perceive the sound /b/ to be the same, even when the coarticulation of the sound is different. This phenomenon is an example of _____.
A) perceptual constancy
B) acoustic consistency
C) phonemic transitions
D) the segmentation problem
Q2) Discuss the "dual-stream model of speech perception." Briefly describe research that supports this model.
Q3) Japanese children at the age of _______ can tell the difference between the /r/ sound and the /l/ sound just as well as American children.
A) six months?
B) one year
C) two years
D) five years
Q4) The existence of phonetic boundaries _____.
A) is currently debated among speech perception researchers
B) only occurs at VOTs of greater than 250 ms
C) has been demonstrated using discrimination experiments
D) shows that categorical perception does not occur in speech perception
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Chapter 14: The Cutaneous Senses
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Sample Questions
Q1) The phrase "multimodal nature of pain" refers to _____.
A) pain that occurs from different sources
B) pain that is tolerable and pain that is intolerable
C) the sensory and emotional components of pain
D) real and imagined sources of pain
Q2) The mapping of the body on the somatosensory cortex can be represented as a(n)
A) homunculus
B) anosmia
C) epidermis
D) pachyderm
Q3) The phenomenon of "phantom limb" is difficult to explain using the _____ of pain.
A) direct pathway model
B) gate control model
C) nocioceptor model
D) neuropathic model
Q4) Explain how haptic exploration is used to identify objects.
Q5) Name and discuss the differences between the four types of mechanoreceptors.
Q6) Describe the basic principles of the gate-control model of pain.
Page 16
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Chapter 15: The Chemical Senses
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Sample Questions
Q1) An eight-hour-old newborn who is given a concentrated shrimp odor to smell will _____.
A) respond with a facial expression similar to a smile
B) respond with an increase in sucking
C) respond with a facial expression that displays disgust
D) will not respond at all to smells at this young age
Q2) Describe the Proust effect and provide a physiological explanation for its occurrence.
Q3) When using the forced-choice procedure in measuring odor detection thresholds, the experimenter should _____.
A) do two trials simultaneously
B) separate trials by at least 500 msec
C) separate trials by at least 5 seconds
D) separate trials by at least 30 seconds
Q4) In one study, males were asked to rate the scent of a t-shirt worn by a woman three nights during ovulation or three nights when not in ovulation. Discuss the results of this study and relate them to reproductive fertility and the human ability to sense pheromones.
Q5) Describe the capacity of human infants to experience taste and smell.
Q6) Compare three different methods for studying the physiology of olfaction.
Page 17
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