Chapters 8-14 | Student Practice Quizzes

Higher Education

Cognition, Fourth Edition - Practice Quiz (Chapters 8–14)

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the Submit my answers button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:

________ is a strategy in ________ whereby participants focus only on one attribute at a time while trying to understand a concept.
a) Conservative focusing; selection tasks
b) Successive scanning; selection tasks
c) Reception task; conservative focusing
d) Wholism; reception tasks
e) Focus gambling; simultaneous scanning

Question 2:

The flowers in your garden are suffering from the heat because you did not have time to water your garden yesterday. The weather report says that it will rain all day and, true enough, the sky is cloudy. However, the weather report can be inconsistent, and you’d rather be safe than sorry. You choose to water your garden. According to Murphy (2003) this is an example of ________.
a) misaligned hierarchies
b) categorical mistrust
c) commitment heuristics
d) vertical thinking
e) implicit hypothesis

Question 3:

According to Rosch’s theory of cognitive economy, our naturalistic use of categories attempts to balance ________.
a) categories and concepts
b) superordinates and subordinates
c) criterial attributes and correlated features
d) simplicity and complexity

Question 4:

According to sensory-functional theories, we understand living things primarily in terms of their ________ and inanimate objects primarily in terms of their ________.
a) emotions; form
b) form; lack of emotion
c) function; sensory features
d) sensory features; function

Question 5:

According to Gelman and Weldman (1991), if you asked a 4-year-old child if a rabbit would still eat carrots even if it had been raised by cows, she would be most likely to say ________ revealing a(n) ________ view.
a) ‘Yes, it would still eat carrots’; essentialist
b) ‘No, it would eat grass and say “moo”’; folk taxonomy
c) ‘Yes, it would still eat carrots’; prototypical
d) ‘It would eat carrots and grass and say “moo”’; integrationism
e) ‘No, it would eat grass and say “moo”’; essentialist

Question 6:

According to Wittgenstein, members of a category share ________.
a) attributional features
b) family resemblances
c) distinctive features
d) criterial attributes
e) negative instances

Question 7:

What is the phrase structure of the sentence ‘The rat eats cheese.’?
a) NP1 + to be + V
b) NP1 + VP + NP1
c) NP1 + VP2 + NP3
d) Art + N1 + V + N2

Question 8:

The ________ hypothesis describes the capability of universal grammar to adapt, in one case, to a language in which the verb always comes before its object and, in another case, to a language in which the object precedes the verb.
a) poverty of the stimulus
b) parameter setting
c) syntactic structures
d) language acquisition

Question 9:

According to a ‘given, new contract’, new information is ________, whereas given information is ________.
a) discovered in the course of the conversation; shared, or given
b) not supported by evidence; obvious
c) known only by the speaker; known by both parties
d) information that is discussed because of its novelty to both parties; information known to both parties

Question 10:

Grice’s four conversational maxims are ________.
a) quality, reality, brevity, and reason
b) meaning, brevity, necessity, and relativity
c) rationality, reliability, necessity, and idiosyncrasy
d) quality, quantity, relation, and manner

Question 11:

According to Vygotsky, the function of inner speech is to ________.
a) keep one’s thoughts private
b) regulate one’s thought
c) attract other people’s attention to one’s own thoughts
d) practice one’s language skills

Question 12:

A man is trying to solve a Sudoku puzzle. He constructs a strategy that works well for the puzzle at hand. He then attempts a new, more difficult Sudoku puzzle, and his strategy does not seem to work. He persists in applying his strategy, to no avail. This is an example of ________.
a) means–end analysis
b) attentional blindness
c) productive thinking
d) structural blindness

Question 13:

The results of Metcalfe and Wiebe's (1987) study of intuition in insight problems showed that a ‘feeling of warmth’ ________.
a) increased incrementally for participants doing both insight and non-insight problems, but increased at a slower rate for participants doing insight problems
b) increased incrementally for the non-insight group, and remained steady for the insight group
c) decreased for the insight group, but increased for the non-insight group.
d) None of the above.

Question 14:

A researcher who is interested in the effects of reaching a dead end while solving a problem would be taking the ________ approach to studying insight problems.
a) representational change theory
b) progress monitoring theory
c) functional fixedness theory
d) Zeigarnik theory

Question 15:

In German and Defeyter’s (2000) study of functional fixedness and children, the results showed that five-year-olds exposed to the pre-utilization condition performed ________ seven-year-olds in the same condition, owing to ________.
a) worse than; insufficient frontal cortex development.
b) better than; five-year-olds having less exposure to new technology.
c) better than; culturally universal abilities independent of exposure to technology.
d) None of the above.

Question 16:

A(n) ________ is a rule of thumb that allows the problem-solver to efficiently come to the correct solution.
a) representational strategy
b) heuristic
c) algorithm
d) go-moku

Question 17:

Gestalt Psychologists criticize computer simulation models of problem solving on what grounds?
a) Computer programs lack insight.
b) Computers are not adequately able to integrate information into a cohesive whole.
c) The programs lack the perceptual sophistication of the brain.
d) All of the above.

Question 18:

A syllogism is considered invalid if ________.
a) one of its premises is false
b) both of its premises are false
c) the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises
d) All of the above.

Question 19:

Syllogistic reasoning according to ________ allows for more information to become apparent than was given in the premises of the syllogism.
a) natural deduction systems
b) iconic mental models
c) inferential principles
d) echoic mental models

Question 20:

When testing hypotheses, tests aimed at disproving the hypotheses would be considered a(n) ________.
a) conformation bias
b) iconicity
c) gambler’s fallacy
d) eliminative strategy

Question 21:

________ are ways in which we are inclined to make judgements, while ________ are simple rules by which we reason.
a) Iconicity; inferences
b) Biases; heuristics
c) Predispositions; principles
d) Choices; judgements

Question 22:

When choosing between two items, only one of which has been seen before, the ________ predicts that a person will ________.
a) availability heuristic; choose the item that is most easily recalled to memory
b) availability; commit the confirmation bias error
c) recognition heuristic; choose the previously seen item
d) recognition; commit the ecological validity error
e) Both a and c.

Question 23:

Madison takes an IQ test and finds that her IQ is 108 and her mental age is 25. What is her chronological age?
a) 40
b) 20
c) 15
d) 25

Question 24:

In a town of 5,000 people with little in- or out-migration, researchers note that over three generations the average IQ has increased by 20 points. What factors could possibly contribute to this phenomenon?
a) Increased health
b) Increased quality of education
c) Increased environmental complexity
d) All of the above.

Question 25:

Stephan is extremely skilled at repairing cars, Alison is a straight ‘A’ student, and Sophie is a prolific musician. Stephan exhibits ________ intelligence, Alison exhibits ________ intelligence, and Sophie exhibits ________ intelligence.
a) fluid; crystallized; fluid
b) crystallized; fluid; crystallized
c) practical; analytical; creative
d) analytical; analytical; creative

Question 26:

According to Gardner, a main criterion for defining a type of intelligence is ________.
a) its own symbol system
b) distinctive developmental history
c) the existence of people who are exceptional in the domain being elucidated
d) All of the above.

Question 27:

Which of the following individuals could be best described as a prodigy?
a) Anna is 23 and has a cumulative university GPA of 4.0.
b) Krista is 23 and is captain of her basketball team.
c) Erik is 8 and is fluent in 3 languages.
d) Eliza is 8 years old and understands linear algebra.

Question 28:

A number of studies have shown that positive affect ________.
a) improves creative problem solving
b) heightens distraction from irrelevant stimuli
c) increases flexibility in cognitive tasks
d) All of the above.
e) None of the above.

Question 29:

________ exploration is undertaken in situations where anxiety and uncertainty are low.
a) Specific
b) Diversive
c) Collative
d) Pragmatic

Question 30:

Samuel listens to the same radio station every day on his drive to work. One day he hears a new song that he hates. After 2 weeks of hearing this same song every morning, he realizes that he now likes the song a lot. In fact he likes it a lot more than the new song that the radio station has just started to play. This phenomenon is known as the ________.
a) mere exposure effect
b) collative stimulus variables phenomenon
c) structural mere exposure effect
d) Both a and c.

Question 31:

You are feeling rather down after receiving a bad grade on your exam and your roommate insists on bringing you to a short film festival in order to cheer you up. According to Gillian and Bower (1984), which type of short films will you remember the most, and which phenomenon does this reflect?
a) The upbeat shorts; mood relief phenomenon
b) The sad shorts; mood congruence phenomenon
c) The sad shorts; mood-dependant recall phenomenon
d) Both sad and upbeat shorts; mood relief phenomenon
e) The upbeat shorts; mood incongruence phenomenon

Question 32:

Which of the following could you say about internal and external events?
a) Internal events happen within a specific context, whereas external events happen outside of this context.
b) Internal events are events we generate ourselves, whereas external events are events we perceive.
c) External events are generally better remembered than internal events.
d) Memory for internal events is less mood dependant than memory for external events.
e) Both b and d.

Question 33:

According to Nicholls, Wolfgang, Clode, and Lindell (2002) which of the following should you do in order to convey cool-headedness?
a) Look directly at the person you are talking to, straight in the eyes
b) Show your left profile as often as you can and avoid showing your right profile
c) Show your right profile as often as you can and avoid showing your left profile
d) Alternate equally between showing your left and your right profile

Question 34:

You love to hear your grandfather reminisce about his early youth before he immigrated to Canada at the age of 10. According to Chu and Downs (2000) what should you then do to hear more of these stories, and what is this effect called?
a) Autobiographical memory is the same across ages, you can simply ask him about these years; the equal memory effect
b) Make him smell an array of different scents; the Proust effect
c) Prime him with concepts such as ‘arts and crafts class’; the bump effect
d) Ask him to imagine the smell of different items; the bump effect d) Ask him to imagine the smell of different items; the bump effect

Question 35:

What is the consequence of our general tendency to form a unitary impression of others?
a) We believe that, ultimately, we are all very similar.
b) We will reject inconsistencies.
c) We will avoid the use of descriptive inconsistencies in order to maintain general coherence in a person’s evaluation.
d) We are unable to associate the idea of someone being both shy and intrepid.
e) We will find ways to justify discordant attributes as situational.

Question 36:

Which of the following is the best example of a problem-centred approach?
a) A study that examines the influence of working memory on reaction time to a Stroop task
b) A study examining the cognitive factors that influence the speed and ease with which people can assemble furniture from a set of instructions
c) A study looking at the effects of remembering a sequence of numbers while simultaneously mimicking a series of facial gestures
d) A study exploring the role of the hippocampus in a spatial maze task

Question 37:

Which is not one of the three interfaces that occurs in a work situation?
a) Organizational interface
b) Learner interface
c) User interface
d) Task interface

Question 38:

Fitts’s Law says that the difficulty of moving a stylus to a target will increase with target ________ and decrease with target ________.
a) movement; size
b) width; movement
c) size; distance
d) distance; width

Question 39:

Which of the following is not a process by which people allocate their attention in order to acquire useful information?
a) Information mining
b) Information foraging
c) Following information scents
d) Information diet

Question 40:

That people prefer to work on learning material that is just challenging enough, without being too easy or too difficult, is described by the ________ model.
a) area of remote learning
b) zone of moderate difficulty
c) region of proximal learning
d) desirable difficulties