PYSC 341
Cognitive Psychology
Study
Questions for Exam 1
- What are the five
disciplines that shaped cognitive psychology and what did each contribute?
- Contrast and compare
structuralism and functionalism.
- Discuss briefly, the
history of Cognitive Psychology from Wundt’s laboratory to the
present. Include Ebbinghaus in your
discussion.
- List and describe three
influences on cognitive psychology -- What events contributed to its
emergence as a separate discipline?
- What is the definition
of cognitive psychology? And what
are its three main assumptions?
- Describe the basic
Information Processing approach to psychology. Include in your discussion the basic
information processing model, its components, and the properties of each component.
- Discuss the Sternberg
paradigm. Include a discussion of
the methodology and the results of his experiment. Also include a discussion of how the
information processing approach accounts for the results.
- Describe the four
Gestalt principles of organization. Include an example of each.
- What is perception?
- What are the 3 models
of pattern recognition? Describe
each.
- What are the early,
middle and late models of auditory attention? Describe each with examples.
- What is the spotlight theory?
- What is attention?
- Describe George
Sperling’s (1960) procedure for studying visual sensory memory. What is the typical result of his
studies and what do they tell us about visual sensory store (iconic
memory).
- Describe the
characteristics of automatic processing.
Give an example of automatic processing not provided in class or
the book.
- Describe the dichotic
listening task. For what purpose
was it used?
- Describe the evidence that
supports Treisman’s Attenuation theory of attention (Middle selection
model)?
- Describe the capacity
model of attention.
- Describe the
multiple-resource model of attention.
- How do the two
different models of attentional resources (# 15 and # 16) account for the
decrease in performance with the increase in the demand for attention?
- What is the Stroop effect?
- Compare and contrast
perceptual based knowledge representation with meaning - based
representation. Give an example of
each.
- What is the dual-code
theory?
- What did Santa (1977)
find with respect to perceptual-based and verbally based information?
- How are mental images
like perception? How are they
different than perception?
- What is Front anchoring? Give an example experimental result
demonstrating Front anchoring.
- How is verbal material
represented? What about
hierarchies?
- What is a meaning-based
representation? What are three such
representations discussed in class?
- What is a
mnemonic? Give an example.
- How is knowledge assumed to be
represented in a propositional representation? Give a simple example.
- What did Bransford & Franks find in
their study?
- What is the within propositional priming
effect? How is this evidence for
propositional representations?
- Describe the essence of semantic
networks? How is information
represented in semantic networks?
What is the idea of cognitive economy? What did Collins and Quillian find in
their research on semantic networks?
- Sketch a simple semantic network for the
category automobile. Go three
levels deep. Include in your sketch
the features associated with each level.
- What is a schema? What are the default values & slots?
- Compare and contrast frames and
scripts. Give an example of each
not discussed in class or the book (briefly describe each example).
- How do cognitive
psychologists measure cognitive processes?
Discuss three major dependent variables used by cognitive
psychologists.
- What do you think was
the most important factor to the emergence of cognitive psychology (you
are free to discuss, people, events, or things). You must give an argument for why you
think it is the most important factor, and your argument should be strong
enough to convince me that you are right.
- Identify a domain,
which you think would benefit from research on attention, perception, or
perceptual knowledge. Identify a
research question and discuss why you think research would be important in
this domain. (In class I identified
the need for cognitive research in Air Traffic Control (ATC). I described the task, and identified a
research question.)
- What is a schema? What are
the default values & slots?
- Compare and contrast frames
and scripts. Give an example of each
not discussed in class or the book (briefly describe each example).
- What did Loftus find in her
eye-witness study (car accidents)?
What are the implications of this research for eye-witness
testimony?
- What factors affect or
influence eye-witness memory?
Describe each with respect to some cognitive principle (some are
from perception, attention, memory, and knowledge).
- Mary-Jo Sapulla was her evening walk as
always. Mary decided to take her
usual route along the Smoky River trial. Along the way Mary passed a young dark
hair man walking rather quickly in the opposite direction. Mary thought it was odd to see someone
whom she did not know as most of the people who walk along the trail live
in Mary’s neighborhood. About 15
minutes after passing the man on the trail, Mary was startled by a loud
gun shot. She looked up and saw a
person running up the hillside.
Although Mary was far enough away to not be seen, she swears that
she’ll never forget what the person looked like. .... (time
passes).... Mary id’s a person in
the line-up as the person she saw running up the hill away from the crime,
a young man with dark hair and a mustache.
The defense has called upon you as an expert witness in the
case. As an expert witness you are
asked to give the facts with respect to eye-witness testimony. What do you tell the court (give you
testimony)?
- What are typicality
effects? Give an example of a
typical and an atypical member of some category not discussed in class or
the book.
- Compare and contrast
instance-based and abstraction based models of categorization.
- Some people have criticized
Loftus’s work on eye-witness testimony.
Choose a side, do you agree or disagree with Loftus’ contention
that eye-witness testimony is unreliable?
Defend your position citing experimental results either discussed in class
or the book or from any other empirical studies.
- What is graded-category
membership? Give an example.
- Why are some categories
considered to be fuzzy?
- Compare and contrast propositional
representations and schemata with respect to what people remember.
- Describe the modal
model. Use a diagram, name and
describe each components function.
- How long is information
stored in STM? What experimental
result suggests this limitation on duration (describe the experiment
briefly).
- Compare and contrast decay
theory with interference theory.
- What is pro-active
interference? Retro-active
interference?
- What was Miller’s finding
with respect to the capacity of STM?
- How is working memory
different from STM? Describe the
working memory model. Include a
discussion of the component and what each component is responsible for.
- What is the dual task
method? What does research using
this method suggest? (explain how
finding using this method suggests this)
- Describe the working memory
model. Draw a diagram & label
the parts. Then describe what each
component is responsible for.
- What is spreading
activation?
- Describe the associative
priming experiment by Meyer and Schvalaveldt
(1971). What do the results of this
experiment suggest?
- What is the depth of
processing theory? What useful idea
came from this theory?
- Describe five ways to
improve your test performance by improving your memory (name and describe
each cognitive principle).
- What are serial position effects in memory? What happens when a
bazaar word is added to the middle of a memorized list (what is it
called)?