APA Cognitive Psychology 2

Question 1

Which type of long-term memory involves skills and habits that are expressed through performance rather than conscious recall?

Accepted Answer

Procedural (implicit) memory

Answer

Procedural memory stores skills and conditioned responses (like riding a bike) that are performed automatically without requiring conscious recollection.

Question 2

What does the 'levels of processing' model (Craik & Lockhart) propose about memory?

Accepted Answer

Deeper, more meaningful processing at encoding leads to better retention

Answer

Craik and Lockhart proposed that retention depends on depth of processing, with semantic (meaningful) encoding producing far better memory than shallow structural or phonological processing.

Question 3

What is 'confirmation bias' in cognitive psychology?

Accepted Answer

The tendency to search for and interpret information in ways that confirm existing beliefs

Answer

Confirmation bias is the tendency to favor information that confirms pre-existing beliefs and to discount or ignore disconfirming evidence.

Question 4

Which cognitive phenomenon explains why people often overestimate how much they knew about an event before it occurred?

Accepted Answer

Hindsight bias

Answer

Hindsight bias (the 'I knew it all along' phenomenon) is the tendency to perceive past outcomes as having been predictable once those outcomes are known.

Question 5

What is 'chunking' in the context of working memory?

Accepted Answer

Grouping individual items into meaningful units to increase effective memory capacity

Answer

Chunking involves organizing items into familiar, meaningful groupings, which increases the amount of information that can be held in working memory.

APA - American Psychological Association Practice Test

APA - American Psychological Association Practice Test

APA Cognitive Psychology 2