ASPPB Cognitive Psychology 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: The 'misinformation effect,' as studied by Elizabeth Loftus, demonstrates that:
- Highly emotional memories are immune to post-event suggestion
- Post-event information can alter the content of original memories (Correct answer)
- Eyewitnesses with higher intelligence are less susceptible to misleading questions
- Repetition of false information has no effect on memory confidence
Correct answer: Post-event information can alter the content of original memories
The misinformation effect shows that exposure to misleading post-event information can distort or replace details of the original memory.
Question 2: Which finding from cognitive neuroscience most directly supports the distinction between implicit and explicit memory?
- Patients with hippocampal damage can learn new motor skills but cannot recall learning them (Correct answer)
- Split-brain patients show intact language comprehension in both hemispheres
- Prefrontal lesions impair working memory span but not long-term semantic knowledge
- Cerebellar damage selectively impairs emotional memory consolidation
Correct answer: Patients with hippocampal damage can learn new motor skills but cannot recall learning them
H.M. and similar patients with hippocampal damage demonstrate preserved procedural (implicit) learning despite profound inability to form new explicit memories, confirming the distinction.
Question 3: In problem-solving research, 'functional fixedness' refers to the tendency to:
- Focus exclusively on the goal state and ignore intermediate steps
- Use a previously successful strategy even when it is no longer efficient
- Perceive objects only in terms of their conventional functions (Correct answer)
- Fix one's attention on irrelevant surface features of a problem
Correct answer: Perceive objects only in terms of their conventional functions
Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias in which people can only conceive of objects being used in their typical, conventional ways, limiting creative problem-solving.
Question 4: The 'representativeness heuristic' can lead to the 'base rate neglect' error because people:
- Overweight statistical base rates relative to individuating information
- Judge probability by similarity to a prototype while ignoring prior probabilities (Correct answer)
- Use emotional reactions rather than logical reasoning to assess risk
- Anchor on the most recently encountered example when estimating frequency
Correct answer: Judge probability by similarity to a prototype while ignoring prior probabilities
When using the representativeness heuristic, people judge how likely something is by how closely it resembles a prototype, often ignoring relevant statistical base rates.
Question 5: Which theory of attention proposes that unattended messages are not filtered out but are attenuated (reduced in strength)?
- Broadbent's early selection filter model
- Treisman's attenuation model (Correct answer)
- Deutsch and Deutsch's late selection model
- Lavie's perceptual load theory
Correct answer: Treisman's attenuation model
Treisman's attenuation model proposes that the unattended channel is not completely blocked but is weakened, allowing high-priority stimuli (e.g., one's own name) to still break through.
Question 6: According to the ACT-R cognitive architecture, procedural knowledge is represented as:
- Declarative chunks stored in a semantic network
- Production rules of the form IF-THEN (Correct answer)
- Activation weights on connectionist network edges
- Propositions linked by associative strength
Correct answer: Production rules of the form IF-THEN
In ACT-R, procedural knowledge consists of production rules (IF condition THEN action) that specify how to act given certain cognitive states.
Question 7: The 'central executive' component of Baddeley's working memory model is most analogous to which broader cognitive construct?
- Long-term memory consolidation
- Attentional control and executive function (Correct answer)
- Phonological short-term store capacity
- Visuospatial sketchpad processing
Correct answer: Attentional control and executive function
The central executive acts as an attentional controller that manages and coordinates the subsidiary slave systems and allocates cognitive resources.
ASPPB Cognitive Psychology 5
The 'misinformation effect,' as studied by Elizabeth Loftus, demonstrates that: