FREE BAPSY Bachelor of Arts in Psychology Cognitive Psychology Questions and Answers Flashcards

Which memory system is responsible for holding information temporarily while performing complex cognitive tasks such as reasoning or comprehension?

Answer: Working memory

Working memory is the system that temporarily maintains and manipulates information during complex cognitive tasks like reasoning and language comprehension.

What does the cocktail party effect demonstrate about selective attention?

Answer: Personally relevant stimuli can capture attention even when unattended

The cocktail party effect shows that personally relevant stimuli, such as hearing your own name, can break through attentional filters and capture awareness.

In problem solving, what is functional fixedness?

Answer: A tendency to perceive objects only in terms of their typical use

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to seeing an object only in the way it is traditionally used, hindering creative problem solving.

According to the levels of processing framework proposed by Craik and Lockhart, which type of encoding leads to the strongest long-term memory retention?

Answer: Semantic encoding

Semantic encoding, which involves processing the meaning of information, produces deeper and more durable memory traces than shallow structural or phonemic encoding.

What is the primary distinction between bottom-up and top-down processing in perception?

Answer: Bottom-up is driven by sensory input while top-down is guided by expectations and prior knowledge

Bottom-up processing starts with sensory data building up to recognition, while top-down processing uses expectations, context, and prior knowledge to interpret sensory information.

Which heuristic involves making judgments based on how easily examples come to mind?

Answer: Availability heuristic

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut where people estimate the likelihood of events based on how readily examples can be recalled from memory.