Cognitive Psychology Flashcards

A student cramming for an exam relies on rote rehearsal to remember a long list of vocabulary words. According to the levels-of-processing theory, why is this strategy likely to be less effective for long-term retention than using the words in sentences?

Answer: Rote rehearsal involves shallow processing based on acoustic features, whereas creating sentences requires deep, semantic processing.

The levels-of-processing theory, proposed by Craik and Lockhart, suggests that memory retention is a function of the depth of mental processing. Deeper, semantic processing (like thinking about a word's meaning and using it in a sentence) leads to more elaborate, longer-lasting memory traces than shallow, acoustic, or structural processing (like repeating a word).

A chess master can glance at a complex game in progress and almost instantly recognize the strategic patterns and recall the best moves. A novice player, looking at the same board, would only see individual pieces. This expert ability is best explained by the cognitive process of:

Answer: Chunking

Chunking is the process of organizing individual pieces of information into larger, meaningful units (chunks). Chess masters use their extensive knowledge to group pieces into familiar patterns, which allows them to process the complex information on the board more efficiently than novices, who see each piece as a separate item.

Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the concept of functional fixedness as a barrier to problem-solving?

Answer: An individual needing to drive a nail into a wall only searches for a hammer, overlooking a nearby heavy wrench that could serve the same purpose.

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. In this scenario, the individual is fixated on the hammer's typical function and cannot see the wrench as a potential tool for driving the nail, thus hindering problem-solving.

According to Noam Chomsky's theory of language acquisition, what innate mechanism enables children to learn language so rapidly and with such similar developmental patterns across different cultures?

Answer: The Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Noam Chomsky proposed that humans are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), a hypothetical brain module that contains a universal grammar. This innate capacity allows children to readily acquire the grammatical structures of any language they are exposed to.

During a lecture, you are focused on the professor's slides but fail to notice a person in a gorilla costume walking across the stage. This phenomenon, a result of selective attention, is known as:

Answer: Inattentional Blindness

Inattentional blindness is the failure to perceive an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight because attention is focused on other tasks or events. The classic experiment demonstrating this involves participants counting basketball passes and failing to see a person in a gorilla suit.

A witness to a car accident is later asked by a lawyer, "How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" The use of the word "smashed" as opposed to "contacted" is more likely to lead the witness to recall broken glass, even if there was none. This is an example of:

Answer: The Misinformation Effect

The misinformation effect, a key concept in eyewitness testimony research by Elizabeth Loftus, occurs when a person's recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate because of post-event information. The suggestive wording of the question can introduce new, false information into the witness's memory of the event.