EPPP Cognitive-Affective Bases 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: The Cannon-Bard theory was proposed primarily to challenge which aspect of the James-Lange theory?
- The role of cognitive appraisal in emotion
- The claim that visceral changes are too slow and non-specific to cause distinct emotions (Correct answer)
- The idea that emotions serve adaptive evolutionary functions
- The distinction between primary and secondary emotions
Correct answer: The claim that visceral changes are too slow and non-specific to cause distinct emotions
Cannon argued that visceral changes are too slow, diffuse, and similar across emotions to be the source of distinct emotional feelings.
Question 2: A client repeatedly seeks reassurance that she is not seriously ill despite negative medical tests. This behavior is best explained by which cognitive construct?
- Illusory correlation
- Intolerance of uncertainty (Correct answer)
- Counterfactual thinking
- Source monitoring error
Correct answer: Intolerance of uncertainty
Intolerance of uncertainty drives repeated reassurance-seeking because ambiguous outcomes are experienced as threatening regardless of probability.
Question 3: The Stroop task is commonly used to measure:
- Episodic memory encoding
- Selective attention and cognitive interference (Correct answer)
- Implicit attitude formation
- Procedural learning speed
Correct answer: Selective attention and cognitive interference
The Stroop task assesses the ability to selectively attend to one feature (ink color) while inhibiting a more automatic response (reading the word).
Question 4: Which construct refers to the belief that one's emotions are inappropriate, wrong, or shameful?
- Affective forecasting bias
- Emotional invalidation
- Secondary emotions (Correct answer)
- Experiential avoidance
Correct answer: Secondary emotions
Secondary emotions are emotional reactions to one's primary emotions—such as feeling ashamed of being anxious—and are central to Linehan's DBT model.
Question 5: The 'availability heuristic' can influence clinical judgment by causing clinicians to:
- Underweight base rates in favor of vivid recent cases (Correct answer)
- Overrely on statistical data when making diagnoses
- Apply culturally sensitive frameworks more consistently
- Engage in confirmation bias during structured interviews
Correct answer: Underweight base rates in favor of vivid recent cases
The availability heuristic leads people to estimate the probability of events based on how easily examples come to mind, which can be distorted by recency or vividness.
Question 6: Embodied cognition research suggests that cognitive processes are:
- Independent of sensorimotor experience and purely symbolic
- Grounded in bodily states and perceptual simulations (Correct answer)
- Primarily mediated by language and verbal labeling
- Localized to prefrontal cortical circuits in isolation
Correct answer: Grounded in bodily states and perceptual simulations
Embodied cognition holds that mental representations are grounded in and shaped by sensorimotor experiences rather than being abstract and amodal.
Question 7: Which of the following is an example of an implicit attitude measure?
- Thurstone scale
- Likert-type self-report questionnaire
- Implicit Association Test (IAT) (Correct answer)
- Structured clinical interview
Correct answer: Implicit Association Test (IAT)
The IAT measures automatic associations between concepts and attributes by assessing reaction times, bypassing deliberate introspective reporting.
EPPP Cognitive-Affective Bases 4
The Cannon-Bard theory was proposed primarily to challenge which aspect of the James-Lange theory?