PSY 333A Midterm Practice

Which of the following theories of attention can help us understand how we control our attention?

• Filter theory

• Attenuation theory

• Spotlight theory

• Deployment of limited resources

• All of the above

Which of the following statements about divided attention are true?

• People are naturally good at multitasking.

• People can get better at multitasking through practice.

• People multitask better when they can break tasks into multiple smaller tasks.

• People can only multitask by flipping their “spotlight” back and forth.

If someone forgets something that we are certain they once knew, all we can say for sure is that…

• they failed to retrieve the information from long term memory

• they never consolidated the information into long term memory

• they ran out of storage capacity in long term memory

• they had similar information stored in long term memory that interfered

When looking at pictures of animals (some of which are birds), birders are able to respond just as quickly and accurately when asked to indicate when a picture shows a particular species of bird as when they are asked to indicate when a picture shows a bird. This provides evidence that…

• people typically learn basic categories before they learn subordinate categories.

• 1. Individual expertise influences how people use hierarchical categories.

• basic level categories tend to maximize the ratio of between- to within-category variation.

• All of the above

 Researchers have found bees get agitated when listening to Mozart. They then consistently found the same basic effect across 5 follow-up studies. An outside group of researchers is are unable to replicate the basic effect. Based on what we know, we can rule out that the failed replication was caused by…

• bad luck for the replicators

• bad luck for the original researchers

• incompetence from the replicators

• fraud or QRPs by the original researchers

• an unreported IV in the original research

When we retrieve and use a memory, we then have to reconsolidate it. As a result, the memory…

• 1. becomes weaker

• 1. can be altered

• 1. stays in short term memory

• 1. loses its emotional content

Some scientists express concerns about research on mental images because…

• they cannot be directly observed.

• such research depends largely on self report.

• participants can be heavily influenced by researchers.

• All of the above

Your working memory is thought to have a capacity of approximately 4 things. “Chunking” influences that capacity because it means that you can…?

• 1. store information in long term memory and rotate which 4 things you focus on.

• 1. work with more information by making those 4 things more complex.

• 1. filter irrelevant information, and make sure that all 4 things are all important.

• All of the above

1. Why is “interference” an important concept in studying memory?

• 1. It can help explain why we might lose information from STM.

• 1. It can help explain why we might fail to retrieve memory from LTM.

• 1. It can help us determine whether separate components of working memory are involved in completing tasks.

• 1. All of the above

Some argue that children learn the structure of language from listening to people speaking around them, but Chomsky argues they must have some innate assumptions about how language works. Chomsky is expressing a(n) _____ perspective.

• nativist

• empiricist

• behaviorist

• unscientific