Deck 8: A--Cognition and Language

Question 1

Expert chess players and beginners study a chessboard for five seconds and are then asked to recall the position of the pieces on the board. When the pieces are arranged randomly, experts demonstrate significantly better memory than the beginners.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Research on the framing effect has demonstrated that people tend to choose the risky strategy when considering gains and avoid taking risks when considering losses.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Maximizing, means thoroughly considering every possibility to find the best one.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Becoming an expert in a given field (whether playing chess or the violin) takes about ten years of concentrated practice.

Question 5

Although other species have the ability to communicate, only human languages have the property of productivity.

Question 6

Transformational grammar, is a system for converting a deep structure into a surface structure.

Question 7

You see the letters "RED" printed in green ink. The difficulty you have in naming the color (instead of reading the word) is known as the Stroop effect.

Question 8

Strategies for simplifying a problem or for guiding an investigation are known as heuristics.

Question 9

You wait in line for over an hour to buy a movie ticket for the late show. You then learn there is a strong, unpleasant odor in the theatre and that the movie is long and bad. According to the sunk cost effect, you will cut your losses (the money you spent on the ticket) and avoid the movie.

Question 10

A penguin is a prototype for the category "bird."

Question 11

Broca's aphasia is a condition marked by impaired recall of nouns and impaired comprehension of language, despite the ability to speak fluently and grammatically.

Question 12

The word superiority effect refers to the finding that it is easier to read a word that is part of a sentence than to read the same word in isolation.

Question 13

Cognitive psychologists conduct the majority of their research by asking subjects to describe their own thinking.

Question 14

In general, it is easier to learn a second language during high school once you have mastered grammar for your primary language.

Question 15

The tendency to read the words, instead of saying the color of ink, is known as the Stroop effect.

Question 16

In general, it is easier to learn a second language at a younger age than at an older age.

Question 17

Thinking about one of the concepts shown in this figure will activate, or prime, the concepts linked to it through a process called spreading activation.

Question 18

Attention is your tendency to respond to and to remember some stimuli more than others at a given time.

Question 19

Students were asked difficult questions (e.g., How long is the Nile River?) and asked to give a range of answers they were 90% confident included the correct answer. On difficult questions, students tend to be more confident than correct.

Question 20

Research on shifting attention demonstrates that cell phone conversations do NOT distract drivers' attention.

Question 21

__________ is your tendency to respond to some stimuli more than others at any given time or to remember some stimuli more than others at any given time.

Question 22

__________ is characterized by easy distraction, impulsiveness, moodiness, and failure to follow through on plans.

Question 23

People who look at real words find it difficult to say the color of ink of each word, instead of reading the words themselves. This result is known as the __________.

Question 24

In decision making, __________ means thoroughly considering every possibility to find the best one.

Question 25

The tendency to answer a question differently when it is framed (phrased) differently is called the __________.

Question 26

In decision making, __________ means searching only until you find something that is good enough.

Question 27

In decision making, the maximizing strategy approximates the use of __________ whereas satisficing is more of a __________ approach.

Question 28

Strategies for simplifying a problem or for guiding an investigation are called __________.

Question 29

According to the Stroop effect, you would be likely say, "__________" if you were asked to name the color of ink of the word yellow written in blue ink.

Question 30

When you increase your attention to something in your visual field, the part of your visual cortex sensitive to that area becomes __________.

Question 31

Most people identify the letter more accurately when it is part of a word than when it is presented by itself. This is known as the __________.

Question 32

Thinking about one of the concepts shown in this figure will activate, or prime, the concepts linked to it through a process called __________.

Question 33

Noam Chomsky has called the rules that we learn for making and interpreting sentences __________ grammar.

Question 34

Psychologists use the term __________ to refer to your tendency to respond to or to remember some stimuli more than others at any given time.

Question 35

We often err by accepting a hypothesis and then looking for evidence to support it, instead of considering other possibilities. This tendency is the __________.

Question 36

When experts made predictions about U.S. and world politics over the next several years, their accuracy was generally__________, and they were __________ confident in their predictions.

Question 37

Logan suffers a stroke on the left side of his brain and as a result has a condition characterized by inarticulate speech and difficulties using and understanding grammatical devices. This condition is known as __________ aphasia.

Question 38

A mechanical, repetitive procedure for solving a problem or testing every hypothesis is called an __________.

Question 39

__________ a concept gets it started. Reading or hearing one word makes it easier to think or recognize a related word.

Question 40

A person who suffers from __________ may be mentally retarded but still able to produce language in a normal and skillful way.

Question 41

Individuals sometimes face a choice among a huge number of options. For example, when you go to library to check out a book, do you go through every book to find the perfect book for your mood or do you browse several books until you find one that looks interesting? People generally follow two strategies; maximizing and satisficing. Define each term and describe which of the above scenarios for checking out a book goes with each.

Question 42

Define phoneme and morpheme. Identify the number of phonemes and number of morphemes in the following sentence: "The cat runs quickly."

Question 43

Some children grow up in a bilingual environment, learning two languages about equally well. Describe the two disadvantages and one primary advantage to bilingualism identified in the chapter.

Question 44

You have bought a $500 ticket package to take all of your family to Sea World on the first weekend in June. Your spouse has free passes to an IMAX viewing of Jaws for the same day. The morning of your outing, you notice storm clouds coming in and the weatherman says that there is a 95% chance of rain and lightning. You think that it might make more sense to go to the IMAX showing, but you paid significantly more for Sea World. Where would you be more likely to go? Name this phenomenon and briefly describe the premise of this type of cognitive error.

Question 45

Often the issues that you have to resolve quickly on a daily basis are complicated and you don't have time to go through every possible solution. You want a "good enough" answer or one that works most of the time. Define the concept of heuristics. In addition, define availability heuristic and representative heuristic and give an example of each type of heuristic.