Answer Key Chapter Quizes

Cognitive Psychology, Theory, Process, and Methodology, 2e Dawn McBride, Cooper Cutting

(Answer Key & Chapter Quizes)

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Instructor Resource McBride, Cognitive Psychology 2e SAGE Publishing, 2018 Thinking about Research Answer Key Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction to Cognitive Psychology ........................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2. Cognitive Neuroscience ................................................................................................................ 2 Chapter 3. Perception ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Chapter 4. Attention ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Chapter 5. Memory Structures and Processes ............................................................................................... 5 Chapter 6. Long-Term Memory: Influences on Retrieval ............................................................................... 6 Chapter 7. Memory Errors .............................................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 8. Imagery ......................................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 9. Language ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 10. Concepts and Knowledge ......................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 11. Problem Solving ........................................................................................................................ 11 Chapter 12. Reasoning and Decision Making ............................................................................................... 12

Chapter 1. Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Proffitt, D. R., Stefanucci, J., Banton, T., & Epstein, W. (2003). The role of effort in perceiving distance. Psychological Science, 14, 106-112.

• Which approach to the study of cognition is being used in this study?

Embodied cognition--body movements are important for the perceptual judgments.

• What type of research design are the researchers using in this study?

Experiment--subjects were randomly assigned to the groups.

• What is the independent variable (IV) in this study?

The main IV was the backpack group (backpack vs. no backpack).Another IV could be the distance to the target that was varied across trials in the study.

• What is the dependent variable in this study?

The dependent variable was the estimated distance to the target. 2 / 4

Instructor Resource McBride, Cognitive Psychology 2e SAGE Publishing, 2018

Chapter 2. Cognitive Neuroscience McDaniel, M. A., LaMontagne, P., Beck, S. M., Scullin, M. K., & Braver, T. S.(2013). Dissociable neural routes to successful prospective memory. Psychological Science, 24, 1791-1800.

• Explain how this study used recordings of brain activity to test a

theoretical description of a cognitive process.In this study, brain activity was recorded in fMRI scans to compare activity during two different prospective memory tasks. Differences in brain activity suggest differences in processing in the two tasks, which is predicted by the theoretical description of these tasks.

2. What was the primary manipulated variable in this experiment? (Hint:

Review the “Research Methodologies” section of Chapter 1 for help in answering this question.) The primary independent variable is the type of prospective memory task (focal vs. non-focal).

• Do you think the researchers would have achieved similar results if they

had used EEG instead of fMRI in this study? Why or why not?They may have seen similar results, but because EEG recordings are not as accurate in terms of activity location and only record activity on the outer cortex, the specific differences across these tasks may not have been seen.

• Explain why it was important for the researchers to show that subjects

were slower in performing the non-focal than the focal prospective memory task.This result shows that there is a behavioral difference between the two tasks that can be seen along with the difference in brain activity. Together, these results provide strong evidence that processing is different in the two 3 / 4

Instructor Resource McBride, Cognitive Psychology 2e SAGE Publishing, 2018 types of tasks. Without the speed difference result, it would be less clear what the difference in brain activity means.

Chapter 3. Perception Malcolm, G. L., Nuthmann, A., & Schyns, P. G. (2014). Beyond gist: Strategic and incremental information accumulation for scene categorization. Psychological Science, 25, 1087-1097.

• Which of the three approaches to the study of perception do you think this

study most adheres to?More of the computational than other approaches are represented here since bottom-up processing seems to contribute to interpretation of the scene. There isn’t much here that is specifically the Gestalt approach, but since top-down processing is clearly involved, a case could be made here for that approach. There isn’t much action planning involved in the task they are asked to do so this approach is not connected here.

2. What was the primary manipulated variable in this experiment? (Hint:

Review the “Research Methodologies” section of Chapter 1 for help in answering this question.) Task type--basic vs. subordinate.

• From this study, is there evidence of bottom-up and/or top-down

processing in scene categorization? Explain your answer.Both seem to contribute. The conclusion summary in the text says that we use “more than just gist information to interpret scenes,” meaning that both bottom-up and top-town processing contribute to the scene processing done in the task. For the basic categorization task, fewer details were needed than for the subordinate task, but subjects focused mostly on objects in both tasks in order to interpret the scenes showing that those details were important in both tasks (just fewer of them needed for the more specific task).

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