Midterm Exam 1 NAME: UW ID:

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1 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm 1 John Miyamoto ( jmiyamot@uw.edu) Psych 355: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Spring 2016 Course website: Midterm Exam 1 NAME: UW ID: Instructions: This exam has 12 total pages. Check that your copy of the quiz has all pages before starting. Section Names: AA = Friday 10:30, AB = Friday 11:30, AC = Friday 12:30, AD = Friday 1:30. You are working on Version A of this exam. Record the version of the exam on the scantron form. All questions are worth 1 point. Turn off your cell phone. You are not allowed to use any books, notes, computers, cell phones or other electronic devices while taking this exam. 1. The behavioral approach to the study of mind refers to what? a) the use of behaviorist methods, like reinforcement conditioning, to shape behavior. b) inferring cognitive processes and mental representations from observed behavior under specified conditions. c) inferring cognitive processes from a combination of behavioral and physiological measurements. d) an approach to psychological research that emphasizes experimentation rather than theory. 2. Which time period is most closely associated with a renewed interest in cognitive psychological research? a) b) c) d) What aspect of behaviorist psychology was most hostile to the development of cognitive psychology? a) Behaviorists emphasized studies of animal behavior; cognitive psychologists preferred to study human behavior. b) Behaviorists emphasized experimental studies of behavior; cognitive psychologists make use of physiological measures and computer models in addition to experimental studies. c) Behaviorists were most interested in theories of learning; cognitive psychologists had broader interests in perception, attention, problem solving, language and decision making.

2 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm 2 d) Behaviorists thought it was unscientific to theorize about unobservable mental processes; cognitive psychologists were quite willing to postulate unobservable mental processes. 4. Response time (also called "reaction time") refers to the time between the of a stimulus and a subject's response to the stimulus. What is the missing word? a) presentation b) perception c) recognition d) awareness 5. Donder's invented the method of subtraction to measure the duration of the decision stage in a choice reaction task. Which of the following is an assumption of Donder's method of subtraction? a) The response stage is shorter when a subject does not have decide which response to make. b) There is no decision stage when a subject performs a simple response time task, but there is a decision stage when the subject performs a choice response time task. c) While performing a choice response time task, the concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin increases in the brain areas that are responsible for decision making. d) It takes longer to perceive the stimulus when performing a choice response time task than when performing a simple response time task. 6. Why is Donders' method of subtraction regarded as an important development in the history of cognitive psychology? a) Donders showed that humans can isolate elementary aspects of thought simply by introspecting on them. b) Donders showed how to remove oxygenated hemoglobin from samples of nerve tissue. c) Donders discovered a logically satisfactory way to measure the duration of unobserved mental processes. d) Donders demonstrated that elementary percepts are hidden beneath unconscious inferences. 7. Suppose that neuron A carries information about the presence of a stimulus light. What aspect of the activity of neuron A carries the information? a) Information is carried in the size of the action potentials. b) Information is carried in the firing rate of the action potentials. c) Information is carried in the polarity of the action potentials. d) Information is carried in the spectrum of the action potentials. 8. Suppose that neuron A provides input to neuron B at a synapse. Assuming that we can observe the firing of neurons A and B, what should we expect to observe if A is inhibitory with respect to B? a) neuron B never fires when neuron A fires. b) neuron A only fires when neuron B is not firing. c) increased firing of neuron A produces increased firing of neuron B. d) increased firing of neuron A produces decreased firing of neuron B.

3 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm 3 9. The top portion of Figure 1, labeled A, shows the receptive field of a retinal ganglion cell with an on-center/off-surround response to visual stimulation. The bottom portion, labeled B, shows the receptive field of the same cell when a bar of light is falling on it. The rectangle in the middle of Figure 1B indicates where the bar of light falls on the center of the receptive field. How do you expect the retinal ganglion cell to respond if light falls on its receptive field as shown in Figure 1B? a) The firing rate of the cell should strongly increase. b) The firing rate of the cell should strongly decrease. c) The firing rate should stay about the same (not respond very strongly to this stimulus). d) None of the above. A B Figure Figures 2A and 2B show the receptive fields of two centeron/surround-off cells in the visual system. Cell A is receiving a uniform medium illumination; you can think of this as the result of staring at a blank screen that is moderately bright. Cell B is similar, but there are two bright bars that are shining above and below the center of the receptive field for the cell on the right. Note that the lights are not shining directly on the center of the receptive field of Cell B. How does the firing rate of Cell B differ from the firing rate of Cell A? Figures 2A Figure 2B a) The neural activity (firing rate) in Cell B is greater than the neural activity in Cell A. b) The neural activity (firing rate) in Cell B is less than the neural activity in Cell A. c) The neural activity in Cell B will show higher amplitude spikes than the neural activity in Cell A. d) The neural activity in Cell B will show lower amplitude spikes than the neural activity in Cell A. 11. A synapse is a) a tube filled with fluid that conducts electrical signals. b) the structure that contains mechanisms to keep a neuron alive. c) the structure that receives electrical signals from other neurons. d) the gap between two neurons across which neurotransmitter chemicals are passed from one neuron to the other. 12. A neurotransmitter is... a) A hormone that is released into the blood to carry information about neural activity between different parts of the body. b) A chemical that is released at a synapse to carry information from one nerve cell to another. c) A type of nerve cell that is specialized for sending signals to other nerve cells. d) A type of microelectrode that is used to monitor the activity of a nerve cell.

4 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm Suppose that a scientist is trying to discover the neural code for a specific kind of motion perception, namely, the perception of objects that are moving from right to left in the visual field. What is meant by the neural code for this type of stimulus? a. The neural code is the pattern of neural response that is specific to this type of moving stimulus. b. The neural code is the fmri image of the brain of a person who is observing this kind of this type of moving stimulus. c. The neural code is a computer program that allows a computer to mimic the behavior of a human when the human observes this type of moving stimulus. d. The neural code is diagram showing the parts of the brain that are active when someone views this type of moving stimulus. 14. Brain imaging has made it possible to a) view individual neurons in the brain. b) view propagation of action potentials. c) determine which areas of the brain are involved in different cognitive processes. d) show how environmental energy is transformed into neural energy. 15. A person who suffers from prosopagnosia has what kind of problem? a) He has trouble recognizing and understanding faces and facial expressions. b) He has trouble remembering the locations of objects. c) He has trouble seeing distance relations in depth perception. d) He has trouble saying the names of common objects when they are placed before him. 16. Paul Broca's and Carl Wernicke's research provided early evidence for... a) distributed processing. b) localization of function. c) prosopagnosia. d) neural net theory. 17. Which of the following methods is best suited to investigating the localization of brain functions, e.g., determining what parts of the brain are associated with processing facial expressions? a. measurement of response time (RT) b. priming c. functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) d. measurement of event-related potentials (ERP) 18. What is the "inverse projection problem" in visual perception? a) For every image received by the retina, there are many possibilities for the physical reality in the external world that could have created that image b) Cognitive psychologists have to guess what s going on in the mind without actually being able to see someone s thoughts. c) It is difficult to accurately map out receptive fields because it is logically necessary to record from vision-specific brain areas rather than the retina.

5 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm 5 d) The left and right halves of each retina are projected neurally to opposite sides of the brain. The inverse projection problem is the problem of recombining these split images into a single image. 19. What is the theoretical connection between the inverse problem, mentioned in Question 18 and Helmholtz's idea of "implicit inference"? a) Implicit inferences are fallacious inferences that psychologists make concerning the mapping between stimuli and brain activity. b) Psychologists must assume unobserved psychological processes to explain observable behavior. The assumptions concerning unobserved psychological processes are the implicit inferences that solve the inverse problem. c) The human tendency to make implicit inferences creates or causes an inverse problem for the visual system. d) A person must make many implicit inferences in order to decide what physical reality produced the sensations that she is currently receiving through her sense organs. Figure 3A Figure 3B Figure 3C 20. In class, I did a quick experiment. Half the class saw Figure 3A and gave it a label. The other half of the class saw Figure 3B and gave it a label. Then everyone saw Figure 3C and gave it a label. The majority of people who saw Figure 3A first labeled Figure 3C as "a man" whereas the majority of people who saw Figure 3B first labeled Figure 3C as "a rat." What does this show about human perception? a) Pattern recognition is based on feature detection. b) Pattern recognition is based on an intermediate level of processing where geons are identified. c) Perception is based in part on top down processes like expectancy. d) Perception is based on bottom up processes that enhance the salience of the man-like or rat-like features of Figure 3.

6 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm If you look at Figure 4 to the right, you will notice that the symbols appear to be organized as diagonal lines that start towards the upper left and descend towards the lower right. This pattern of diagonal lines is an example of what principle of perception? a) the Gestalt principle of Pragnanz (good figure) b) the Gestalt principle of similarity c) the Gestalt principle of figure-ground d) the Gestalt principle of smallness 22. Which Gestalt law can be expressed as follows: Every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible. a) similarity b) good continuation c) proximity (also called nearness) d) good figure (also called pragnanz) s a = e $ g * i ~ k l # n % p _ + + s a = e $ g * i ~ k l # n % p + s a = e $ g * i ~ k l # n % p p _ + s a = e $ g * i ~ k l # n % % p _ + s a = e $ g * i ~ k l # n n % p _ + s a = e $ g * i ~ k l # # n % p _ + s a = e $ g * i ~ k l l # n % p _ + s a = e $ g * i ~ k k l # n % p _ + s a = e $ g * i ~ ~ k l # n % p _ + s a = e $ g * i i ~ k l # n % p _ + s a = e $ g * * i ~ k l # n % p _ + s a = e $ g g * i ~ k l # n % p _ + s a = e $ $ g * i ~ k l # n % p _ + s a = e a = e $ g * i ~ k l # n % p _ + s Figure Goldstein's textbook states that Gestalt "laws" are actually "heuristics." What does this mean? a) The so-called Gestalt laws are useful best-guess rules for perceiving the environment. They generally lead to perceptions that correctly represent the environment, but they do not always do so. b) The so-called Gestalt laws are actually examples of important computer algorithms that can be proved to be the fastest and most accurate procedures for inferring a visual scene. c) The so-called Gestalt laws have been shown to lead to fallacious and erroneous perceptual representations. d) The so-called Gestalt laws were actually discovered many centuries before by Greek philosophers who thought they were examples of "pure vision." 24. Suppose that a subject is presented with two stimuli in succession, e.g., Stimulus A followed by Stimulus B. Stimulus A is said to prime the processing of Stimulus B if... a) prior exposure to Stimulus A disrupts or blocks the processing of Stimulus B. b) prior exposure to Stimulus A causes subjects to confuse the correct response to Stimulus A with the correct response to Stimulus B. c) prior exposure to Stimulus A inhibits the detection of perceptual features in Stimulus B. d) prior exposure to Stimulus A facilitates the processing of Stimulus B. 25. According to Biederman's recognition-by-components (RBC) theory, why does the detection of nonaccidental features play an important role in object recognition? a) The neural response to nonaccidental features occurs early in visual information processing prior to object categorization. b) Nonaccidental features are symptomatic of the parts of objects, or the outline of these parts, or the points at which different parts are joined together.

7 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm 7 c) Nonaccidental features help discriminate artifacts 1 from non-artifacts like rocks or trees. d) Nonaccidental features cannot combine into illusory conjunctions. 26. Figure 5 displays the results of the Biederman's geon priming experiment. Which of the following best represents the argument that Biederman would make to interpret these results? a) The initial viewing of a 50% version primes the category label for the object, e.g., it primes the concept of "lock." Therefore the subsequent viewing of an object that is drawn from the same category is facilitated (RT is faster for Blocks 2A, 2B and 2C than for Block 1). b) The initial viewing of a 50% version primes the geons which constitute the components of the object. These geons are the same for both 50% versions so they are equally primed by viewing the initial 50% version. The new object from the same category is also primed to some degree because the category label for the object is primed, but the geons for the new object are not primed to the same degree as the geons of the two 50% versions. Therefore Block 2C is slower than Blocks 2A and 2B. c) The initial viewing of a 50% version primes the perceptual features of this 50% version. Because these features are shared by the stimuli in Blocks 2A, 2B and 2C, the responses in these conditions are facilitated, i.e., RT is faster in these conditions. d) The initial viewing of a 50% version primes both the perceptual features and the binding process by which the features are organized into an object. The stimuli in Blocks 2A and 2B share more perceptual features with the initial 50% version and their binding process is also more similar, so Blocks 2A and 2B should be faster than Block 2C. Mean Response Time Figure 5. Mean Response Times in Geon Priming Experiment Block 1 Block 2A: Identical 50% Version Block 2B: Complementary 50% Version Block 2C New Object Same Category 27. Figure 6 shows fmri recordings in the fusiform face area (FFA) and the parahippocampal place area (PPA). The vertical axis shows the level of brain activity and the horizontal axis uses the symbols, and, to indicate whether a face or place stimulus was presented during a time period. What does this result show about the cognitive processes performed by the FFA and PPA? a) FFA and PPA are both capable of detecting faces and places. b) FFA is specialized for processing faces; PPA is specialized for processing places. Figure 6 c) Viewing a face primed the subsequent viewing of a place; conversely, viewing a place primed the subsequent viewing of a place. 1 "Artifacts" are objects that are manufactured by humans.

8 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm 8 d) FFA and PPA are typically out of phase with each other. 28. Figure 7 shows the left hemisphere of a human brain. I have added two large black arrows to this diagram. What do these arrows represent? a) The upper arrow is the perception pathway. The lower arrow is the language pathway. b) The upper arrow is the language pathway. The lower arrow is the perception pathway. c) The upper arrow is the "what" pathway. The lower arrow is the "where" pathway. d) The upper arrow is the "where" pathway. The lower arrow is the "what" pathway. 29. Gauthier taught subjects to recognize small computer-generated figures called Greebles. Subjects spent four days learning to identify different Greebles and to group them into "families." The results of Gauthier s Greeble experiment illustrate... a) that neurons specialized to respond to faces are present in our brains when we are born. b) that training a monkey to recognize the difference between common objects can influence how the monkey s neurons fire to these objects. c) that practice at identifying Greebles could produce measurable changes in the level of activity in fusiform face area (FFA); the changes are cited as an example of experience-dependent plasticity. d) that our nervous systems remain fairly stable in different environments. 30. In Broadbent's (1958) filter model, the detector... a) separates the most relevant information from less relevant information in the in-coming messages. b) processes sensory inputs for unusual characteristics (unexpected features, cues for danger, intense inputs, etc.) and switches attention to these inputs. c) processes the output of the sensory store for features and geons. d) processes the output of the filter for higher-level characteristics of the message such as its meaning. 31. Suppose we do the following experiment. The subject hears different words spoken into the left and Stimulus Pair 1 Right Ear "7" Left Ear "No" right ear over headphones. The task is to report what 2 "Dogs" "8" he hears in his left ear while ignoring what he hears 3 "5" "Allowed" in the right ear. The table to the right shows what the subject hears in his left and right ear with each stimulus pair, 1, 2 and 3. If the experiment is conducted in the same way as the "Dear Aunt Jane" experiment of Gray and Wedderburn (1960), what are the correct response and the typical response? a) The correct response is to be just as fast when reporting the words and numbers as pairs as when allowed to report the words and numbers in any order. The typical response is that the former task takes longer than the latter task. b) The correct response is: "No 8 Allowed." The typical response is "No Dogs Allowed." Figure 7

9 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm 9 c) The correct response is "No Dogs Allowed." The typical response is "No 8 Allowed." d) The correct response is "No 8 Allowed." The typical response is "No 8 Allowed." 32. Why are the results of the "Dear Aunt Jane" experiment inconsistent with Broadbent's (1958) filter model? In other words, what assumptions of Broadbent's model are contradicted by the results of this experiment? a) The filter model claims that the meanings of all messages, whether or not they are attended, are represented in the cognitive system, but the meanings fade rapidly. Therefore there should be more errors on words that came later in the stimulus presentation than on words that came early in the presentation. This was not observed in the "Dear Aunt Jane" experiment. b) The filter model claims that the initial sensory store has unlimited capacity. The "Dear Aunt Jane" experiment showed that combining word and number stimuli overloaded the capacity of the sensory store. c) Broadbent thought that the unattended messages were completely blocked by the filter, and that meanings of words in the attended message were retrieved after the message had passed through the filter. The result of the "Dear Aunt Jane" experiment shows that this cannot be true. d) The filter model predicts that subjects should be faster reporting the words in any order than when they were told to report them in pairs. The result of the "Dear Aunt Jane" experiment shows that this is not true. 33. Broadbent's (1958) filter model made strong claims about selective attention. Which assumption of Broadbent's filter model was the focus of attacks by researchers who doubted that it was correct? a) The filter is preceded by a sensory memory that retains brief neural representations of the initial stimulus. b) Attention selects inputs (messages) based exclusively on the physical characteristics of the inputs. c) Selective attention is like a spotlight that illuminates part of the visual field while leaving other areas in the dark. d) It takes a brief amount of time to switch attention from one one stream of information (message) to another stream of information (a different messages). 34. MacKay (1973) found that a word (e.g., "money" or "river") presented to the unattended ear would bias the interpretation of an ambiguous sentence (e.g., "He threw stones at the bank.") in the direction that is most consistent with the word. What is the theoretical significance of this finding? a) According to Treisman's feature integration theory, perceptual features can migrate from one object to another during the preattentive stage. In this case, meanings are found to migrate from the word in the unattended ear to the sentence in the attended ear as is predicted by Treisman's feature integration theory. b) The result demonstrates how a flanking stimulus can enhance the processing of a focal stimulus. c) Early selection theories of attention predict that messages should be filtered (attended message should be processed; unattended message should be blocked) prior to extracting the meaning of words. Therefore a word in the unattended ear should have no effect on behavior. MacKay's (1973) result disconfirms this prediction of early selection theory. d) Late selection theories predict that meanings of messages should be processed prior to attentional selection. Therefore the meaning of the sentence should have been completed at the same time as the interpretation of the word in the unattended ear. Since MacKay found a bias towards an

10 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm 10 interpretation that was consistent with the word in the unattended ear, the result disconfirms a basic assumption of late selection theories. 35. It has been found that irrelevant distracting stimuli can impair the performance of novice and expert video game players on an easy game, but when the difficulty level of the game is increased, only the expert video game players are affected by the irrelevant stimuli. Why does this happen? a) Expert video game players have excess attentional capacity to devote to irrelevant stimuli when the game is easy but also when it is moderately difficult. Novice video game players have excess attentional capacity when the game is easy but not when it is difficult. b) Expert video game players are more sensitive to all stimuli, whether or not they are relevant to the game. c) Long-term practice at video game playing has altered the brains of expert game players by a process known as experienced-based plasticity. As a result, they have neural pathways for processing the irrelevant stimuli that that the novices do not have. d) Expert video game players have learned that seemingly irrelevant stimuli can turn out to be relevant to performance on a game. Consequently they pay more attention to irrelevant stimuli than do novice game players. 36. Figure 8 shows the model that a patient was asked to copy, and the patient's copy of the model. What is a plausible diagnosis for this patient's perceptual deficit? a) left prosopagnosia b) left visual agnosia c) left unilateral neglect d) left change blindness Figure Typically, that is, for most adult Americans, all of the following are examples of automatic processes EXCEPT: a) a woman walking down the street (I'm referring to the processes by which she maintains her balance and moves forward). b) a man reading a sign at the grocery store that says "peaches $1.50/pound" (I'm referring to the processes by which he understands what this means). c) a woman who is driving a car sees the light in front of her turn red so she starts to apply the brakes (I'm referring to her decision to brake the car when she saw the light turn red). d) a student solving a math problem (I'm referring to the processes by which the student decides what mathematical manipulations to try on the problem). 38. Which is the best description the results in the Stroop effect? a) People are slow at reading words that name colors when the words are written in a conflicting color. b) People are slow at reading a list of words when they are written in differently colored fonts. c) People are slow at naming the color of the font in which words are written if the words are names of other conflicting colors. d) People are faster at naming the color of objects than the shape of objects.

11 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm The Stroop Task suggests that: a) Automatic responses cannot be overridden with controlled responses. b) Once a response to a stimulus has been automatized, it is difficult or impossible to inhibit the response when one encounters the stimulus. c) Automatic processes usually conflict with concurrent controlled processes. d) Color naming is an automatic processes. 40. Suppose an experiment is done in which the subject must fixate on position B in Figure 9, and then, on randomly chosen trials, the subject has to switch attention to positions A, or C or D. If it is found that subjects are faster at switching attention from B to C than from B to A or from B to D, what would this suggest about the nature of attention? a) Attention is object-based. b) Attention is location based. Figure 9 c) It takes more time to switch attention in horizontal directions than vertical directions. d) The capacity of attention is limited. 41. Tipper and Behrman (1996) studied a patient with left unilateral neglect 2. In one of the experimental conditions, the patient was asked to detect a flash in one of the disks as shown in Figure 10. The patient's response time was slower for flashes in the disk on the left than for flashed in the disk on the right. After the disks rotated on the display, thereby exchanging positions, the patient's response time continued to be slower for flashes in the disk on the left (this disk was initially on the right, but it was on the left after the rotation - see Figure 11. These results contrast with the case where the disks were connected by a bar. In this case, the patient's response was faster to flashes in the disk on the left after the rotation, because it was on the right prior to the rotation. What is the most important conclusion to be drawn from the fact that the effect of exchanging the position of the disks through a rotation was different depending on whether the disks were or were not connected by a bar? Figure 10 Figure 11 a) Damage to the right parietal lobe can cause difficulty at tracking objects that move through space. b) Rotating the position of the two disks captured the attention of the patient when the disks were connected by a bar, but failed to capture attention when the disks were not connected by a bar. c) The lines created by the connecting bar make it easier for the patient to track the disks as they rotate and exchange positions. 2 This disorder is also called left hemispatial neglect.

12 File = D:\p355\mid1a.p355.spr16.docm 12 d) When the disks were connected by a bar, the disks were perceived to be the left and right half of a single object. When the disks were not connected by a bar, they were perceived to be two separate objects. The effect of rotating the position of the disks was different depending on whether the patient interpreted the rotation as a rotation of a single object or as the rotation of two separate objects. 42. According to Treisman's (1986) feature integration theory, features are combined into perceptual objects during what stage of perceptual processing? a. the preattentive stage b. the focused attention stage c. the object formation stage d. the apperceptive stage This is the end of the exam.