1. A fundamental tenet of nativism is that:

a. all knowledge comes through the senses.
b. some individuals enter life with a tabula rasa; others don't.
c. at leaast some basic categories of human knowledge, such as time, space, and causality, are given a priori. *
d. the doctrine of specific nerve energies explains why we hear sound.

2. Sounds in the environment enter the ear and cause vibration of a membrane in the inner ear. In the case of audition, vibration of the inner ear membrane represents the:

a. proximal stimulus. *
b. distal stimulus.
c. sensation.
d. neural basis of the tabula rasa.

3. Suppose we can just tell the difference between 50 and 51 candles burning in an otherwise unilluminated room. According to Weber's law, we should then be able to just distinguish 300 candles from:

a. 301.
b. 303.
c. 306. *
d. 310.

4. In a detection experiment, there are two payoff matrices. In I, it is: +5 for a hit, -15 for a false alarm, +5 for correct negative, and -5 for a miss. In II it is: +5 for a hit, -5 for a false alarm, +5 for a correct negative, and -15 for a miss. We would expect the subject to establish a criterion:

a. biased toward "yes" judgments for both I and II.
b. biased toward "no" judgments for both I and II.
c. biased toward "yes" judgments for I; biased toward "no" judgments for II.
d. biased toward "no" judgments for I; biased toward "yes" judgments for II. *

5. A pheromone is:

a. any olfactory stimulus that has a particular built-in meaning for a given organism, such as carrion for a hyena.
b. a special chemical substance secreted by a given organism that produces a particular reaction in another member of the same species who smells that substance. *
c. any chemical substance such as sweat that provides a distinct olfactory stimulus for another member of that same species.
d. a built-in, species-specific signal that indicates sexual receptivity.

6. Different frequencies of sound waves maximally deform different parts of the basilar membrane, a phenomenon which supports:

a. opponent theory.
b. impulse frequency theory.
c. place theory.*
d. the all-or-none law.

7. An individual sees two equal-sized trees. One tree is 40 feet away from the person, and the other is 100 feet away. The retinal image of the closer tree will be _____ that of the farther tree.

a. larger than *
b. smaller than
c. equal to
d. reversed relative to

8. The negative afterimage of a greenish-yellow square is:

a. a violet-colored square.*
b. a yellow-orange square.
c. a black circle.
d. a fog of red which occupies the entire visual field.

9. According to the principle of direct realism,

a. sensations only arise from real objects in the world.
b. perception is prone to confuse reality with imagination.
c. the stimulus environment provides all the information needed for perception.*
d. realistic perception involves unconscious inferences and other problem-solving activities.

10. When looking down a rocky beach you see individual stones nearby, but farther away you can see only a rough-looking terrain. This best shows us judging distance from:

a. texture gradients.*
b. interposition.
c. shape constancy.
d. linear perspective.
e. motion parallax.

11. If you can move neither your head nor your eyes:

a. it will be difficult to detect that an object you are looking at begins to move.*
b. your visual world will seem to move when you try to move your eyes.
c. you will be able to see for only a second or two. After that the world will "go gray" and you will be unable to see anything.
d. you will begin to hallucinate.

12. When we see a pattern of dots and we group certain dots together based on their color, we are grouping according to the principle of:

a. figure.
b. similarity. *
c. proximity.
d. subjective contours.

13. Expectancies and context effects are especially important in:

a. Gestalt principles of organization.
b. feature detection.
c. bottom-up processing.
d. top-down processing.*

14. In impossible figures:

a. primitive features do not connect with each other in logical ways.
b. bottom-up processing cannot occur.
c. individual parts of the figure make sense.*
d. we process the entire array simultaneously, and in parallel, which results in a top-down overload.

15. The filter theory of attention suggests that in a task in which separate messages are simultaneously played in each ear of the subject:

a. the auditory stimulus is received by the receptors in the "unattended-to" ear, but the information is only partly processed.*
b. the auditory stimulus is filtered before it has an opportunity to get beyond the receptor level in the "unattended-to" ear.
c. the information from auditory stimuli from the "unattended-to" ear reach the cortex, but even one's own name is filtered out.
d. a sensory filter is produced first in one ear and, after some very brief time interval, is switched to the second ear.

16. Perceptual constancy describes the phenomenon that our perception of:

a. a stimulus remains the same in spite of changes in the distal stimuli it provides.
b. a stimulus remains the same in spite of changes in the proximal stimuli it provides. *
c. an object changes when the distal stimuli it provides change.
d. an object changes when the proximal stimuli it provides change.

17. The Renaissance masters tried to paint pictures that would:

a. correspond to the image the model cast on the eye. *
b. represent enduring and characteristic attributes of the model.
c. convey the momentary impression the scene produced in the artist's mind.
d. indicate what the model looks like, not just from one orientation but from several different ones.

18. "Projective" personality tests such as the Rorschach Inkblot Technique and the Thematic Apperception Test illustrate the principle that:

a. perception involves nothing more than extracting information from the stimulus.
b. perception is organized by principles such as proximity and similarity.
c. the perceiver brings knowledge and attitudes to bear on the process of perception.*
d. the perceptual cycle involves a continuous process of "bottom-up" analysis.

19. A test where you fill in the blanks is an example of a:

a. free recall test.
b. savings test.
c. recognition test.
d. cued recall test.*

20. The greatest forgetting of learned material takes place:

a. very shortly after learning.*
b. during the learning itself.
c. several days after learning.
d. none of the above

21. When an item fades from short-term memory our best guess is that:

a. it is usually gone forever.*
b. it can be recalled when we need it.
c. we are left with only a sensory impression.
d. we store only its emotional impressions.

22. A drug that prevents processing of information into long-term memory is administered to a subject prior to a memory task. Under these conditions one expects to see the elimination of:

a. the primacy effect. *
b. the recency effect.
c. any recall of items.
d. a and b

23. When a piece of information is said to be inaccessible, it:

a. was never placed into long-term memory.
b. cannot be retrieved from short-term memory.
c. is lost forever in short-term memory.
d. is presently unretrievable from long-term memory.*

24. On a test of recall, subjects who learn a list of words in one room do better if tested in that same room than if tested in a different room. This is an illustration of:

a. habituation.
b. method of loci.
c. positive transfer.
d. encoding specificity . *

25. Subjects have been tested for forgetting after long intervals spent awake or asleep. The results of such experiments pose a problem to:

a. interference theory of forgetting.
b. retrieval theory of forgetting.
c. reconstruction theory of forgetting.
d. decay theory of forgetting.*

26. The retrieval cue hypothesis cannot account for all forgetting because:

a. we continue to learn new things all the time, which interfere with our memories.
b. memory becomes better with age.
c. forgetting increases as a function of time even when the environment remains unchanged. *
d. mnemonics don't always work.

27. Which of the following is a major reason that many researchers doubt that there is anything really special about "flashbulb memory"?

a. Very few people say that they have experienced such memories.
b. Although people seem to have them, they are not very confident in their recall.
c. Much of what is recalled has been subsequently rehearsed.*
d. It seems impossible in terms of what we know about encoding in the brain.

28. If subjects are asked to recall meaningful verbal material, as in Bartlett's stories taken from the folklore of other cultures, there is a tendency to:

a. recall things as similar to familiar events.*
b. report images rather than meanings.
c. make errors in terms of acoustic confusions.
d. show an inability to chunk information.

29. Paula received a severe blow to the head in a car accident. What is the most reasonable explanation for her amnesia for what led up to the accident?

a. The information wasn't yet consolidated in long-term memory.*
b. Short-term memory interfered with the long-term memory storage.
c. Semantic memory has been disrupted.
d. She has lost the use of her hippocampus. That is, she is like H.M., but not as severely impaired.

30. H.M., the famous neurological patient who has serious and permanent amnesia, can remember some things. For the most part, these things are:

a. aspects of declarative memory acquired prior to his surgery and procedural memory of things learned both before and since his surgery.*
b. procedural memory for most things acquired prior to his surgery and episodic memory of things learned both before and since his surgery.
c. procedural memory for most things acquired prior to his surgery and semantic memory for events that have happened since his surgery.
d. verbal memories prior to his surgery and episodic ones since then.

31. The distinction between maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal illustrates that:

a. retention is not merely a function of repetition.*
b. elaboration is more important than organization at the time of encoding.
c. retrieval factors are more important than encoding factors as determinants of retention.*
d. memory reconstruction is essentially independent of trace information.

32. Memory for events which violate our expectations is:

a. worse than memory for events which are consistent with them.
b. better than memory for events which are consistent with them.*
c. worse than memory for events which are irrelevant to them.
d. none of the above.

33. Subjects were shown R's rotated by various degrees. Sometimes they were genuine R's that were rotated; sometimes they were mirror image R's. The subjects' task was to decide whether the rotated R's were normal or mirror reversed. The results showed that the time needed to make this decision was:

a. directly proportional to the angle of rotation from the upright. *
b. increased with the angle of rotation, but not proportionally; the first 10 degrees took more time than the next 10 degrees, and so on.
c. increased with the angle of rotation, but not proportionally; the first 10 degrees took less time than the next 10 degrees, and so on.
d. unaffected by the angle of rotation from the upright.

34. In Collins and Quillian's hierarchically arranged systems:

a. retrieval time is independent of the number of levels one must pass through in order to assess the information.
b. the same information is stored at every level of the hierarchy.
c. knowledge is stored such that information for any one item may be stored at a variety of different levels. *
d. retroactive inhibition of one category leads to forgetting about all other superordinate categories.

35. One of the hallmarks of learning a skill such as typing, receiving Morse code, tying one's shoes, etc., is:

a. a smooth increase in the level of skill.
b. a jumpy change in skill, alternating periods of rapid improvement with periods of little apparent change.*
c. periods of learning alternating with periods of apparent forgetting.
d. a sudden increase in learning after long periods of little apparent change in activity.

36. A big advantage of using algorithms to solve well-defined problems is that algorithms:

a. take less time than other methods.
b. guarantee a solution.*
c. take a hierarchical approach.
d. most closely duplicate the way that human experts solve problems in their area of expertise.

37. A big advantage of using a heuristic rather than an algorithm is that the heuristic:

a. allows for more creativity in responses.
b. is often a lot faster.*
c. is more certain to result in a correct response.
d. ends up with only one possible solution.

38. Motorcycle accidents account for more deaths than airplane crashes, but airplane crashes get more publicity. If Mike hears about an airplane crash on the news, and decides to ride his motorcycle instead of flying from Washington to Atlanta, he is making a reasoning error due to:

a. the availability heuristic.*
b. functional fixedness.
c. a syllogistic error.
d. a problem of framing.

39. In testing hypotheses, people generally:

a. seek new information which is consistent with the hypothesis.*
b. seek new information which is inconsistent with the hypothesis.
c. seek new information which is irrelevant to the hypothesis.
d. seek new information which is both consistent with the hypothesis, and inconsistent with some alternative hypothesis.

40. According to the principle of normative rationality:

a. people attempt to maximize gains and minimize losses.*
b. people err in their decisions by departing from rational self-interest.
c. people value efficiency more than optimality.
d. people are not motivated to use algorithms and other optimal decision tools.

41. According to prospect theory:

a. people make choices based on the objective values of outcomes.
b. people make choices based on the subjective values of outcomes.
c. people choose among options whose outcomes are satisfactory.
d. people evaluate utilities against some reference point.*

42. Studies of automatic behavior of highly overlearned acts, blindsight, and priming effects with amnesics have in common the study of consciousness:

a. by asking the participants in the research to look within and to describe the processes involved.
b. by comparing the processes involved with those of complex computers.
c. by examining what happens in the absence of conscious awareness.*
d. in ways that have little or no relevance to issues about the way or ways that consciousness might be related to behavior.

43. The response to "How are you?" is almost invariably "Fine." This is:

a. one of the few examples of speech behavior that easily fits into a behavioral account of language learning. *
b. an illustration of a frozen metaphor.
c. a demonstration of the difference between semantics and syntax.
d. a manifestation of a conversational rule.

44. The number of morphemes in the sentence "He kicked the ball," is:

a. 3.
b. 4.
c. 5.*
d. 15.

45. What people are most apt to remember about a sentence is its:

a. attitude.
b. surface structure.
c. family resemblance structure.
d. underlying structure. *

46. What makes it hard to understand the sentence "The truck towed slowly past the car crashed"?

a. The second proposition "the truck was towed slowly past the car" is inserted in the middle of the first proposition.
b. The sentence omits some helpful function words like "which was" that could well precede the word "towed."
c. One of the propositions is in the passive form.
d. Each of the above contributes to making the sentence hard to understand.*

47. Parents of two- and three-year-olds are fairly likely to correct their children's:

a. grammatical errors.
b. factual errors.*
c. errors of both grammar and fact.
d. sentences that show ambiguity in the use of words.

48. If an experimenter points to a familiar object and says "That's foff," children will almost always guess that foff names:

a. some of the parts of the object.
b. the whole object.
c. the material of which the object is made. *
d. the color of the object.

49. If isolated from language forms, an infant such as Helen Keller would be likely to:

a. remain isolated from language.
b. invent her own language forms. *
c. develop quite severe mental retardation.
d. remain isolated until learning American Sign Language.

50. The most convincing evidence that first languages are easiest to learn when young comes from studies of:

a. younger vs. older chimpanzees learning ASL.
b. congenitally deaf middle-aged adults who learned ASL at different ages.*
c. language in children blind from birth.
d. intensive case studies of people who were not exposed to language until late childhood or adolescence, like the cases of Genie and Helen Keller.