Exam 2 Cognitive Psych

Which of the following could be an example of covert attention?

• Checking that your shoelaces are tied

• Looking between couch cushions for lost money

• Turning around when someone calls your name

• Eavesdropping on different conversations at a party but acting as if you are not

When visually scanning a complex scene in an attempt to find a person or object, the region directly adjacent to your focus of attention is processed _______ regions further away

• less than

• more than

• faster than

• the same as

Research on object-based attention suggests that when we attend to part of an object, attention

• enhances processing of the whole object

• is confined to a point in space on that object

• enhances processing only of the attended part, not of the whole object

• tells us what the object is, but not where it is located

Feature integration theory posits that the features of objects

• are not combined until after attention binds them together

• can be combined without attention to the object

• are not perceived without attention

• are forgotten once attention is diverted away from the object

The tendency to pay more attention to emotional stimuli than to non-emotional stimuli is referred to as

• vigilance

• attentional bias

• biased competition

• experience-guided attention

We often find ourselves switching back and forth between different tasks. Compared to when we're able to focus on one task at a time, such "task switching" leads to

• greater accuracy

• less boredom

• faster responses

• slower and less accurate task performance

The Stroop effect is one of the most robust phenomena in cognitive psychology. Which of the following would eliminate it?

• The words being names of colors in a language you don't know

• Recruiting additional cognitive control to overcome the interference

• Naming the colors in time with a ticking clock to make sure your responses are evenly spaced

• Having coffee beforehand to make sure you are alert

In Baddeley's model of working memory, what component integrates information from multiple internal sources?

• Central executive

• Phonological loop

• Episodic buffer

• Visuospatial sketchpad

Two important factors that affect how efficiently we can multitask are

• proactive control and reactive control

• cognitive load and cognitive control

• cognitive load and cognitive overlap

• cognitive control and cognitive overlap

Which statement about our ability to multitask is most true?

• When driving, it is safe to engage in a second task (e.g., talking on a cell phone) as long as you are very, very well practiced at driving

• Most people cannot multitask without their performance suffering

• People can multitask as long as their stress levels remain low

• People can multitask as long as the number of tasks is kept below the limit of the number of things they can attend to (about 4 for most people)