Recitation Week 7

1. On the topic of feature binding, which of the following are true?

• a. Simple search (e.g., searching for a blue circle in a sea of red circles) gets significantly harder as the number of distractors increases.

• b. Conjunctive search (e.g., searching for a blue circle in a sea of blue and red circles and squares) does not get harder as the number of distractors increases.

• c. Feature binding is required for us to be able to perceive objects, as opposed to a mosaic of free-floating qualities.

• d. Feature binding, unlike other processes, does not impose a cognitive load, and so does not eat up any of our finite attentional capacity.

2. According to Shiffrin & Schneider's theory of automaticity, which of the following statements accurately reflects the transition from controlled to automatic processing?

• a. Controlled processing requires no attention and is unaffected by the complexity of the task.

• b. Automatic processing occurs instantly without the need for practice or repetition.

• c. Through practice and repetition, some tasks can transition from requiring controlled, conscious effort to becoming automatic and requiring less cognitive effort.

• d. Tasks that are inherently complex can never become automatic, regardless of the amount of practice or repetition.

3. Kosslyn, Ball, and Reiser (1978) conducted an experiment where participants memorized a map of an island and were asked to mentally scan from one location to another, pressing a key upon "arriving." Their findings suggested that the time taken to respond depended on:

• a. the complexity of the landmarks on the map

• b. the subjective familiarity of the locations

• c. the spatial distance between the two points

• d. the number of times participants had previously practiced the task

4. In the mental scanning experiment by Kosslyn, Ball, & Reiser in 1978, which of the following changes will invalidate the conclusion of the experiment?

• a. Having subjects to verbally report arrival instead of pressing a key

• b. Asking subjects to mentally rotate the map 180 degrees before mental scanning

• c. Increasing the number of items on the map to make it correlate with spatial distance

• d. All of above

5. Ross and Lawrence (1968) asked participants to memorize a daily path with 50 locations and later tested their recall. What did their results suggest?

• a. Participants recalled locations in random order, showing no systematic pattern

• b. Recall was better when participants mentally followed the path in order

• c. Participants remembered locations equally well, regardless of order

• d. The number of locations remembered was unrelated to the use of spatial cues

6. Paivio & Foth investigated how encoding task influence subjects’ memory of concrete and abstract words. What was their main manipulation?

• a. Some subjects imagine the word pair, while others compose sentences with the word pair

• b. Some subjects rehearse the word pair, while others compose sentences with the word pair

• c. Some subjects are tested with cue-recall, while others are tested with recognition

• d. Some subjects are cued with their own generated images, while others are cued with images generated by other subjects