Cognitive psychology worksheet with answers

Free printable Cognitive psychology worksheet: 8 problems from easy to exam level, with an answer key. Print it or save it as a PDF.

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1.Easy

Believing that after five tails in a row a fair coin is "due" to land heads is the:

  1. AHindsight bias
  2. BEndowment effect
  3. CGambler's fallacy
  4. DSunk cost fallacy
2.Easy

In cognitive psychology, a schema is:

  1. AAn organised framework of knowledge about something
  2. BA sudden loss of memory after brain injury
  3. CA single item held in short-term memory
  4. DA visual illusion caused by misleading depth cues in a scene
3.Easy

Köhler's chimpanzees, who suddenly stacked boxes to reach bananas, are a classic example of:

  1. AFunctional fixedness
  2. BTrial-and-error learning
  3. CInsight
  4. DMental set
4.Medium

In a lexical decision task, people recognise "nurse" as a word faster after seeing "doctor" than after seeing "bread". This is best explained by:

  1. ARetroactive interference
  2. BThe phonological similarity effect
  3. CIconic memory decay
  4. DSpreading activation in a semantic network
5.Medium

Inattentional blindness is shown by the study in which participants failed to notice:

  1. AA person in a gorilla suit walking through a basketball game
  2. BA change in the colour of a single letter
  3. CA tone played in one ear
  4. DA word flashed below the threshold of awareness
6.Medium

In the Brown–Peterson task, participants count backwards by threes after seeing a trigram such as "KTR". The main finding was that:

  1. ARecall stayed almost perfect even after 18 seconds of counting
  2. BRecall fell sharply within about 18 seconds without rehearsal
  3. CCounting backwards made the trigrams easier to remember
  4. DOnly the first letter of each trigram tended to be forgotten
7.Hard

Clive Wearing developed severe amnesia after a brain infection and cannot remember events from moment to moment, yet he can still play the piano and conduct music. This shows that:

  1. AEpisodic memory is needed to perform any skill
  2. BMusical skills are stored in short-term memory
  3. CProcedural memory can survive severe loss of episodic memory
  4. DAll long-term memory depends on a single system
8.Hard

Evidence that short-term and long-term memory are separate stores comes from patients who:

  1. AHave impaired long-term learning but normal digit span, and others with the opposite pattern
  2. BShow the same recall for all list positions
  3. CLose all memories after a mild headache
  4. DRemember everything equally well

Answer key

  1. 1. C · Gambler's fallacy
  2. 2. A · An organised framework of knowledge about something
  3. 3. C · Insight
  4. 4. D · Spreading activation in a semantic network
  5. 5. A · A person in a gorilla suit walking through a basketball game
  6. 6. B · Recall fell sharply within about 18 seconds without rehearsal
  7. 7. C · Procedural memory can survive severe loss of episodic memory
  8. 8. A · Have impaired long-term learning but normal digit span, and others with the opposite pattern

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