Cognitive psychology worksheet with answers

About how many items can a person hold in short-term memory, according to George Miller's classic estimate?

1. A20 ± 5
2. B3 ± 1
3. C12 ± 3
4. D7 ± 2

Remembering what you did at your tenth birthday party relies mainly on:

1. ASemantic memory
2. BEpisodic memory
3. CProcedural memory
4. DIconic memory

The "cognitive revolution" of the 1950s and 1960s shifted psychology's focus towards:

1. AInternal mental processes such as memory and thinking
2. BIntrospection about raw sensations only
3. COnly observable behaviour and reinforcement
4. DUnconscious sexual and aggressive drives

After studying the words "bed, rest, tired, dream, snooze", many people falsely recall "sleep". This paradigm demonstrates:

1. ANear-perfect recall of meaningful, related word lists
2. BFalse memories produced by related associations
3. CThe word length effect in verbal memory
4. DRapid decay of items in iconic memory

Lists of similar-sounding letters (B, G, V, T) are harder to recall immediately than dissimilar letters (F, K, Y, W). This suggests short-term memory:

1. AStores letters mainly as visual images of their shapes
2. BMainly codes information by meaning
3. CHas unlimited capacity for letters
4. DMainly codes verbal information acoustically

Which feature is typical of an automatic process, such as reading a familiar word?

1. AIt is easily disrupted by a second task
2. BIt can only be done slowly, one step at a time
3. CIt is fast and hard to stop once started
4. DIt needs a lot of conscious effort

Morris, Bransford and Franks found that words processed for rhyme were better recognised in a rhyming test than words processed for meaning. This challenges levels of processing because:

1. AShallow processing is always better than deep processing
2. BRhyming words are stored in iconic memory
3. CMeaning cannot be processed during learning
4. DMemory depends on the match between encoding and test, not only on depth

In Treisman's feature integration theory, why is finding a red X among red Os and blue Xs slow?

1. ALetters cannot be searched visually
2. BSingle features cannot be detected without attention
3. CCombining features (a conjunction) requires focused attention to each item
4. DRed is processed more slowly than blue