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

In cognitive psychology, a schema is:

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

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

  1. AHindsight bias
  2. BSunk cost fallacy
  3. CGambler's fallacy
  4. DEndowment effect
3.Easy

Riding a bicycle without thinking about it relies mainly on:

  1. AProcedural memory
  2. BEpisodic memory
  3. CIconic memory
  4. DSemantic memory
4.Medium

People often accept an invalid syllogism if its conclusion sounds true, such as "Some vitamins are healthy". This is called:

  1. ABelief bias
  2. BHindsight bias
  3. CAnchoring
  4. DSelf-serving bias
5.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. ASpreading activation in a semantic network
  2. BRetroactive interference
  3. CIconic memory decay
  4. DThe phonological similarity effect
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. ACounting backwards made the trigrams easier to remember
  2. BRecall fell sharply within about 18 seconds without rehearsal
  3. COnly the first letter of each trigram tended to be forgotten
  4. DRecall stayed almost perfect even after 18 seconds of counting
7.Hard

According to Lavie's load theory of attention, an irrelevant distractor is most likely to be processed when:

  1. AThe distractor is presented to the blind spot
  2. BThe participant is told to ignore it
  3. CThe main task has low perceptual load
  4. DThe main task has high perceptual load
8.Hard

When a video shows a face saying "ga" while the audio says "ba", many people hear "da". This shows that:

  1. APeople cannot tell similar speech sounds apart
  2. BSpeech perception combines what we see and hear
  3. CVision is ignored when we listen to speech
  4. DHearing always overrides vision when they conflict

Answer key

  1. 1. A · An organised framework of knowledge about something
  2. 2. C · Gambler's fallacy
  3. 3. A · Procedural memory
  4. 4. A · Belief bias
  5. 5. A · Spreading activation in a semantic network
  6. 6. B · Recall fell sharply within about 18 seconds without rehearsal
  7. 7. C · The main task has low perceptual load
  8. 8. B · Speech perception combines what we see and hear

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