Attention, Perception, Learning and Memory Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Response inhibition is related to extinction.

Inhibition theories of extinction, from Pavlov's internal inhibition to Hull's reactive inhibition, explain extinction as the build-up of an inhibitory tendency that suppresses the response when it is no longer reinforced. The original learning is not erased but held back.

Spontaneous recovery is evidence for this account, the response returning as inhibition dissipates, but it is a consequence, not the process the theory explains. Learned helplessness is Seligman's account of passivity after uncontrollable events, and latent learning is Tolman's learning without reinforcement.

Answer: A

Both (A) and (R) are true, and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).

(A) describes perceptual constancy: an object's perceived size, shape, brightness and colour stay stable even though its image on the retina (the proximal stimulus) changes with distance, angle and lighting. A door seen opening still looks rectangular, though its retinal image becomes a trapezoid.

(R) gives the reason: the perceptual system uses cues such as distance and surrounding context to adjust its interpretation of the proximal stimulus. Those mechanisms are what produce constancy, so (R) explains (A).

Answer: A

The cocktail party phenomenon inspired research on attention.

Colin Cherry (1953) described how at a noisy party we can follow one conversation while ignoring others, yet notice our own name spoken elsewhere. His dichotic listening and shadowing experiments launched the study of selective attention, including Broadbent's filter theory and Treisman's attenuation theory.

The name refers to the party setting, not to alcohol, hypnosis or biological rhythms.

Answer: A

The correct sequence is Registration by senses → Filtering → Unattended information static → Designated information processed.

In Broadbent's early selection (filter) theory, all incoming information is first registered briefly in a sensory store. A selective filter then passes one channel on the basis of physical features such as location or pitch; the unattended information is held but goes no further and soon decays, while the selected information is processed for meaning.

Filtering cannot come before the senses have registered the input, and the filter must operate before the unattended information is left unprocessed, which rules out the other orders.

Answer: D

This explains the Müller-Lyer illusion.

Richard Gregory's misapplied size-constancy explanation notes that the arrow-fins of the Muller-Lyer figure resemble corners: outward fins look like the inside corner of a room (which looks farther away), and inward fins like the outside corner of a building (which looks nearer). The brain enlarges the line that seems farther, so the line with outward fins looks longer.

The Ponzo illusion uses converging lines like railway tracks, the Ames room uses a distorted room seen from one viewpoint, and the Poggendorff illusion involves a diagonal line interrupted by a rectangle; none rests on the corner explanation.

Answer: B

This illustrates selective attention.

Selective attention is focusing on one source of information while ignoring others that are also present, like following a TV programme while tuning out a partner's complaints.

Synesthesia is a blending of senses, such as seeing colours when hearing sounds. Sensory adaptation is the decline in sensitivity to a constant, unchanging stimulus, such as no longer noticing a ticking clock; nagging is neither constant nor ignored because of adaptation. 'Sensory attention' is not a standard term.

Answer: A

This is top-down processing.

In top-down (conceptually driven) processing, higher-level cognition, such as knowledge, expectations and goals, guides and regulates the processing of lower-level sensory information. Reading a messy handwritten word correctly because the context suggests it is an example.

Bottom-up processing runs the other way, building perception from sensory data upward. Proprioception is the sense of body position, and transduction is the conversion of physical energy into neural signals by receptors.

Answer: A

Wavelength and intensity determine the perception of colour and brightness.

The wavelength of light is perceived mainly as hue (colour): short wavelengths look violet or blue and long wavelengths red. The intensity (amplitude) of light is perceived mainly as brightness. (The paper prints 'itensity'.)

Illumination is the light falling on a scene, not a perceptual quality produced by wavelength, and constancy is the stability of perception despite changes in the light, not a direct product of wavelength or intensity.

Answer: A

The two processes are (a) and (b): the sensory process and the decision process.

Signal detection theory separates detection into a sensory process, the person's sensitivity to the signal (measured by d'), and a separate decision process, the criterion the person adopts in deciding whether to say a signal was present (measured by beta or c).

Response bias is the outcome of the decision process rather than a second, separate process, and motivation affects the decision criterion but is not one of the two processes the theory names. So the options with (c) or (d) are wrong.

Answer: C

The method used is reconstruction: the learner is shown items in a given order, the order is then scrambled, and the learner has to put them back in the original order, so what is tested is memory for the sequence. In recall the learner must produce the items without cues, in recognition he picks the earlier items out of new ones, and in relearning the saving of time or trials on a second learning of the same material is measured. None of these involves rebuilding a disturbed order. The answer is reconstruction.