Attention, Perception, Learning and Memory Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Assertion (A) is true: in interference theory, forgetting results from the interference of other learning, in the interval between the original learning and its recall. Reason (R) is true as a statement, since the intervening task is said to weaken the trace, but the weakening of a trace is the idea of decay theory, and the interference theory says that competing material disturbs the retrieval, so (R) is not the right explanation. The answer is both are true, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).

Answer: D

The daughter is given a chocolate every time she does well, which is continuous reinforcement, and the brother only when he gets the highest marks in the class, which means that the reward is given for only some good performances, partial reinforcement. So the example illustrates continuous and partial reinforcement. Positive and negative reinforcement refer to adding or removing a stimulus, and primary and secondary refer to the type of reinforcer, and here the chocolate is the same for both. Partial reinforcement of the brother's behaviour also makes it more resistant to extinction than the daughter's, who may stop trying the first time she does not get a chocolate. The answer is continuous and partial reinforcement.

Answer: B

Sound information is maintained in the acoustic code, which is the way the short-term memory stores items by their sound, as the mistakes between letters that sound alike show. The semantic code stores information by meaning, the iconic code holds visual images for a very short time, and 'information code' is not a standard term. Evidence for it comes from short-term memory errors, in which people confuse letters such as B, D and P that sound alike, even when the letters were seen and not heard, as shown by Conrad's work. The answer is the acoustic code.

Answer: D

Perception of a stimulus below the threshold of conscious experience is subliminal perception. The stimulus is too weak or too brief to be consciously noticed, but it may still influence behaviour or feeling.

The just noticeable difference is the smallest change in a stimulus that can be detected, and the differential threshold is the same idea. Signal detection theory is a framework for how a stimulus is detected against noise. None of these means perception below the level of awareness.

Answer: B

Remembering vividly where you were when you heard of a shocking event such as the 26/11 Mumbai attack is flashbulb memory. It is a detailed, long lasting memory of the circumstances in which a surprising and emotionally important event was learned, and it is retained although not always accurately.

Implicit and non-declarative memory are expressed without conscious recall, as in skills, and episodic memory is the general memory for personal events. Flashbulb memory is the particular type of episodic memory for such events, so it is the one that fits.

Answer: D

The correct matching is p-3, q-1, r-4, s-2. George Miller gave the magical number seven plus or minus two for the span of short-term memory, Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed the three memory system (sensory, short-term, long-term), Bartlett showed that memory is constructive, and Alan Baddeley proposed working memory.

The other codes give working memory to Miller or the three-store model to Bartlett, which is wrong. The booklet prints the magical number with a greater-than sign, which is a misprint for the usual seven plus or minus two.

Answer: D

Forgetting is not counted as an error in eyewitness testimony in this question. The errors listed in the other options are named distortions of eyewitness memory: suggestibility (misleading questions), the illusion of out-group homogeneity (the printed 'outgoing' is a misprint for out-group), and source monitoring errors.

Forgetting is the loss of information and is the ordinary memory failure, so the key treats it as the one that is not one of these particular errors.

Answer: B

Both statements are true, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A). Encoding specificity says a retrieval cue works only if information about it was encoded at the time of learning, and presenting category names as cues helps recall of the words earlier presented.

The reason describes one experimental result, but it does not explain why a cue must be encoded; the principle states it. So the second option is correct, not the one with the explanation.

Answer: C

Difficulty in deployment of attention can occur in engagement, disengagement and shifting. Attention is deployed by engaging with a target, disengaging from it when it is no longer relevant, and shifting to a new one, and a problem at any of these steps shows up as a difficulty in deploying attention. So the answer is 1, 3 and 4.

Distraction (2) is the effect of an irrelevant stimulus drawing attention away, and the key does not count it as one of the steps of deployment. The options with it are therefore wrong.

Answer: D

The view that learning is the acquisition of knowledge through the cognitive processing of information is held by Michael Posner, a cognitive psychologist known for his work on attention and information processing.

Dollard and Miller explained learning through drive, cue, response and reward, Tolman's cognitive map is a cognitive notion but within a behavioural framework, and Bandura's social learning stresses modelling. The key gives Posner for the information processing view.