Question: Multiple Choice

1. The duration of visual/auditorysensory memory seems to be

A) about 10 seconds.
B) about 1-4 seconds.
C) about 100 milliseconds.
D) about 1-4 minutes.
E) about 3 hours.

2. Which of the following would a research participant MOST likely be able to detect if it occurred in the unattended channel in a dichotic listening experiment (listen to two messages at the same time and shadow/repeat back one of the messages)?

A) a change from English to French
B) thirty-five repetitions of the same word (embedded in a continuous prose passage)
C) a change in semantic content
D) the participant's last name
E) an unfamiliar voice

3. Which theory of attention is best able to explain why the phenomenon in #2 above would occur?

A) Broadbent's theory
B) Engleman's theory
C) Driver's theory
D) Treisman's attenuation theory
E) Any early selection theory

4. The examples in class where a major part of a visual scene is altered and many people do not notice the change are called (for example, the color changes that occurred in the "color changing card trick" video or the mudsplash/flicker demonstrations)

A) inattention blindness. B) attentional blink. C) change blindness. D) repetition blindness.

5. Which part of working memory would be active when you are trying to follow a shooting star across the sky?

A) visual-spatial sketchpad.
B) episodic.
C) implicit.
D) phonological loop.
E) sensory buffer.

6. The number words for English have fewer syllables than Welsh, which have fewer syllables than Hebrew, which have fewer syllables than Arabic. Which group of people, if given a number span task in their native language (they are given numbers to store and repeat back), would remember the most numbers?

a. English speaking
b. Welsh speaking
c. Hebrew speaking
d. Arabic speaking
e. There would be no difference among the groups because you are giving them the same task.

7. Which of the following would be a task that requires working memory (versus just short-term storage
of information)?

a. Repeating back a string of digits
b. Repeating back a string of words
c. Trying to carry on a conversation while following a basketball game
d. all of the above
e. none of the above

8. If I were to ask you to rotate Lego-like (blocks) figures in memory while saying animal names for each successive letter of the alphabet (antelope, bear, cat, dog, etc.), you would be using what component(s) of working memory?

(a) the phonological loop
(b) the visuo-spatial sketchpad
(c) the central executive
(d) all of the above
(e) the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad only

9. Bill sees something in the distance, but he can't yet determine what it is. He has experienced:

a. perception.
b. sensation.
c. perception and then sensation.
d. sensation and then perception.
e. none of the above.

10.When given the list of words "pay, say, clay, ray, stay, play, grey, day, hay" a group of students remembers 5.7 words on average while when given the list of words "peak, sin, clap, rack, stop, plea, green, dye, her" the students remember 7.1 words. The results on these lists show

(a) the irrelevant speech effect.
(b) the phonological similarity effect.
(c) the word length effect.
(d) the person doing the experiment messed it up.

11. True or False: A person who does NOT have digit-color synesthesia would be able to quickly (meaning instantly) find the 2's in the figure below and see that they form a triangle due to automatic/pop-out attention. Please explain.

Short essays:

1. What part or parts of working memory are used when a student is taking notes from a professor's lectures? Assume that the professor uses PowerPoint and students do NOT have the option of printing the slides to bring with them to class. Please explain what those parts of working memory are involved and why you think those parts of working memory are involved.

2. A person who has digit-color synesthesia is being tested. She claims to see yellow when presented with the number 7. Based on what you know about the Stroop effect and about synesthesia, what do you predict would happen if we presented her with the number 7 in yellow ink, in black ink, and then in red ink and timed how long it took her to identify the color of ink the number was in each case? In other words, would there be differences in how fast she responded in each case? Why or why not?