PSYCH 1A Assignment #3

20 points possible

Name__________________________________________

Answer the following questions. [1 point each]

1. After media coverage of two awful train crashes, people overestimated the probability of being killed or
injured in a train crash and exaggerated the dangers of train travel. This example illustrates:
2. While Alex was waiting for a prescription to be filled, he called Kaitlyn to see if she wanted him to pick up
anything while he was at the grocery store. To his surprise, Kaitlyn rattled off ten different items she
wanted him to buy. Alex forgot two items in the middle of the list. Alex's pattern of forgetting illustrates:
3. Tracey is a pastry chef specializing in strawberry tarts. If asked to quickly name a dessert, even though
most people would likely respond with cake or cookies, Tracey would likely say strawberry tarts. Based on
Traceys personal experience as a pastry chef, strawberry tarts are an example of what?
4. Richard can recall very specific and vivid details of the day his son was born. Richard's memory of this very
emotional, personal event in his life is called:
5. Whenever Alison tried to recall her new cell phone number, she kept getting it mixed up with an old phone
number. Alison's failure to remember her new phone number is probably due to:
6. George very clearly remembers when he had to go to the emergency room for stitches on his left thigh. This
is an example of which type of long-term memory?
7. Although she had not made one in years, Eve carefully folded the paper to make a paper airplane for her
grandson. Eve's ability to perform this task is an example of which type of long-term memory?

8. Jamal is untidy, outgoing, and a chain smoker. He frequently stays up late and has a very flexible work
schedule. Given this description, most people would guess that Jamal is a bartender (which he is not) rather
than a tax accountant (which he is). This example illustrates the influence of:
9. As Adam was filling out the loan application, he couldn't remember his previous address even though he had
lived there for five years. Adam's memory of his current address was interfering with his memory of his old
address, which is an example of:

10. In his chemistry class Milton learned the rules and features used for classifying certain chemical compounds.
What kind of a concept has Milton learned?
11. Seth has a good understanding of the social rules of his language and uses intonation as appropriate when
he speaks. What is Seth demonstrating when he follows these social rules?

12. With virtually no hesitation you can say that pigs, sheep, and cows are all examples of the concept of
mammal, but you may hesitate a few seconds before deciding whether bats and porpoises are also
mammals. What does this suggests pigs, sheep, and cows represent?

- OVER -

Fill-in-the-Blanks [.5 points each]

13. _______________________________ is the way information is presented so as to emphasize either a
potential gain or a potential loss as the outcome.
14. _______________________________ is the inability to form long-term memories of events occurring after
a brain injury or brain surgery, although memories formed before the trauma are usually intact.
15. _______________________________ is an example of a concept that embodies its most common and
typical features.
16. A _______________________________ is a mental category used to represent a class or group of objects,
people, organizations, events, situations, or relations that share common characteristics or attributes.
17. _______________________________ is the component of language that includes the characteristics of
spoken language, such as intonation and gestures, that indicate the social meaning of utterances.
18. The smallest units of meaning in a language are _______________________________.
19. The _______________________________ is a cognitive rule of thumb that says that the probability of an
event or the importance assigned to it is based on its availability in memory.
20. _______________________________ is a decision making approach in which alternatives are evaluated
against criteria that have been ranked according to importance.
21. _______________________________ is the subsystem within long-term memory that stores facts,
information, and personal life experiences; also called explicit memory.
22. _______________________________ is the subpart of declarative memory that stores general knowledge;
a mental encyclopedia or dictionary.
23. _______________________________ amnesia is the inability to remember a specific period of time in the
past.
24. Recollection of the circumstances in which a memory was formed is _______________________________.
25. _______________________________ is the subpart of declarative memory that contains memories of
personally experienced events.
26. The _______________________________ effect is the tendency to recall information better if one is in the
same pharmacological or psychological (mood) state as when the information was encoded.
27. _______________________________ are individual instances of a concept that are stored in memory from
personal experience.
28. The _______________________________ is the tendency to encode elements of the physical setting in
which information is learned along with memory of the information itself.
29. _______________________________ involves the inability to learn new information because of something
that was learned previously.
30. _______________________________ is cognitive shortcut that involves making a decision based on an
assessment of how closely a new object or situation matches an existing prototype of that object or
situation.