Cognitive Psychology

 Instructions for Psy 494 Midterm, Fall 2018 SHORT ESSAY PORTION (20 points) You will have a LIMIT of 275 words per short essay question. If you go over this limit (over 275 per question), you will receive a “0” grade for that short essay question, so please make sure to count your words carefully. Use your OWN words! I will consider the following to be plagiarism: (a) “copy and paste” from any source (lecture, book, online, any other source including another student’s work, past or present), (b) slight paraphrasing of any source (lecture, book, online, any other source including another student’s work, past or present) (i.e., switching a few words around, etc.), (c) using someone else’s examples and ideas without referencing them. Any plagiarism will result in a grade of “0” for the assignment, at the very least (see plagiarism note in syllabus). The 6 Essay Questions: 1. Roediger and McDermott’s (1989) study provides support for false memory. Paragraph 1: How did Roediger and McDermott show evidence for false memory in recognition, using Deese’s paradigm? (Hint: focus on Experiment 1, Table 1, and make sure to define all terms, such as ‘critical lure’ in your own words). Paragraph 2: Roediger and McDermott (1989) found that completing a recall task before a recognition task, elicited higher false memory for the critical lure on the recognition task. How do they explain why this finding occurred? Paragraph 3: How might Roediger and McDermott’s (1989) study apply to a real-life situation? Make sure to use an example and explain your reasoning. 2. With respect to categorization, please address the following. Paragraph 1: What is the classical view of categorization? (Make sure to use and to explain the terms individually necessary and jointly sufficient in your definition). Paragraph 2: Illustrate why the classical view could apply to a geometrical square but not to the categorization of gender (Hint: Show how it fails to “objectively” capture either the category “man” or the category “woman”). Paragraph 3: Define psychological essentialism in your own words (be brief!). Then, use psychological essentialism to explain Prentice and Miller’s (2006) finding that in a female-male dyad, telling a woman (out loud) that she is an over-estimator while informing the man (out loud) that he is an under-estimator, resulted in failure to correct one’s performance the second time around. 3. The Wason Selection Task (WST) has been used as a major task for examining people’s deductive reasoning. Paragraph 1: Define Cosmides’ Social Contract/Social Exchange theory (include the cost-benefit rule and detection of cheaters’ mechanism). Paragraph 2: Make a critique of this work (i.e., discuss a major problem with Cosmides’ work). Paragraph 3: How did Gigerenzer and Hug use perspective effects to create a more elegant experimental design that supports Cosmides’ theory? 4. Confirmation Bias is prevalent in the laboratory and in everyday life. Paragraph 1: Provide a definition of confirmation bias in your own words. Paragraph 2: Illustrate confirmation bias using Wason’s 2-4-6 task. Make sure to show how the hypothesized rule is nested within the correct rule in the original version of Wason’s 2-4-6 task. Paragraph 3: Discuss and demonstrate the circumstances (Hint : Think of a different correct rule) on Wason’s 2-4-6 task in which using a triple that is an instance of the hypothesized rule can lead to a disconfirmation of the hypothesized rule. 5. Based on the Sherman et al. (2009) article: Paragraph 1: Provide a definition and give an example of category accentuation in your own words. Paragraph 2: Provide a definition and give an example of illusory correlation in your own words. Paragraph 3: How do Sherman et al.’s (2009) findings help to explain the nature of stereotyping? 6. Imagine that you are the professor teaching Psy 494. In this capacity, you come up with an essay question to test your students’ knowledge about an important concept/finding in the decision making lecture. Paragraph 1: State the essay question you would ask your students to answer (use the format of essay questions 1-5 above). Paragraph 2: Explain why your question is substantive – what educational goal would you hope to achieve by asking this question, if you were the professor? Paragraph 3: What would constitute a high quality answer? Make sure to write out the answer to your essay question, which you would consider to be worthy of an A grade.