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PYC 3703 Tutorial Letter 201/1/2019 Cognition: Memory, Thinking and Problem Solving
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PYC3703/201/1/2019Tutorial Letter 201/1/2019
Cognition: Memory, Thinking and
Problem Solving
PYC3703
Semester 1
Department of Psychology
Feedback – Assignment 01
BARCODE
,Dear Student
In this tutorial letter we provide the correct answers to the questions in Assignment 01, with short
explanations of why a particular alternative is correct. If you answered a question incorrectly please read
the explanation in conjunction with the discussion in the prescribed book. Use the page references
given, or the index in the prescribed book, to locate the appropriate page in the book where the topic is
discussed. In the comments below CP stands for the currently available edition of the prescribed book:
Goldstein, E.B. and Van Hooff, J.C (2018). Cognitive Psychology (1st EMEA edition).
Please note that this assignment contributes to your final mark. The two assignments together count
20% of your final mark, and the examination makes up the other 80%. Your final mark for the module will
consist of your year mark (maximum of 20%) for the two assignments (Assignment 01 and 02) plus your
examination mark (maximum of 80%).
Your PYC3703 teaching team
QUESTION 1
During the 1950s, many psychologists were becoming disillusioned with behaviourism, and cognitive
psychology began to emerge. A major reason why they were disappointed with behaviourism is because
it - - - - -.
1. was a purely empirical approach to psychological research
2. could not throw any light on the internal, cognitive mechanisms underlying human behaviour
3. did not pay sufficient attention to the observation and measurement of behaviour
4. focused too much on social and emotional aspects and not enough on the personal and
introspective factors causing behaviour
Option 2 is correct. Cognitive psychology emerged mainly in reaction to the extreme assumption of the
behaviourists that only observable aspects should be studied and that the internal mechanisms of the
mind cannot be explored in a scientific manner. The main problem with the behaviourists methodology is
that one is forced to postulate cognitive factors, that are not directly observable, in order to explain
reasonably complex psychological processes such as language, memory and reasoning (CP, pp. 10-12).
QUESTION 2
Donder’s (1868) main reasoning for doing a choice reaction time experiment was to study - - - - -.
1. sensation
2. childhood attachment styles
3. decision making
4. personality development
Option 3 is correct. Donders was interested in determining how long it takes for a person to make a
decision. He demonstrated this by determining a person’s reaction time i.e. how long it takes to respond
to presentation of a stimulus. He measured simple reaction time by asking his participants to push a
button as rapidly as possible when they saw a light go on. He measured choice reaction time by using
two lights and asking his participants to push the left button when they saw the left light go on, and the
right button when they saw the right light go on. Reaction times in the choice task were longer than that
of the simple task leading Donders to reason that the difference in reaction time between these tasks
indicated how long it took participants to make the decision that lead to pushing the correct button (CP,
pp. 4-5).
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, PYC3703/201
QUESTION 3
The founder of the first laboratory of scientific psychology was - - - - -
1. Franciscus Donders.
2. Hermann von Helmholtz.
3. Wilhelm Wundt.
4. Hermann Ebbinghaus.
Option 3 is correct. Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology at the University
of Leipzig in Germany. Wundt’s approach of structuralism dominated psychology in the late 1800s and
early 1900s (CP, pp. 5-6). Franciscus Donders conducted experiments that demonstrated how long it
takes a person to make a decision (CP, pp. 4-5). Hermann Ebbinghaus demonstrated the time it took to
forget (CP, pp. 6-7). Hermann von Helmholtz was a physicist whose contributions to perception included
the realisation that the image on the retina is ambiguous (CP, p. 63).
QUESTION 4
John Watson believed that psychology should focus on the study of - -.
1. observable behaviour
2. mental processes
3. consciousness
4. attention
Option 1 is correct. John Watson founded behaviourism, which emphasised the importance of
observable behaviour in response to the shortfalls he perceived in analytic introspection, which was
popular at the time. Watson wanted to restrict psychology to observable behavioural data and rejected
the idea of going beyond those data to draw conclusions about unobservable mental events (CP, p. 9).
QUESTION 5
Regarding children's language development, Noam Chomsky noted that children generate many
sentences they have never heard before. From this, he concluded that language development is driven
largely by - -.
1. an inborn biological program
2. cultural influences
3. classical conditioning
4. Operant conditioning
Option 1 is correct. Skinner argued that children learn language through operant conditioning in that
children imitate speech that they hear and repeat correct speech because it is rewarded. Chomsky
(1959), however, observed that children say many sentences that have never been rewarded by a
parent, and that during the normal course of language development, they go through a stage in which
they use incorrect grammar even though this incorrect grammar may never have been reinforced (CP, p.
11).
QUESTION 6
Broadbent was the first person to develop which of the following?
1. A flow diagram depicting the mind as processing information in a sequence of stages.
2. A computer program for solving logic problems.
3. An experimental procedure for studying the way people process information.
4. The first textbook of cognitive psychology.
Option 1 is correct. Broadbent’s flow diagram provided a way to visualise and analyse the operation of
the mind in terms of a sequence of processing stages, and proposed a model that could be tested by
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, further experiments. His filter model of attention diagram shows many messages entering a ‘filter’, which
selects the message to which the person is attending for further processing by a detector and then
storage in memory (in CP refer to Figure 1.10 on page 12).
QUESTION 7
The ‘cognitive revolution’ - - - - -.
1. occurred rapidly, within a period of a few years, in response to the attacks on Skinner and the
development of computers
2. extended over a long period of time, beginning in the early part of the century, in reaction to
Wundt’s introspection experiments
3. was a gradual process that occurred over a few decades
4. part of experimental psychology since the founding of the first psychology laboratory
Option 3 is correct. Chomsky’s observation of language development, Cherry’s dichotic listening
experiment, Broadbent’s flow-chart filter model, the rise of artificial intelligence and information theory-
represented the beginning of a shift in psychology from behaviourism (the study of stimulus-response
relations) to cognitive psychology (the study of mental processes we cannot observe directly) (CP, pp.
13-14).
QUESTION 8
The approach to studying the brain in order to understand what specific part of it controls a specific skill
or cognitive process is called - - - - -.
1. synthesis
2. localisation of function
3. distributed Representation
4. brain lesioning
Option 2 is correct. As the name suggests ‘localization of functions’ refers to the process of determining
where a specific cognitive ‘function’ is located in the brain. For example, cognitive neuroscience
research suggests that the cognitive function or process of auditory perception is controlled by the
temporal lobe, because injury to this lobe results in impairment in perception and processing of sound
(CP, pp. 36-39). Please note that localization of function is an attempt to map the brain, but that many
higher-level cognitive processes cannot be narrowly localized in the brain because they are spread out
over different areas.
QUESTION 9
Signals between neurons occur when these chemical messengers transmit information from one neuron
to the next across the synaptic gap.
1. Synapses
2. Terminal buttons
3. Neurotransmitters
4. Action potentials
Option 3 is correct. Neurotransmitters are the chemicals that pass signals from the axon’s terminal bulbs
to the dendrites of the receiving neuron (CP, p. 30). Option 1 is incorrect because a synapse is the small
gap between two neurons and this gap needs to be crossed before information is transmitted to the
receiving neuron.
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