COGNITION AND SENSATION COMPREHENSIVE EXAM
2026/2027 QUESTIONS AND SOLUTIONS RATED A+
✔✔creativity - ✔✔the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas
✔✔functional fixedness (fixation) - ✔✔the inability to see a new use for an object
✔✔Executive functions - ✔✔cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate,
organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior
✔✔Algorithm - ✔✔a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem
✔✔Heuristic - ✔✔a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and
solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms
✔✔representativeness heuristic - ✔✔judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well
they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other
relevant information
✔✔availability heuristic - ✔✔making a decision based on the answer that most easily
comes to mind
✔✔Insight - ✔✔a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem
✔✔confirmation bias - ✔✔a tendency to search for information that confirms one's
preconceptions
✔✔Cognitive bias - ✔✔error in thinking that involves processing threatening information
or interpreting ambiguous information negatively
✔✔hindsight bias - ✔✔"I knew it all along"
✔✔Overconfidence - ✔✔the tendency to be more confident than correct
✔✔Fixation - ✔✔the inability to see a problem from a new perspective
✔✔Mental set - ✔✔a tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way
that has been successful in the past
✔✔Intuition - ✔✔the power of knowing things without thinking; sharp insight
✔✔belief perseverance - ✔✔clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which
they were formed has been discredited
, ✔✔Framing - ✔✔the way an issue is posed
✔✔Nudge - ✔✔framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial
decisions
✔✔Gambler's Fallacy - ✔✔Belief that past events affect future probabilities.
✔✔sunk cost fallacy - ✔✔we are reluctant to waste something we have paid for
✔✔ Sensation - ✔✔the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system
receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment
✔✔sensory receptors - ✔✔sensory nerve endings that respond to stimuli
✔✔Psychophysics - ✔✔The study of how physical stimuli are translated into
psychological experience.
✔✔Perception - ✔✔The act of becoming aware through the senses
✔✔bottom-up processing - ✔✔analysis that begins with the sense receptors and works
up to the brain's integration of sensory information.
✔✔top-down processing - ✔✔the use of preexisting knowledge to organize individual
features into a unified whole
✔✔Transduction - ✔✔conversion of one form of energy into another
✔✔Absolute threshold - ✔✔the weakest amount of a stimulus that a person can detect
half the time
✔✔Subliminal - ✔✔below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness
✔✔signal detection theory - ✔✔Canceling out background noise, pick out a single
sound and respond. Like knowing your kids cry out of a crowd.
✔✔Priming - ✔✔An enhanced ability to think of a stimulus, such as a word or object, as
a result of a recent exposure to the stimulus
✔✔difference threshold (just noticeable difference) - ✔✔smallest amount of change
needed in a stimulus before we detect a change
✔✔Webers law - ✔✔to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant
minimum percentage
Noticeable difference
2026/2027 QUESTIONS AND SOLUTIONS RATED A+
✔✔creativity - ✔✔the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas
✔✔functional fixedness (fixation) - ✔✔the inability to see a new use for an object
✔✔Executive functions - ✔✔cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate,
organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior
✔✔Algorithm - ✔✔a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem
✔✔Heuristic - ✔✔a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and
solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms
✔✔representativeness heuristic - ✔✔judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well
they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other
relevant information
✔✔availability heuristic - ✔✔making a decision based on the answer that most easily
comes to mind
✔✔Insight - ✔✔a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem
✔✔confirmation bias - ✔✔a tendency to search for information that confirms one's
preconceptions
✔✔Cognitive bias - ✔✔error in thinking that involves processing threatening information
or interpreting ambiguous information negatively
✔✔hindsight bias - ✔✔"I knew it all along"
✔✔Overconfidence - ✔✔the tendency to be more confident than correct
✔✔Fixation - ✔✔the inability to see a problem from a new perspective
✔✔Mental set - ✔✔a tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way
that has been successful in the past
✔✔Intuition - ✔✔the power of knowing things without thinking; sharp insight
✔✔belief perseverance - ✔✔clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which
they were formed has been discredited
, ✔✔Framing - ✔✔the way an issue is posed
✔✔Nudge - ✔✔framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial
decisions
✔✔Gambler's Fallacy - ✔✔Belief that past events affect future probabilities.
✔✔sunk cost fallacy - ✔✔we are reluctant to waste something we have paid for
✔✔ Sensation - ✔✔the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system
receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment
✔✔sensory receptors - ✔✔sensory nerve endings that respond to stimuli
✔✔Psychophysics - ✔✔The study of how physical stimuli are translated into
psychological experience.
✔✔Perception - ✔✔The act of becoming aware through the senses
✔✔bottom-up processing - ✔✔analysis that begins with the sense receptors and works
up to the brain's integration of sensory information.
✔✔top-down processing - ✔✔the use of preexisting knowledge to organize individual
features into a unified whole
✔✔Transduction - ✔✔conversion of one form of energy into another
✔✔Absolute threshold - ✔✔the weakest amount of a stimulus that a person can detect
half the time
✔✔Subliminal - ✔✔below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness
✔✔signal detection theory - ✔✔Canceling out background noise, pick out a single
sound and respond. Like knowing your kids cry out of a crowd.
✔✔Priming - ✔✔An enhanced ability to think of a stimulus, such as a word or object, as
a result of a recent exposure to the stimulus
✔✔difference threshold (just noticeable difference) - ✔✔smallest amount of change
needed in a stimulus before we detect a change
✔✔Webers law - ✔✔to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant
minimum percentage
Noticeable difference
