PSY 654 STUDY GUIDE 1 UPDATED ACTUAL QUESTIONS
AND CORRECT ANSWERS
Question:
1. 1. In what way can highlight help learning?
Answer:
Helps you remember whatever you highlighted much better
Question:
2. 2. Name two limitations of highlighting
Answer:
No difference in bettering performance whether you highlight or not The things you didn't highlight you
remember worse (laser focus on highlighted part)
Question:
3. 3. What are diminishing returns of learning in re-reading?
Answer:
- On the 4th or 5th read, you don't end up retaining more information (plateaus); After you keep rereading
it, your brain becomes familiar with it but it just means you recognize it, not that you know or understand it
Question:
4. 4. When is re-reading better than testing? When is testing better than re-reading?
Answer:
If your test or quiz would be happening within the next 5 minutes; and if you have days of time before the
test
Question:
5. Describe an experiment that would demonstrate these patterns of results.
Answer:
- Fowler & Barker (1974); gave people scientific articles to read, one group could highlight and one group
could not
- Peterson (1992); gave people history articles to read, then gave them application problems and found the
highlighting group did much worse
- Rothkopf (1968); read 1500-word text, test scores after 0, 1 ,2, and 4 reads found after 4th time there are
almost no additional gains
- Roediger & Karpicke (2006); read passages - if within 5 mins, rereading is better, but if within days or
several hours, self-testing is better
Question:
6. 5. Provide one example of a test/quiz that you would be better off re-reading over and over again as
opposed to testing yourself
Answer:
If your test or quiz would be happening within the next 5 minutes
, Question:
7. 6. What part of the cerebral cortex is involved in creating a mental representation of the space around
you?
Answer:
The parietal lobe helps set up 3D representations of the world around us
Question:
8. 7. Discuss the contributions that Santiago Ramon y Cahal and Edgar Adrian made to our understanding
of the structure and function of the brain
Answer:
- Santiago Cahal discovered that when you look at neurons theyre not necessarily directly connected to one
another
- Discovered the precise structure of a brain cell
- Had no desire to be a neuroscientist, but he combined art and medicine to make drawings
- Edgar Adrian discovered methods for measuring electrical signals in the nervous system
- More intensive stimuli do not result in stronger signals, but rather signals that are sent more often (action
potentials)
Question:
9. 8. How do neurons code for the intensity of a stimulus? Are action potentials stronger for more intense
stimuli? Are action potentials fired more frequently formore intense stimuli? Both?
Answer:
- All neurons fire at the same rate; if the stimulus is a higher intensity, the more often that neuron is going
to fire
- Action potentials dont get bigger or more powerful, they just go off more often
Question:
10. 9. What was the significance of the work done by David Hubel and Thornsten Weisel? What was the
significance of the work done by Charles Gross?
Answer:
Hubel and Weisel worked on "feature detectors"
- Worked on cats; implanted microelectrodes in specific neurons and showed them very specific stimuli
- Found that neurons in our visual cortex which are very sensitive to lines of different orientations,
curvature, hues of colour only fire for one specific thing, the other nearby neurons that arent responsible
for it will not fire
- Charles Gross worked on "complex stimuli"
- Discovered that one information gets processed in the occipital lobe, it gets passed down to the temporal
lobe (allows us to make meaning of the world around us)
Question:
11. 10. What is the difference between specificity coding and population coding? Use facial processing to
make your argument. How does sparse coding build on the idea of population coding?
AND CORRECT ANSWERS
Question:
1. 1. In what way can highlight help learning?
Answer:
Helps you remember whatever you highlighted much better
Question:
2. 2. Name two limitations of highlighting
Answer:
No difference in bettering performance whether you highlight or not The things you didn't highlight you
remember worse (laser focus on highlighted part)
Question:
3. 3. What are diminishing returns of learning in re-reading?
Answer:
- On the 4th or 5th read, you don't end up retaining more information (plateaus); After you keep rereading
it, your brain becomes familiar with it but it just means you recognize it, not that you know or understand it
Question:
4. 4. When is re-reading better than testing? When is testing better than re-reading?
Answer:
If your test or quiz would be happening within the next 5 minutes; and if you have days of time before the
test
Question:
5. Describe an experiment that would demonstrate these patterns of results.
Answer:
- Fowler & Barker (1974); gave people scientific articles to read, one group could highlight and one group
could not
- Peterson (1992); gave people history articles to read, then gave them application problems and found the
highlighting group did much worse
- Rothkopf (1968); read 1500-word text, test scores after 0, 1 ,2, and 4 reads found after 4th time there are
almost no additional gains
- Roediger & Karpicke (2006); read passages - if within 5 mins, rereading is better, but if within days or
several hours, self-testing is better
Question:
6. 5. Provide one example of a test/quiz that you would be better off re-reading over and over again as
opposed to testing yourself
Answer:
If your test or quiz would be happening within the next 5 minutes
, Question:
7. 6. What part of the cerebral cortex is involved in creating a mental representation of the space around
you?
Answer:
The parietal lobe helps set up 3D representations of the world around us
Question:
8. 7. Discuss the contributions that Santiago Ramon y Cahal and Edgar Adrian made to our understanding
of the structure and function of the brain
Answer:
- Santiago Cahal discovered that when you look at neurons theyre not necessarily directly connected to one
another
- Discovered the precise structure of a brain cell
- Had no desire to be a neuroscientist, but he combined art and medicine to make drawings
- Edgar Adrian discovered methods for measuring electrical signals in the nervous system
- More intensive stimuli do not result in stronger signals, but rather signals that are sent more often (action
potentials)
Question:
9. 8. How do neurons code for the intensity of a stimulus? Are action potentials stronger for more intense
stimuli? Are action potentials fired more frequently formore intense stimuli? Both?
Answer:
- All neurons fire at the same rate; if the stimulus is a higher intensity, the more often that neuron is going
to fire
- Action potentials dont get bigger or more powerful, they just go off more often
Question:
10. 9. What was the significance of the work done by David Hubel and Thornsten Weisel? What was the
significance of the work done by Charles Gross?
Answer:
Hubel and Weisel worked on "feature detectors"
- Worked on cats; implanted microelectrodes in specific neurons and showed them very specific stimuli
- Found that neurons in our visual cortex which are very sensitive to lines of different orientations,
curvature, hues of colour only fire for one specific thing, the other nearby neurons that arent responsible
for it will not fire
- Charles Gross worked on "complex stimuli"
- Discovered that one information gets processed in the occipital lobe, it gets passed down to the temporal
lobe (allows us to make meaning of the world around us)
Question:
11. 10. What is the difference between specificity coding and population coding? Use facial processing to
make your argument. How does sparse coding build on the idea of population coding?
