PSYC 301 MIDTERM 2 UPDATED ACTUAL QUESTIONS
AND CORRECT ANSWERS
Question:
1. It is unlikely that mental definitions represent our conceptual knowledge because
Answer:
it is easy to find exceptions to any proposed definition
Question:
2. In some speech sounds, the flow of air out of the lungs is entirely interrupted for a moment; for other
sounds, the flow of air is restricted but air continues to flow. This feature of sound production is referred to
as
Answer:
manner of production
Question:
3. The term "basic-level category" refers to the
Answer:
most natural level of categorization, which is neither too specific nor too general
Question:
4. If you put your fingers on your throat and produce a [z] sound, you will feel vibration. This vibration
means the [z] sound is
Answer:
voiced
Question:
5. fMRI evidence suggests that the brain areas that are activated when someone is thinking about
non-living objects will
Answer:
be different from the active areas for living objects
Question:
6. In the word "cats" the "s" is
Answer:
a morpheme and a phoneme
Question:
7. In making judgments about category membership, people
Answer:
often make a distinction between typicality and actual category membership
Question:
8. Phonemes that differ in only one production feature sound similar to each other, whereas phonemes that
differ in several production features sound distinct. This suggests all of the following EXCEPT that
,Answer:
listeners should be able to detect speech sounds simply by isolating individual sounds.
Question:
9. Categorization models based on family resemblance rely on
Answer:
overlap in the features of the various members of a category
Question:
10. The claim that "language is generative" is the claim that
Answer:
the units of language can be combined and recombined to create vast numbers of new linguistic entities.
Question:
11. According to a parallel distributed processing (PDP) model, how is the fact "Neil Armstrong was an
astronaut" represented in the mind?
Answer:
Patterns of connections among many nodes separately represent Neil Armstrong and astronaut, and
through learning these patterns have become linked to each other
Question:
12. Nonfluent aphasia, in which a patient has good language comprehension but disrupted speech
production, is typically associated with damage to
Answer:
Broca's area
Question:
13. In one study, participants were asked to judge which was a "better" even number, 4 or 18. The
participants
Answer:
made the judgment in a fashion that implied a graded-membership pattern for the category "even number."
Question:
14. Marcus is talking on the phone to his mother about what he should buy at the grocery store when a
garbage truck drives past him. As a result, he is unable to hear what his mom is saying for 3 or 4 seconds.
Which of the following is LEAST likely to help him figure out what his mother said?
Answer:
understanding how categorical perception works
Question:
15. To parse a sentence, one needs to
Answer:
. determine the syntactic role of each word in the sentence.
Question:
16. Categorization is influenced by resemblance, but it is also influenced by factors other than
resemblance. Which of the following is evidence for the importance of these other factors?
,Answer:
Resemblance is typically determined by relatively superficial perceptual features, but sometimes
categorization depends on deeper essential properties of the category.
Question:
17. In the 1950s, the anthropologist Benjamin Whorf argued that a person's language powerfully and
irreversibly determines the possible range of that person's thoughts. In subsequent decades, this claim
Answer:
has found little specific support, with the implication that language certainly guides our thoughts but does
not influence what it is possible for someone to think.
Question:
18. In which of the following ways are exemplars and prototypes different?
Answer:
Prototypes, but not exemplars, rely on averaged, or combined memories to create the standard for a
category.
Question:
19. If Whorf's strong claims of linguistic relativity were proven to be correct, which of the following is
LEAST likely to be true?
Answer:
A child who speaks a language that does not make a distinction between the concepts of "blue" and
"green" could learn the distinction with enough practice later in life.
Question:
20. When compared to the statement "A canary is an animal," the reaction time for "A bird is an animal"
will be
Answer:
faster
Question:
21. How many morphemes does the word "reachable" have?
Answer:
two
Question:
22. An adult's conceptual knowledge relies on
Answer:
prototypes, exemplars, and beliefs
Question:
23. Mike suffered damage to the left frontal lobe of his brain and now has a difficult time speaking or
writing. Mike most likely has
Answer:
broca's aphasia
, Question:
24. According to the prototype notion, "being typical" for a category and "being a member of the category"
should go together; if one is true, the other is true. In light of other things you know, which of the
following is a problem for this broad claim?
Answer:
whales are more typical of fish than sea lampreys are, but whales aren't fish
Question:
25. Which of the following is NOT a principle that guides sentence parsing?
Answer:
decisions about the parsing of individual words are not made until the entire sentence has been heard
Question:
26. If asked to name as many birds as they can, participants are most likely to name
Answer:
birds resembling the bird prototype (e.g., robin, sparrow)
Question:
27. "Coarticulation" refers to the fact that in producing speech
Answer:
phonemes overlap, both in their production and in their sound pattern
Question:
28. In Trial 18 of a sentence verification task, participants see the sentence "A robin is a bird." In Trial 42
they see "A penguin is a bird." According to the prototype notion, we should expect faster responses to
Answer:
"robin" because participants more readily see the resemblance between "robin" and the bird prototype
Question:
29. In some cases factors outside the language (e.g., the setting in which a sentence occurs) can help us
understand garden-path sentences. These factors are referred to as
Answer:
extralinguistic context
Question:
30. Collins and Quillian proposed that conceptual knowledge is represented in the mind through a
hierarchy of concepts. In their model, the property "eats food" would be stored
Answer:
at a high level, linked to the node within the network that represents all things that eat
Question:
31. The plural for the word "pill" is pronounced with a [z] sound (it is pronounced "pillz"), but the plural
for "pit" is pronounced with an [s] sound ("pits"). This contrast is governed by a rule of
Answer:
phonology
AND CORRECT ANSWERS
Question:
1. It is unlikely that mental definitions represent our conceptual knowledge because
Answer:
it is easy to find exceptions to any proposed definition
Question:
2. In some speech sounds, the flow of air out of the lungs is entirely interrupted for a moment; for other
sounds, the flow of air is restricted but air continues to flow. This feature of sound production is referred to
as
Answer:
manner of production
Question:
3. The term "basic-level category" refers to the
Answer:
most natural level of categorization, which is neither too specific nor too general
Question:
4. If you put your fingers on your throat and produce a [z] sound, you will feel vibration. This vibration
means the [z] sound is
Answer:
voiced
Question:
5. fMRI evidence suggests that the brain areas that are activated when someone is thinking about
non-living objects will
Answer:
be different from the active areas for living objects
Question:
6. In the word "cats" the "s" is
Answer:
a morpheme and a phoneme
Question:
7. In making judgments about category membership, people
Answer:
often make a distinction between typicality and actual category membership
Question:
8. Phonemes that differ in only one production feature sound similar to each other, whereas phonemes that
differ in several production features sound distinct. This suggests all of the following EXCEPT that
,Answer:
listeners should be able to detect speech sounds simply by isolating individual sounds.
Question:
9. Categorization models based on family resemblance rely on
Answer:
overlap in the features of the various members of a category
Question:
10. The claim that "language is generative" is the claim that
Answer:
the units of language can be combined and recombined to create vast numbers of new linguistic entities.
Question:
11. According to a parallel distributed processing (PDP) model, how is the fact "Neil Armstrong was an
astronaut" represented in the mind?
Answer:
Patterns of connections among many nodes separately represent Neil Armstrong and astronaut, and
through learning these patterns have become linked to each other
Question:
12. Nonfluent aphasia, in which a patient has good language comprehension but disrupted speech
production, is typically associated with damage to
Answer:
Broca's area
Question:
13. In one study, participants were asked to judge which was a "better" even number, 4 or 18. The
participants
Answer:
made the judgment in a fashion that implied a graded-membership pattern for the category "even number."
Question:
14. Marcus is talking on the phone to his mother about what he should buy at the grocery store when a
garbage truck drives past him. As a result, he is unable to hear what his mom is saying for 3 or 4 seconds.
Which of the following is LEAST likely to help him figure out what his mother said?
Answer:
understanding how categorical perception works
Question:
15. To parse a sentence, one needs to
Answer:
. determine the syntactic role of each word in the sentence.
Question:
16. Categorization is influenced by resemblance, but it is also influenced by factors other than
resemblance. Which of the following is evidence for the importance of these other factors?
,Answer:
Resemblance is typically determined by relatively superficial perceptual features, but sometimes
categorization depends on deeper essential properties of the category.
Question:
17. In the 1950s, the anthropologist Benjamin Whorf argued that a person's language powerfully and
irreversibly determines the possible range of that person's thoughts. In subsequent decades, this claim
Answer:
has found little specific support, with the implication that language certainly guides our thoughts but does
not influence what it is possible for someone to think.
Question:
18. In which of the following ways are exemplars and prototypes different?
Answer:
Prototypes, but not exemplars, rely on averaged, or combined memories to create the standard for a
category.
Question:
19. If Whorf's strong claims of linguistic relativity were proven to be correct, which of the following is
LEAST likely to be true?
Answer:
A child who speaks a language that does not make a distinction between the concepts of "blue" and
"green" could learn the distinction with enough practice later in life.
Question:
20. When compared to the statement "A canary is an animal," the reaction time for "A bird is an animal"
will be
Answer:
faster
Question:
21. How many morphemes does the word "reachable" have?
Answer:
two
Question:
22. An adult's conceptual knowledge relies on
Answer:
prototypes, exemplars, and beliefs
Question:
23. Mike suffered damage to the left frontal lobe of his brain and now has a difficult time speaking or
writing. Mike most likely has
Answer:
broca's aphasia
, Question:
24. According to the prototype notion, "being typical" for a category and "being a member of the category"
should go together; if one is true, the other is true. In light of other things you know, which of the
following is a problem for this broad claim?
Answer:
whales are more typical of fish than sea lampreys are, but whales aren't fish
Question:
25. Which of the following is NOT a principle that guides sentence parsing?
Answer:
decisions about the parsing of individual words are not made until the entire sentence has been heard
Question:
26. If asked to name as many birds as they can, participants are most likely to name
Answer:
birds resembling the bird prototype (e.g., robin, sparrow)
Question:
27. "Coarticulation" refers to the fact that in producing speech
Answer:
phonemes overlap, both in their production and in their sound pattern
Question:
28. In Trial 18 of a sentence verification task, participants see the sentence "A robin is a bird." In Trial 42
they see "A penguin is a bird." According to the prototype notion, we should expect faster responses to
Answer:
"robin" because participants more readily see the resemblance between "robin" and the bird prototype
Question:
29. In some cases factors outside the language (e.g., the setting in which a sentence occurs) can help us
understand garden-path sentences. These factors are referred to as
Answer:
extralinguistic context
Question:
30. Collins and Quillian proposed that conceptual knowledge is represented in the mind through a
hierarchy of concepts. In their model, the property "eats food" would be stored
Answer:
at a high level, linked to the node within the network that represents all things that eat
Question:
31. The plural for the word "pill" is pronounced with a [z] sound (it is pronounced "pillz"), but the plural
for "pit" is pronounced with an [s] sound ("pits"). This contrast is governed by a rule of
Answer:
phonology
