5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition (39 page)

Sometimes we are unsuccessful at solving a problem; we cannot attain our goal. What hinders our ability to solve the problem? Obstacles to problem solving and biases in reasoning can keep us from reaching a goal.
Fixation
is an inability to look at a problem from a fresh perspective, using a prior strategy that may not lead to success. If we’ve solved 10 problems in a 50-problem set using one rule, we tend to use the same rule to solve the 11th. This tendency to approach the problem in the same way that has been successful previously is a type of fixation called
mental set.
We may get stuck on the 11th problem because it requires a different rule from the first 10. Another type of fixation that can be an obstacle to problem solving is called
functional fixedness,
a failure to use an object in an unusual way. For example, if people are carrying plastic tablecloths to a picnic area when it starts to rain, and they get soaked because they aren’t wearing raincoats and don’t have umbrellas, they are evidencing functional fixedness. They could have used the tablecloths to protect them from the rain. Using decision-making heuristics when we problem solve can result in errors in our judgments. Amos Tversky and Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman studied how and why people make illogical choices. They looked at two types of research. Normative studies ask how we
ought
to make decisions, and do not actually reflect how people make decisions. Descriptive studies look at how decisions are actually being made. Tversky and Kahneman found we often make erroneous decisions based on intuition. Under conditions of uncertainty, we often use the
availability heuristic,
estimating the probability of certain events in terms of how readily they come to mind. For example, many people who think nothing of taking a ride in a car are afraid to ride in an airplane because they think it is so dangerous. In fact, riding in an airplane is much safer; we are far less likely to be injured or die as a result of riding in an airplane. Other errors in decision making result from using the
representative heuristic,
a mental shortcut by
which a new situation is judged by how well it matches a stereotypical model or a particular prototype. Is someone who loves to solve math problems more likely to be a mathematics professor or a high school student? Although many people immediately reply that it must be the professor, the correct answer to the problem is the high school student. The total number of high school students is so much greater than the total number of mathematics professors that even if only a small fraction of high school students love to solve math problems, there will be many more of them than mathematics professors.
Framing
refers to the way a problem is posed. How an issue is framed can significantly affect people’s perceptions, decisions, and judgments. We are more likely to buy a product that says it is 90% fat-free, than if it says it contains 10% fat. A suggestion can have a powerful effect on how we respond to a problem. Kahneman and Tversky asked if the length of the Mississippi River is longer or shorter than some suggested length, then asked how long the person thinks the river actually is. When the suggested length was 500 miles, the length guessed was much smaller than when the suggested length was 5,000 miles. The
anchoring effect
is this tendency to be influenced by a suggested reference point, pulling our response toward that point.

Confirmation bias
is a tendency to search for and use information that supports our preconceptions, and ignore information that refutes our ideas. To lessen this tendency, we can consider the opposite.
Belief perseverance
is a tendency to hold on to a belief after the basis for the belief is discredited. This is different from
belief bias,
the tendency for our preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, making illogical conclusions seem valid or logical conclusions seem invalid.
Hindsight bias
is a tendency to falsely report, after the event, that we correctly predicted the outcome of the event. Finally, the
overconfidence bias
is a tendency to underestimate the extent to which our judgments are erroneous. For example, when reading this section dealing with obstacles to problem solving and errors in decision making, we tend to think that we make these errors less often than most other people.

Creativity
is the ability to think about a problem or idea in new and unusual ways, to come up with unconventional solutions. One way to overcome obstacles to problem solving and avoid biases in reasoning is to borrow strategies from creative problem solvers.
Convergent thinkers
use problem-solving strategies directed toward one correct solution to a problem, whereas
divergent thinkers
produce many answers to the same question, characteristic of creativity. When they feel stuck on a particular problem, creative thinkers tend to move on to others. Later they come back to those stumpers with a fresh approach. To combat the confirmation and overconfidence biases, when beginning to solve a problem, creative problem solvers
brainstorm,
generating lots of ideas without evaluating them. After collecting as many ideas as possible, solutions are reviewed and evaluated.

Directions:
For each question, choose the letter of the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question.

1.
The three stages of the Atkinson–Shiffrin process of memory are

(A) iconic, echoic, encoding

(B) sensory, short term, long term

(C) shallow, medium, and deep processing

(D) semantic, episodic, procedural

(E) cerebellum, temporal lobe, hippocampus

2.
Which of the following examples best illustrates episodic memory?

(A) telling someone how to tie a shoe

(B) answering correctly that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066

(C) knowing that the word for black in French is noir

(D) remembering that a clown was at your fifth birthday party

(E) long-term memory for the times tables learned in second grade

3.
Doug wrote a grocery list of 10 items, but leaves it at home. The list included in order: peas, corn, squash, onions, apples, pears, bananas, flour, milk, and eggs. If the law of primacy holds, which of the following is Doug most likely to remember when he gets to the store?

(A) peas, pears, eggs

(B) banana, flour, peas

(C) apples, pears, bananas

(D) flour, milk, eggs

(E) peas, corn, onions

4.
In the example above, which of the items would be recalled in Doug’s short-term memory immediately after writing the list?

(A) peas, corn, squash

(B) peas, corn, onions

(C) apples, pears, bananas

(D) flour, milk, eggs

(E) flour, corn, bananas

5.
According to the levels of processing theory of memory,

(A) we remember items that are repeated again and again

(B) maintenance rehearsal will encode items into our long-term memory

(C) deep processing involves elaborative rehearsal, ensuring encoding into long-term memory

(D) input, output, and storage are the three levels

(E) we can only hold 7 items in our short-term memory store before it is full

6.
Which of the following brain structures plays a key role in transferring information from short-term memory to long-term memory?

(A) hypothalamus

(B) thalamus

(C) hippocampus

(D) frontal lobe

(E) parietal lobe

7.
Dai was drunk, so his girlfriend convinced him to get out of his car, and she drove him home in her car. He could not remember where his car was parked when he got up the next morning, but after drinking some liquor, Dai remembered where he left his car. This phenomenon best illustrates

(A) the misinformation effect

(B) mood-congruent memory

(C) the framing effect

(D) state-dependent memory

(E) anterograde amnesia

8.
Phonemes are:

(A) the rules of grammar that dictate letter combinations in a language

(B) the smallest unit of sound in a language

(C) the smallest unit of meaning in a language

(D) semantically the same as morphemes

(E) about 100 different words that are common to all languages

9.
Because it has all of the features commonly associated with the concept bird, a robin is considered

(A) a prototype

(B) a schematic

(C) an algorithm

(D) a phenotype

(E) a heuristic

10.
Compared to convergent thinkers, to solve a problem divergent thinkers are more likely to:

(A) process information to arrive at the single best answer

(B) think creatively and generate multiple answers

(C) problem solve in a systematic step-by-step fashion

(D) frequently suffer from functional fixedness

(E) use algorithms rather than heuristics to arrive at a solution

11.
Unlike B. F. Skinner, Noam Chomsky believes that children

(A) learn to speak by mimicking the sounds around them

(B) speak more quickly if their parents correct their mispronunciations early

(C) are hard-wired for language acquisition

(D) learn language more quickly if positive rewards are given to them

(E) can learn to speak correctly only during a critical age

12.
Which of the following is a good example of functional fixedness?

(A) failing to use a dime as a screwdriver when you have lost your screwdriver

(B) not being able to solve a physics problem because you apply the same rule you always do

(C) using a blanket as a pillow

(D) adding water to a cake mix when it calls for milk

(E) thinking of an apple first when you are asked to name fruits

13.
Having been told that Syd is an engineer and Fran is an elementary school teacher, when Arnold meets the couple for the first time, he assumes that Syd is the husband and Fran is the wife, rather than the opposite, which is the case. This best illustrates:

(A) confirmation bias

(B) cognitive illusion

(C) the mere exposure effect

(D) the anchoring effect

(E) the representativeness heuristic

14.
Which of the following is a holophrase one-year-old Amanda is likely to say?

(A) “Mmmmm”

(B) “Gaga”

(C) “Eat apple”

(D) “I eated the cookie”

(E) “Bottle”

15.
Which of the following exemplifies retroactive interference?

(A) After suffering a blow to the head, Jean cannot form new memories.

(B) Elle failed a Spanish test because she studied for her Italian test after studying Spanish.

(C) Lee cannot remember an important date on the history exam.

(D) Gene cannot remember his new locker combination but remembers last year’s.

(E) Jodi remembers the first few items on her school supply list, but can’t remember the rest of them.

1. B—
The three stages of the Atkinson–Shiffrin process of memory are sensory memory, short-term (working memory), and long-term memory.

2. D—
Episodic memories, like having a clown at your fifth birthday, are memories of events which happened to you personally—rather than factual semantic memories like
dates, math problems, and French vocabulary—or procedural memories like how to tie a shoe.

3. E—
Peas, corn, and onions all are words at the beginning of the list. The primacy effect refers to better recall for words at the beginning of a list, which have been transferred to long-term memory as a result of rehearsal.

4. D—
Flour, milk, and eggs are the last items on the list. They are likely to be in our short-term memory for retrieval for 20 seconds unless rehearsed. Words at the beginning of the list, as in the question before, are more likely encoded into our long-term memories because we have rehearsed them more often than items at the end of the list.

5. C—
Elaborative rehearsal enables deeper processing of information into long-term memory. It makes both encoding into and retrieval from long-term memory easier.

6. C—
Although explicit memories are not necessarily stored in the hippocampus, we know that hippocampal damage does affect processing of explicit memories for semantic and episodic events into long-term memory.

7. D—
Dai remembered where he left his car when he was in the same physiological state as when he was last in his car.

8. B—
There are about 100 phonemes worldwide; the English language uses about 45 of them.

9. A—
When asked to mention types of birds, an average or typical one likely to come to mind (a prototype) would be a robin because it has all the characteristics of the category.

10. B—
Divergent thinkers think out of the box, generate more possible solutions, and are more creative thinkers than convergent thinkers.

11. C—
Nativist Noam Chomsky has suggested that babies come equipped with a
language acquisition device
in their brains that is preprogrammed to analyze language as they hear it and determine its rules.

12. A—
Using a dime to substitute for a screwdriver shows a lack of functional fixedness because you are able to come up with an unconventional way to use a standard item when needed.