1. Which one of the following can be said to be true of language?

a) The psychology of language is concerned with the organization and processing of written language only.
b) Language lies at the interface of pure psychology, linguistics and mathematics.
c) Language is a simple process with very few mysteries.
d) None of the above.

2. All of the following represent components of natural language use except for ____________.

a) Syntax
b) Pragmatics
c) Mnemonics
d) Semantics
e) Discourse

3. When related sentences are put together to make a sensible message, this is referred to as _________.

a) Context
b) Semantics
c) Pragmatics
d) Discourse
e) Reading

4. Which TWO of the following statements are true of parsing?

Psycholinguistics has been especially concerned with how people parse sentences – that is, how they break them down into their correct phonological structures.
Parsing has to be done because, otherwise, it would be impossible to interpret a sentence at all.
The difficulty in understanding some sentences can be ascribed to an initial misinterpretation; this is called a ‘country walk’.
Misparsing a sentence can result in failure in comprehension at all levels.

a) 1 & 2
b) 1 & 3
c) 2 & 4
d) 3 & 4

5. Which of the following statements about interpretation of language is correct?

a) There is one principal class of phenomena that requires more than literal meaning.
b) In understanding metaphor the processor first has to parse sentences, then has to determine their significance too.
c) The meaning of “Could you close the door?” can be established on the basis of semantics alone.
d) Both (a) and (b).

6. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT in terms of the modular view of word-sense retrieval?

a) The modular view of word-sense retrieval is that word meanings are stored in a way that is not context sensitive.
b) When we encounter a string of letters that represents a word, we automatically look up and retrieve the meaning.
c) If a string represents more than one word, then only one meaning is immediately retrieved if the context indicates which one.
d)The modular view of word-meaning extraction is attractive because it keeps the mechanisms of looking up word-meaning separate from context.

7. Which of the following statements about Swinney’s 1979 experiment is FALSE?

a) Participants were presented with spoken passages like these: (a) Mary needed to buy some presents, so she went to the bank; (b) Mary found the river cold, so she swam to the bank.
b) Immediately after the presentation of the ambiguous word, Swinney presented a single letter string on a screen; participants had to decide whether the letter string was a word or not (a lexical decision).
c) When the string was a word, it could either be related to the intended sense of the ambiguous word (e.g. ‘money’), related to the other sense (e.g. ‘mud’), or unrelated to either.
d) It turned out that there was differential advantage (priming) for different senses of the word when there was a delay before the second stimulus, depending on the meaning; so context appeared to affect initial sense selection.

8. Gibbs’ work revealed many things, but three of the following are false in relation to his findings. Which is the CORRECT answer?

a) The findings of Gibbs show that the applicability of the standard comprehension model is widespread.
b) Comprehending sentences in stories is the same as comprehending actual interactions in dialogue.
c) Work on indirect speech-act comprehension reinforces the view that literal interpretation is always necessary.
d) Similar findings have been obtained for metaphor comprehension as have been obtained with speech-act comprehension.

9. The common term used to describe all types of language loss is ________.

a) Dyslexia
b) Aphasia
c) Dysphasia
d) Lexphasia
e) None of the above

10. Which of these statements about scenario research is true?

a) In the sentence ‘Harry drove to London ’, there may be a default representation of the fact that a car was used. Subsequent mention of a car should not be a problem, because its default is already in the representation resulting from the sentence. Garrod and Sanford failed to show this.
b) Sanford and Garrod argued that we automatically relate what is being said to background knowledge, and that background knowledge is organized in long-term memory about specific situations.
c) In Garnham’s experiment, ‘cooked’ was a better retrieval cue for the sentence ‘Mary cooked the chips’ than was ‘fried’ because ‘cooked’ actually appears in the sentence.
d) Scenarios result from text comprehension; they do not help comprehension take place.

11. According to Lakoff, metaphors have a significant influence in how we think and understand our social worlds. Which of the following examples below is not an example of a metaphor?

a) A good book is like a good meal.
b) Necessity is the mother of invention.
c) When Helen heard the news, she almost had a meltdown.
d) There was considerable political fallout from the scandal.
e) The students demonstrated a tidal wave of generosity.

12. With respect to problem-solving, which of the following statements is true?

a) Being numerate calls for a standard application of arithmetic procedures drawn from memory.
b) Creative problem-solving can also be done according to a formula.
c) Even if we experience the same problem type over and over again, creative problem-solving never becomes routine.
d) None of the above.

13. Research studies that examine people�s responses on the Watson Selection test, the military problem puzzle and speak-aloud protocols have demonstrated that reasoning about problems is strongly influenced by ____________.

a) Logic
b) Detection of the problem
c) Conditional probabilities
d) Heuristics
e) Representation of the problem

14. With respect to anagram problems, which of the following statements are correct?

a) The simplest strategy is blind search, in which you just move the letters around blindly until a phrase appears.
b) Constraining the search space will help to speed up the problem-solving process.
c) All problems can be construed in terms of search spaces.
d) All of the above.

15. Which one of the following statements are true of the Wason Selection, or four-card problem (Wason, 1966)?

The Wason Selection Task is a good task because it produces identical results in concrete and abstract forms.
In general, concrete versions of the task are more difficult to think about than uncluttered abstract versions.
Although the task is one of pure reasoning, some concrete versions are easier because of how we think in certain social situations.
People typically pick one card correctly, but pick an inappropriate one as the second choice in the original version of the task.

a) 1 & 2
b) 3 & 4
c) 1 & 4
d) 2 & 3

16. Which of the following is an example of people�s reliance on the representativeness heuristic to make decisions or judgments?

a) People report that they did more than 50% of the work in domestic situations
b) People tend to overestimate car accidents
c) People are more likely to attribute a case of heartburn to spicy food than bland food
d) People tend to underestimate death from diabetes
e) People report hitting more red traffic lights when late to work because of traffic

17. All of the following qualities describe reasoning by intuition except for ____________.

a) Occurs automatically
b) Fast analysis of information
c) Strong feeling of conviction
d) Logical analysis
e) Difficult to justify

18. When two groups of participants were each shown a different set of results based on an experiment with rats, both groups reported that the results shown to them were obvious outcomes. This suggests that sometimes things appear to be more obvious than they should. Which cognitive phenomenon can explain this effect?

a) Hindsight bias
b) Intuition
c) Availability heuristic
d) Conditional reasoning
e) Search space

19. While considerable research suggests that human�s exhibit relatively poor reasoning ability, what reasons have been given to be critical of this research?

a) Rationality is not absolute
b) Experiments lack ecological validity
c) Satisficing responses are rational responses
d) People have limited time and data available
e) All of the above

20. The temporary inability to retrieve a word that is well-known to us is referred to as the _________.

a) Recency effect
b) Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
c) Wernicke�s aphasia
d) Acquired dyslexia
e) Broca�s aphasia