FOPAC Extended response practice questions .docx

**Language practice questions:** **Question**: Why do many people claim language is universal? **Ανσωερ**: The idea that language is universal means that it is something that all people learn, regardless of the culture they grow up in or the language they need to use. There are number of lines of...

**Language practice questions:** **Question**: Why do many people claim language is universal? **Ανσωερ**: The idea that language is universal means that it is something that all people learn, regardless of the culture they grow up in or the language they need to use. There are number of lines of evidence that suggest this. One has been to look at how language is used cross-culturally. In this respect, we know of no culture that does not use language that has similar properties to all other languages, such as syntactic categories, the organisation of phonology, language being productive and the possibility to express infinite numbers of things. This includes people who are congenitally deaf who use sign language, suggesting that language is not only universal to people who speak, but universal to other modalities of communication like signing. There is also evidence to show that language *acquisition* is universal. The most famous evidence for this comes from deaf children growing up in Nicaragua. These children had no language input from adults at all (they were taught by teachers they were supposed to but couldn't lip-read), yet invented their own sign language. This language was very similar to other sign languages that exist in the world and had all the hallmarks of what we think of as important in language, like word categories, morphology, and so on. This suggests that, as long as a group of children can talk to each other, they will learn how to use language. This shows, that, unlike many other skills we learn such as mathematics, cultural transmission from adults to children is not necessary for us to learn language. This suggests the universality of language is not simply because it is so useful that adults almost always teach it to children. Another way of providing evidence that language is universal is to look at the developmental learning sequence. People have found that this sequence is shared across cultures despite children growing up in extremely different environments. In particular, all normally developing children babble in a similar way in their first 6 months, and then begin to babble with intrusions from the sounds of their own language. After that they say single words, then holophrases, and finally more complex grammatical structures. One cannot find children that do not follow this order. This provides further developmental evidence that even the stages involved in language development are universal. Comment: This is just one possible answer. There are other things you might have wanted to put in about the universals of language. Some stuff about where the bounds are would be possible -- i.e., who doesn't learn language. This is also quite a broad question, so I don't expect a massively detailed answer. You might notice that whilst we had a section on this in one of the lectures, some of the stuff I put in came from some of the other lectures. What I'm interested in here is your ability to distil the question down and show you know more than just what the examples are. Do you know what the examples really mean? Did you realise the Nicaraguan study is an example ruling out cultural transmission?  **Question**: What is categorical perception in spoken language and what can it tell us about our interactions with the world? **Answer**: Categorical perception in spoken language is to do with the processing of phonemes. These are the smallest units of sound you can break words into. For example, the 's','m','ur', and 'f' in *smurf*. The basic idea is that our perception of phonemes does not map perfectly onto the physical reality. We can measure this by creating an acoustic continuum across two phonemes, like '*b*' (in bear) and '*p*' (in pear). This means that there would be a sound exactly in the middle of 'b' and 'p' and a continuum of sounds more like 'p' and more like 'b'. From these, we can examine people's perception of phonemes. If people were to hear 'b' and 'p' to a similar extent as changes to the stimuli across the continuum, it would suggest we perceive phonemes like the acoustic reality. We could measure this by seeing how often people thought a 'b' or a 'p' really was a 'b' or a 'p' and see if graded stimuli changes cause similarly graded responses. This might be misleading because if a stimuli can be, for example, 80% of one type and 20% of the other, as people may simply give 100% of the same response to the type with 80%. We would therefore need to also see if people actually perceive the stimuli purely (i.e., 100% 'b' or 'p') when they are not pure stimuli.  The actual results show people's perception is not similar to the acoustic reality. Rather, they tend to give much more polarized answers whereby they perceive a phoneme as one or the other, even when they are acoustically mixed. The categorical perception of phonemes has important implications. One is that it makes it much simpler for us to hear people with different voices. If we constantly heard intermediate sounds when speaking to people, we would be constantly confused by things people are saying when two words were possible (e.g., I played with the **?pit** or **?bit**). That would be very common when speaking with people with accents because most of their speech may not be close to an idealized phoneme. Thus, for each speaker, we would have to learn how their particular speech maps to each phoneme -- a massive task. A second implication is that we can use the categorical perception of phonemes to help children with disorders as children with poor categorisation often have reading and language problems. In this case, because this skill is learnt by the age of one, we could identify and thus help individuals at a very early age. A third implication is that it shows that under the right circumstances, we learn to perceive the world in a very different way from reality. This is not just something special about language and humans, because other animals, like the chinchilla, show a similar effect. Thus, the origin of the effect must be more general than something that just helps us with speech. Comment: This question really has two parts. One is just factual information where you need to describe what the categorical perception of phonemes is. The second are the things you really need to think about. I can think of other implications, but a few like that which I gave would have been fine. Attention and Memory Practice Questions **Question**: Several early attention researchers likened focussed visual attention to a spotlight. What does this mean and how accurate is this analogy? **Answer**: Early attention researchers (e.g., **Posner et al., 1980**) likened focussed visual attention to a spotlight with a fixed-size beam. This analogy captures several key aspects of how focussed visual attention operates: 1. **Selective Focus:** Like a spotlight, attention allows us to selectively focus on specific aspects of our environment while ignoring others. This is crucial for processing information efficiently and effectively. 2. **Limited Capacity:** Just as a spotlight can only illuminate a small area at a time, our attentional capacity is limited. We cannot attend to everything in our visual field simultaneously, so we must choose what to focus on. 3. **Flexibility:** Similar to how a spotlight can move and change its focus, our attention can shift rapidly from one location to another as needed. This flexibility enables us to adapt to changing circumstances and goals. 4. **Awareness:** When something is illuminated by the spotlight of attention, we become consciously aware of it. Conversely, things outside the spotlight may go unnoticed or be processed at a lower level of awareness. While the spotlight analogy captures many aspects of focused visual attention, it\'s not a perfect representation. **Eriksen and St. James (1986)** argued the spotlight is more like a camera-zoom lens that can be adjusted to alter the visual area it covers. In this zoom-lens analogy, the spotlight can have a broad focus, covering a large area of the visual field, or a narrower focus, covering a smaller area of the visual field. Studies suggests this is true and that there is a trade-off between the spotlight's size and processing efficiency. For example, in a computer-based experiment, **Muller et al.'s (2003)** participants reacted slower to onscreen events that occurred within their visual field when they were required to have a broader focus of attention, relative to a narrower one. Other researchers have questioned whether our spotlight of attention is shaped like a circular spotlight or whether it can take the shape of objects of interest, so we process those objects more effectively. Evidence suggests the spotlight of attention can take the shape of objects. For example, **Egly et al. (1994) **ran a reaction time study where participants saw two rectangles and a cue indicating the most likely location of a subsequent target. The target appeared at either: - - - If attention was shaped like a spotlight, responses should be equally fast when the target appears at B or C. Instead, participants responded faster to the target when it appeared at (B), which was the un-cued end of the cued rectangle. This \'same-object advantage\' has been offered as evidence that the spotlight can take the shape of objects. Subsequent research suggests visual attention can be shaped like a spotlight or object, but default mode is likely 'spotlight mode' (e.g.,** Pilz et al., 2012**). In conclusion, the spotlight analogy provides a useful metaphor for understanding some aspects of visual attention, but it is likely that the spotlight is actually a zoom-lens, and the spotlight's beam can take the shape of objects of interest. **Question**: What are the components of Baddeley and Hitch\'s original 1974 Working Memory model and what do we use them for in everyday life? **Answer**: Baddeley and Hitch's (1974) original Working Memory model has three components: **1. The phonological loop**: This component is responsible for the temporary storage and rehearsal of verbal information, such as words and numbers. It consists of two subcomponents: - - In everyday life, the phonological loop plays an important role in tasks such as remembering a phone number, following verbal instructions, and learning new vocabulary. Focussing on the latter, it allows us to temporarily hold new words in mind whilst longer-term memory traces are created. Research shows that children and adults with phonological loop impairments can have language learning difficulties (e.g., Baddeley et al., 1988). **2. The visuo-spatial sketchpad: **This component is responsible for the** **temporary storage of visual information (i.e., what things look like) and spatial information (i.e., where they are in space). The visuo-spatial sketchpad is also responsible for mentally visualising and manipulating information stored in long-term memory (e.g., visualising an elephant we once saw at the zoo, but manipulating the image so we picture it wearing roller skates). In everyday life, the visuospatial sketchpad is involved in tasks such as navigation and visual searches. Visual imagery is also used in many professions. For example, people who work in design-related fields, such as architects and artists, use visual imagery to imagine what their finished creations will look like. Indeed, research by Wilson et al. (1999) showed than an accomplished artist was unable to produce new detailed realistic works of art as she could no longer visualise what objects looked like. **3. The central executive**: This component is the control centre of working memory. It has three primary functions: focussing attention on tasks, switching attention from one task to another, and dividing attention between tasks. Focussing on the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad, specifically, it helps coordinate their activities. An everyday example of the central executive being used is when you are trying to watch a movie but get interrupted by a phone call that you decide to answer. Whilst watching you movie, you will be focussing the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad's resources on that task. When the phone rings and you decide to answer it, you will be engaging in task switching, with the phonological loop's resources now being used to process the phone conversation. If, however, you decide to chat on the phone and listen to the movie in the background at the same time, you will be dividing the phonological loop's limited resources between the two tasks (and will probably struggle to perform either task very well). **Perception Practice Questions** **Question**: What are monocular and binocular cues used for? Give an example of each. **Answer**: People can use both binocular and monocular cues to judge the depth of an object. A monocular cue is one that is based on information from one eye only. It does not require binocular vision to use it. An example of a monocular cue is occlusion. It is the term given to when one object occludes another, thereby indicating that it is closer to the viewer than the object it occludes.  A binocular cue is one based on information from both eyes. For example, disparity is a binocular cue. Because the left eye and right eye are separated from each other, there will be differences in the location of an object in the left eye view and right eye view. These differences will also change depending on the distance that the object is from the fixation plane. These differences or disparities are used by the visual system as a cue to depth. (Note: full marks for defining binocular cues with an example, and for defining monocular cue with an example. Other examples would also be accepted for both monocular and binocular cues). **[Question]**: Elizabeth wants to measure orientation sensitivity in astronauts after they have returned to Earth from a mission in space. What experimental technique(s) should she use and why? **[Answer]**: Since she wants a perceptual measure, Elizabeth could use psychophysics. While it would be possible to also use fMRI, psychophysics is easier to administer and can provide a robust, objective estimate of orientation sensitivity.  Because Elizabeth wants to understand the impact of space flight on orientation sensitivity, she would plan to test the astronauts both before and after their flight. She could use the method of constant stimuli. Elizabeth could refer to existing literature to select the step sizes needed for the method of constant stimuli paradigm. These stimuli would then be randomly interleaved for the participant. Elizabeth would then collate the responses and fit a function to estimate the participant's orientation threshold. Elizabeth would carry out this experiment before the astronauts left and after they returned. By comparing the two thresholds, she could then estimate the effect of space flight on orientation sensitivity.  (Note: full marks for describing the experimental technique and explaining why it is appropriate.) **[Decision Making Practice Questions]** **Question**: Provide a short description of the proposal or model, and, if relevant, older models it extends on. **Answer**: According to the heuristics and biases model of decision-making, people are prone to the confirmation bias, in that they tend to only seek evidence that confirms their hypotheses about relationships between entities. In other words, they tend to ask questions that have a "yes" answer if the hypothesis is true. Perfors and Navarro (2009) present some calculations to show that this hypothesis-testing approach is optimal in terms of the information gained with each query when the entities referred to by the hypothesis are rare. For many other biases proposed by the heuristics and biases model, research has not been conducted on environments in which they are adaptive. **Question**:  Describe evidence from laboratory studies that supports the proposal or model, or that addresses a central research question relating to the model (e.g., what is the relationship between confidence and accuracy?) **Answer:** The existence of the confirmation bias is evidenced by how people tend to respond on the Wason Task. To test the rule "If a card has a vowel on one side, it has a number divisible by 13 on the other side", people choose to overturn the \'A\' card or the \'A\' and \'26\' cards when they can see the following card faces: \'A\', \'S\', \'26\' and \'7\'. Only a small minority of participants tend to select the \'A\' and \'7\' cards, as they would need to do to check that the rule is both confirmed and not disconfirmed by the cards. in the selection of cards below, people tend to select the 'A' and '4' cards rather than the 'A' and '7' cards. Hendrickson and colleagues (2016) presented evidence that people look for evidence confirming their hypotheses when the entities referred to in the hypotheses (e.g., battleship positions on a board) are rare. When the entities are frequent, people seek out disconfirming evidence. **Question**: Explain some of the successes and, if relevant, challenges, of applying the model in healthcare or beyond **Answer:** Christensen-Szalanski and Bushyhead (1983) found that physicians' predictions about whether a patient had pneumonia reflected that patient's status on 12 out of 14 present symptoms, but only 1 out of 5 absent symptoms. This occurred even though all 19 symptoms were predictive of the patient's radiographed pneumonia status. Considering present rather than absent symptoms is indicative of the confirmation bias, and could be addressed through introducing a decision log form that asks physicians to describe evidence expected to be present and absent under different possible diagnoses. Findings such as this one are challenging to replicate, as they are based on judgements physicians made for over 1,500 patients total, and collecting such large datasets in real-world settings is a resource-intensive exercise.