Free Cognitive Psychology MCQs with Answers

• A. the availability heuristic
• B. confirmation bias
• C. the representativeness heuristic
• D. the belief perseverance phenomenon

Explanation: Ken's height matches the stereotype of a basketball player, so people infer team membership from resemblance to a typical category member.

• A. arrangement; intuition; functional fixedness
• B. arrangement; intuition; confirmation bias
• C. transformation; intuition; mental set
• D. arrangement; insight; functional fixedness

Explanation: The two-string task is an arrangement problem because the existing setup must be reorganized, and its solution commonly appears as a…

• A. orderly arrangements of words into grammatically correct sentences
• B. derivation of meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences
• C. logical and methodical procedures for solving problems
• D. simple thinking strategies that facilitate quick decision making

Explanation: Semantics is the meaning system of language, covering meaning derived from morphemes, words, and sentences.

• A. the arrangement problem and the framing effect
• B. the framing effect and the gambler's fallacy
• C. the conjunction fallacy and the gambler's fallacy
• D. the conjunction fallacy and the overconfidence effect

Explanation: The representativeness heuristic makes people judge likelihood by resemblance rather than probability, producing the conjunction fallacy…

• A. morphemes
• B. semantics
• C. algorithms
• D. syntax

Explanation: Syntax is the system of rules governing how words are arranged into phrases and sentences, so it includes sentence structure errors such…

• A. the framing effect
• B. the availability heuristic
• C. confirmation bias
• D. functional fixedness

Explanation: Confirmation bias leads a person to seek or notice evidence supporting an existing belief, so the teacher watches boys more closely for…

• A. concept; prototype
• B. phoneme; grammar
• C. semantics; syntax
• D. nomenclature; sematics

Explanation: Semantics concerns word meaning, whereas syntax concerns the order and arrangement of words in sentences.

• A. functional fixedness
• B. confirmation bias
• C. overconfidence
• D. the availability heuristic

Explanation: Functional fixedness is the tendency to see an object only in its usual role, so Maham failed to recognize that a jacket could serve as a…

• A. surface structure
• B. linguistic determinism
• C. functional fixedness
• D. belief perseverance

Explanation: The surface structure is the actual form and arrangement of words in a spoken sentence, which is shaped by a person's language experience.

• A. step-by-step procedure for solving problems
• B. mental grouping of similar objects, events, or people
• C. problem solving strategy
• D. best example of a particular category

Explanation: A prototype is the most representative or best example of a category, such as a robin being a prototype of a bird.

• A. front occipital
• B. left occipital
• C. left temporal
• D. right temporal

Explanation: Sudden insight in problem solving has been associated with a burst of activity in the right temporal lobe, particularly the anterior…

• A. pre-speech, babbling and jargon
• B. words, sentences, and paragraphs
• C. grammar, babbling, and phonemes
• D. phonemes, morphemes, and grammar

Explanation: Phonemes are the smallest sound units, morphemes are the smallest meaningful units, and grammar consists of rules for combining them.

• A. category hierarchies
• B. functional fixedness
• C. algorithms
• D. overconfidence

Explanation: A category hierarchy organizes concepts from broad classes into increasingly specific subcategories, such as animal, bird, and sparrow.

• A. more; the same
• B. fewer; more
• C. more; more
• D. fewer; less

Explanation: English has fewer written letters than phonemes because several sounds can be represented by combinations of letters, while consonant…

• A. Observable behaviour
• B. Interaction with others
• C. The unconscious mind
• D. Thought

Explanation: Cognitive psychology studies internal mental processes such as thinking, memory, perception, language, and problem solving.

• A. an arrangement problem
• B. a series-completion problem
• C. a deductive reasoning problem
• D. an analogy problemSelf-Help & Motivational

Explanation: The relationship is category membership: an apple is a type of fruit, just as a hamburger is a type of food.

• A. insight
• B. determined
• C. deductive
• D. echoic

Explanation: Deductive reasoning moves from a general rule to a logically necessary specific conclusion: if all dogs have tails and poodles are dogs…

• A. functional fixedness
• B. inductive reasoning
• C. heuristic reasoning
• D. insight insufficiency

Explanation: Functional fixedness is the tendency to see an object only in its usual role, so the pliers are not recognised as a possible nutcracker.

• A. belief perseverance
• B. the farming effect
• C. the representativeness heuristic
• D. linguistic determinism

Explanation: Linguistic determinism is the idea that the language available to people influences how they perceive and think about the world.

• A. underestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments
• B. judge the likelihood of an event in terms of how readily instances of its occurrence are remembered
• C. cling to our initial conceptions, even though they have been discredited
• D. judge the likelihood of category membership by how closely an object or event resembles a particular prototype

Explanation: The representativeness heuristic estimates category membership by comparing an event or object with a mental prototype.