Week 9 Quiz

A robin gets an instant "yes" to the question "Is it a bird?", while a penguin often gets a pause before the "yes." What best explains the difference?

Select one.

• The robin is closer to the prototype, the most typical example of the concept "bird"
• The penguin is not fully a member of the concept "bird"
• The robin judgment uses an algorithm and the penguin judgment uses a heuristic
• The penguin judgment shows functional fixedness about what birds can do

Lena is quiet, wears glasses, and talks about books all evening. Her town has far more salespeople than librarians, yet a neighbor concludes she must be a librarian. Which heuristic is at work, and what does it ignore?

Select one.

• The availability heuristic, which ignores how vivid librarians are
• Confirmation bias, which ignores evidence against the neighbor's belief
• The representativeness heuristic, which ignores the base rate of each job
• Framing, which ignores how the description of Lena was worded

Why does a shark-attack headline make an ocean swim feel more dangerous than the drive to the beach?

Select one.

• The headline makes the swim resemble a typical dangerous activity, so the representativeness heuristic applies
• A vivid, recent story is easy to retrieve from memory, and that ease of recall feels like frequency
• The headline frames the drive as a gain, so the swim feels like a loss
• The reader already believed swimming was dangerous and noticed only the evidence that fit

Memory runs through encoding, storage, and retrieval. Which of these steps does the availability heuristic lean on most directly?

Select one.

• Encoding, because only events that are encoded deeply can be judged
• Storage, because events stored longest seem the most frequent
• Retrieval, because examples that come to mind easily seem more common
• None of the memory steps, because the availability heuristic is about resemblance

One yogurt is labeled "90% fat-free" and another is labeled "10% fat." A shopper says the first one is clearly healthier. What best describes the two labels?

Select one.

• They describe different amounts of fat, so the shopper is right
• They state the same fact, so preferring one label shows a framing effect
• They state the same fact, so preferring one label shows the availability heuristic
• They describe different amounts of fat, so the preference shows overconfidence

Dev starts a new diet he believes in. For a month he reads every article praising it, skips the ones that raise doubts, and cannot recall a study a friend mentioned that found no benefit. A classmate calls this "the availability heuristic." What is the better label, and why?

Select one.

• The availability heuristic is right, because the praising articles were easier to recall
• Representativeness, because the diet resembles a typical successful diet
• Mental set, because Dev keeps using a method that worked before
• Confirmation bias, because a belief Dev already held steered which evidence he sought and kept

At a new job, Ana totals a column of numbers by hand, the way she always has, though the spreadsheet in front of her can add the column in one step. Which obstacle to problem solving is this?

Select one.

• Mental set, because she is reusing a familiar method when a better one exists
• Functional fixedness, because she sees the spreadsheet only in its usual job
• Overconfidence, because she is more certain of her total than her accuracy supports
• The representativeness heuristic, because the column resembles an earlier problem

Which order matches how children typically develop language?

Select one.

• One-word speech, babbling, telegraphic speech, two-word speech
• Babbling, two-word speech, one-word speech, telegraphic speech
• Telegraphic speech, babbling, one-word speech, two-word speech
• Babbling, one-word speech, two-word speech, telegraphic speech

IQ tests are scaled so the mean score is 100 and 15 points mark one step of spread, and about 68% of people score between 85 and 115. Which statement follows from the scale?

Select one.

• A score in that band means the person performed close to the average of the standardization sample
• A score in that band measures the person's worth compared with others
• A score outside that band means the test was not reliable for that person
• A score in that band means the person has no special strengths

A nurse aces written exams, invents a better way to organize the supply room, and is the person coworkers ask about handling a difficult family. Which theory describes these three strengths as analytical, creative, and practical intelligence?

Select one.

• Spearman's general intelligence (g)
• Gardner's multiple intelligences
• Sternberg's triarchic theory
• The Flynn effect